https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0475-8578
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ABSTRACT
This article investigates for European societies the contextual conditions and social stratification of status seeking, defined as the desire to increase one’s rank in the social hierarchy and thereby to gain prestige. We explore diverging assumptions about (a) the level of status seeking across societies and (b) the social gradient of status seeking within them, derived from three prominent sociological theories: the income inequality thesis sensu Wilkinson and Pickett, the post-materialism thesis sensu Inglehart, and the status competition thesis sensu Bourdieu. We employ representative, high-quality data from the European Social Survey (ESS) 2018 for more than 45.000 individuals in 29 countries, which we analyse in a multilevel framework. We find evidence that socioeconomic development dampens status seeking while income inequality is less influential. Within societies, a higher rank in the stratification system, in particular a more favorable occupational class position and higher income, are associated with stronger status seeking. While our results for contextual conditions match post-materialism theory best, the results for social gradients conform best to status competition theory. Both findings question the current dominance of the inequality thesis as the stepping stone into status seeking research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
ESS Round 9: European Social Survey Round 9 Data (2018). Data file edition 3.1. NSD – Norwegian Centre for Research Data, Norway – Data Archive and distributor of ESS data for ESS ERIC. doi:10.21338/NSD-ESS9-2018.
Notes
1 Indeed, some studies (see Cheng et al. Citation2013; Maner Citation2017) use the term prestige instead of status.
2 Apart from conspicuous consumption, there are a number of ways to achieve recognition (see the comprehensive theoretical framework and discussion in Mattan et al. Citation2017).
3 Please note that the measure of status seeking that flows from our definition is completely different from that used in sociological prestige scales. While the former is about how much individuals themselves seek status, the latter is about the prestige individuals assign to different occupations (cf. Wegener Citation1992).
4 “Low parental class” comprises farm workers and unskilled workers; “lower middle” semi-skilled workers and skilled workers; “upper middle” clerical, sales, and service occupations; and “high parental class” professional, technical, and higher administration occupations.
5 We adapted a basic syntax from Weiss and Bauer and revised it according to recommendations for the use of ISCO-08 by Harrison. See: https://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/download/ESeC_full_version_for_ESS.do; https://www.ericharrison.co.uk/european-socio-economic-classification-esec.html.
6 As a robustness check, we re-estimated all models with imputed income information (multiple imputation using predictive mean matching). There were no significant changes in results, compared to a mean imputation. For this reason, and because a mean imputation is much easier to replicate, we retain the simpler method.
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Notes on contributors
Jan Delhey
Jan Delhey is Professor of Macrosociology at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (Germany) and member of the board of directors of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies. He is a comparative sociologist mainly interested in how inequality and societal modernization impact on individual quality-of-life, trust, and social cohesion. Some of his recent publications concerned the spirit level theory, e. g. “Social Ills in Rich Countries: New Evidence on Levels, Causes, and Mediators” (2020 in Social Indicators Research, with Leonie C. Steckermeier).
Christian Schneickert
Christian Schneickert is interim professor for Methods of Empirical Social Research at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (Germany). His teaching and research centers on elites, stratification, culture, globalization, and the sociology of education and science. Some of his recent publications concerned the dispositional structure and stratification of transnational activities, e.g. “Habitus in the context of Transnationalization: From ‘transnational habitus’ to a configuration of dispositions and fields” (2021 in The Sociological Review, with Sören Carlson).
Stephanie Hess
Stephanie Hess is research fellow and PhD student at the chair of Macrosociology at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (Germany). She is a family sociologist and demographer mainly interested in how family conflicts and inequality shape children's quality-of-life. Her recent publications concerned the spillover effect of conflict in parents' lives onto children's well-being, e.g. “Associations between Mothers' Work-Family Conflict and Children's Psychological Well-being: The Mediating Role of Mothers' Parenting Behavior” (2020 in Journal of Child and Family Studies, with Matthias Pollmann-Schult).
Auke Aplowski
Auke Aplowski was Research fellow in the project “Recognition, Disrespect and Status Seeking” at the chair of Macrosociology at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (Germany) until September 2020. Since then he is researcher at the Federal Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden (Germany).