SOC 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Erving Goffman, Ascribed Status, Paul Ekman

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1100
• Professor: Deanna Behnke- Cook

Document Summary

Social interaction: the process by which people act and react in relation to others. In every society, one of the building blocks of life is status, a social position that a person holds. Each of us holds many statuses at once. The term status set refers to all of the statuses that a person holds at a given time. Over a lifetime, people gain and lose dozens of statuses. For example, one could be married but if their spouse dies then they gain a new status of being signal. An ascribed status is a social position that one recieves at birth or assumes involuntarily later in life. Ascribed statuses are matters about which people have little or no choice. An achieved status refers to the social position that someone assumes voluntarily and that reflects personal ability and effort. An achieved status is achieved and an individual has at least some choice in the matter.