Status and Role

Status set is all the statuses one person holds at a given time: a woman may simultaneously be an advocate, a mother, a daughter, a tenant and a member of a housing society.

Status symbols are the outward marks by which a status is displayed and recognised: a robe, a uniform, a car, a title.

Role

The concepts that carry marks

Role set. Merton's term for the several role relationships attached to a single status. The status of judge carries relationships with advocates, litigants, court staff, the appellate court and the press. Note carefully: a status set is many statuses held by one person; a role set is many relationships attached to one status. Examiners test the difference.

Role expectation is what others believe the occupant should do; role performance is what the occupant actually does. The gap between them is where most social friction lives.

Role conflict arises when a person holds two or more statuses whose roles make incompatible demands. An advocate who is also the opposite party's cousin. A police officer whose duty is to arrest a neighbour.

Role strain arises within a single status, when the demands of one role are themselves incompatible. A judge must be patient with a litigant in person and must also dispose of a heavy board. Nothing outside the status is competing; the strain is internal to it.

That distinction, conflict between statuses and strain within one, is the most commonly examined thing in this chapter and the most commonly muddled.

Role distance, a term of Goffman's, is the visible detachment a person shows from a role they are performing, signalling that they are more than the role. A senior advocate who jokes about the ritual of the court while observing it perfectly is displaying role distance.

Role exit is the process of leaving a status central to one's identity, and it is rarely clean: a retired judge, a former spouse, a person leaving a religious order.

A worked example

Advocate Nikita Rane appears for a tenant in an eviction matter.

Her status set that afternoon: advocate, daughter, member of the bar association, tenant of her own flat, mother of a child whose school ends at three.

Her role set as advocate alone: obligations to her client, duties to the court, professional obligations to her opponent, responsibilities to her junior, obligations to the association.

Role strain, inside the single status of advocate: her duty to advance her client's case fully, and her duty not to mislead the court, are both duties of that one status and they pull against each other when her client instructs her to advance a version she doubts.

Role conflict, between two statuses: the matter is listed at two thirty, her child's school closes at three, and the roles of advocate and mother make incompatible demands at the same hour. Nothing is wrong with either role; they simply cannot both be performed.

How such conflicts are resolved, which is what an examiner wants after the definitions:

• Ranking the roles. Societies rank obligations, and a court appearance ordinarily outranks a school pickup, which is why the resolution feels obvious even though nothing formal decides it.
• Segregating them in time and space. The professional and domestic roles are kept in separate places and hours, and conflict appears exactly where the segregation fails.
• Delegating. Someone else collects the child.
• Formal rules. Professional rules resolve the strain inside the advocate's status by providing that the duty to the court prevails, which is precisely a society settling a role strain by legislation.

That last point is worth carrying into Module IV. A great deal of law is a society's settled answer to a recurring role conflict: rules on conflict of interest, on recusal, on the duties of a director, on the responsibilities of a trustee. Each names two roles that pull apart and says which wins.

Status and role compared

What this does NOT mean

A role is not a personality. Two very different people can perform the same role adequately, and the same person performs many roles in a day.

Statuses are not always ranked. Some are graded, but many are simply different positions.

Role playing is not insincerity. A person adapting their behaviour to the situation is behaving normally, and the failure to do so, behaving identically in a courtroom, at a funeral and at a party, is what strikes others as strange.

Ascribed does not mean unchangeable. Some ascribed statuses can be altered; the point is that they are not acquired by effort.

Quick revision

1. Linton: a person occupies a status and plays a role. Status is static, role is dynamic.
2. Ascribed: given at birth or without effort. Achieved: acquired by effort or choice. Achievement usually begins from an ascribed starting point.
3. Master status overrides the rest in how a person is treated.
4. Status set: many statuses, one person. Role set (Merton): many relationships, one status.
5. Role conflict: between two statuses. Role strain: within one status.
6. Role distance (Goffman); role exit.
7. Conflicts are resolved by ranking, segregation in time and space, delegation, and formal rules.
8. Much law is a settled answer to a recurring role conflict: conflict of interest, recusal, fiduciary duty.

Test yourself

1. Define status and role and state the relation between them. A status is a socially defined position in a group or society, carrying rights, duties and privileges. A role is the pattern of behaviour expected of whoever occupies that position. In Linton's formulation a person occupies a status and plays a role: status is the static positional aspect and role its dynamic behavioural aspect.

2. Distinguish ascribed from achieved status, and say why the distinction is not clean. Ascribed status is assigned without regard to ability or effort, usually at birth, such as sex, age, caste or family. Achieved status is acquired through effort, choice or competition, such as advocate or graduate. The distinction is not clean because achievement almost always starts from an ascribed position: schooling, language, money and contacts, which decide who can achieve, are themselves largely inherited.

3. Distinguish role conflict from role strain, with examples. Role conflict arises between two or more statuses whose roles make incompatible demands, as when an advocate's hearing and her child's school closing fall at the same hour. Role strain arises within a single status, when that one role's own demands pull apart, as when an advocate's duty to advance her client's case fully conflicts with her duty not to mislead the court.

4. Distinguish a status set from a role set. A status set is all the statuses one person occupies at a given time: advocate, mother, daughter, tenant. A role set, Merton's term, is the several role relationships attached to a single status: the status of judge carries relationships with advocates, litigants, staff, the appellate court and the press. One is about a person, the other about a position.

5. How does law relate to role conflict? A great deal of law is a society's settled answer to a recurring conflict of roles. Rules on conflict of interest, judicial recusal, the duties of directors and the obligations of trustees each identify two roles that pull in different directions and lay down which is to prevail, so that the conflict is resolved in advance and identically for everyone rather than case by case.