Status Crystallization and Interracial Attitudes

The concept of status crystallization as defined by Lenski is examined. Its applicability in the field of race relations is tested. Data in this field indicate that class position and degree of status crystallization considered jointly are more effective concepts for analysis of attitudes in the field of race relations than is either concept considered separately. The relationship of the findings to other studies of attitudes is suggested. Status crystallization as the concept is defined by Lenskil has received considerable attention over the past few years. It is, briefly, a concept which seeks to specify in an empirical fashion the component elements of social class and the interrelationships among those components.2 PROBLEM, ASSUMPTIONS, AND METHODS Social class has had significance for sociologists and those who use social class as a concept do so in ways, generally speaking, which suggest that by social class we are referring to status, power, prestige, life chances, rank-order position, etc., in a social system. Such positional aspects of individuals and groups in a system tell us important things about the interactions which occur, the choices of behavior open to individuals, and the kinds of properties that the social system under discussion has. Communities and societies have been the units within which such analyses are made. Quite characteristically the assumption is made, usually implicitly, that a communityfor example-has one and only one class system. The use of class has tended to follow either a strictly economic and/or marketchances definition similar to the way Weber used the concept3 or a usage more similar to that of Parsons as involving: not a rigid entity but a fairly loosely correlated complex.... All that is here contended is that the family-occupation-income complex is by and large the core of the wider complex. We have deliberately abstracted from ethnic status which might be brought in. In a sense, it is taken care of by way of the family. Perhaps the best single case for another element would be education. . . . [It] is only in the broadest sense that this class complex can in American society be made to yield a single unequivocal scale of classes. Some such broad classification as 'upper'carefully defined-'middle' and 'lower' make sense. . . . But care should be taken not to imply that . . . the lines between adjacent classes are very clear-cut.4 This wider view of class is used here. The components of position in such a class system in a community, particularly a large community, are, as Parsons suggests, such items as occupation, income, education, race and/or religion and ethnic origin. Arithmetic mean score of the four variables as a measure of social class is used here. No significant grounds for other procedures have been proposed that have won wide acceptance. * Revised version of a paper read at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, 1965. 1 Gerhard E. Lenski, "Status Crystallization: A Non-Vertical Dimension of Social Status," American Sociological Review, 19 (August 1954), pp. 405-413. 2 For a general discussion of many of the problems involved see Reinhard Bendix and Seymour M. Lipset (eds.), Class, Status and Power: A Reader in Social Stratifications (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1953). 3 See Max Weber, "Class, Status, Party," in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 180-195. 4 See Talcott Parsons, "A Revised Analytical Approach to the Theory of Social Stratification" in Bendix and Lipset, op. cit., pp. 120-121. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.148 on Sun, 11 Sep 2016 04:30:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms