status, social status There are two approaches to the concept of status in sociology. In its weak form, it simply means the position which a person occupies in the social structure , such as teacher or priest. It is often combined with the notion of social role to produce the idea of a status-role.

In its stronger meaning, it refers to a form of social stratification in which status groups or strata are ranked and organized by legal, political, and cultural criteria. There are many versions of this approach to status. For example, the legal theorist Sir Henry Maine argued that we can conceptualize the history of Western society in terms of a transition from status to contract: that ...