Social status is the relative level of social value a person is considered to possess. Such social value includes respect, honor, assumed competence, and deference. On one hand, social scientists view status as a "reward" for group members who treat others well and take initiative. This is one explanation for its apparent cross-cultural universality. On the other hand, while people with higher status experience a litany of benefits—such as greater health, admiration, resources, influence, and freedom—those with lower status experience poorer outcomes across all of those metrics.
Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron was a French philosopher, sociologist, political scientist, historian and journalist, one of France's most prominent thinkers of the 20th century.
Lester Frank Ward was an American botanist, paleontologist, and sociologist. The first president of the American Sociological Association, Ward has been characterized as a pioneering figure in American sociology. His 1883 work Dynamic Sociology was influential in establishing sociology as a distinct field in the United States. However, despite its initial impact his work was quickly sidelined during the institutionalization and development of American sociology.
Marcel Danesi is Professor of Semiotics and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is known for his work in language, communications and semiotics and is Director of the program in semiotics and communication theory. He has also held positions at Rutgers University (1972), University of Rome "La Sapienza" (1988), the Catholic University of Milan (1990) and the University of Lugano.
Norman Thomas di Giovanni was an American-born editor and translator known for his collaboration with Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.
Joe Richard Feagin is an American sociologist and social theorist who has conducted extensive research on racial and gender issues in the United States. He is currently the Ella C. McFadden Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University.
Charles Lemert is an American born social theorist and sociologist. He has written extensively on social theory, globalization and culture. He has contributed to many key debates in social thought, authoring dozens of books including his text Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life, 5th edition. From 1982 to 2010, he taught at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his family.
Shirley R. Steinberg is an educator, author, activist, filmmaker, and public speaker whose work focuses on critical pedagogy, transformative leadership, social justice, and cultural studies. She has written and edited numerous books and articles about equitable pedagogies and leadership, urban and youth culture, community studies, cultural studies, Islamophobia, and issues of inclusion, race, class, gender, and sexuality. Steinberg was the Research Chair of Critical Youth Studies at the University of Calgary for two terms, executive director of the Freire Project freireproject.org, and a visiting researcher at University of Barcelona and Murdoch University. She has held faculty positions at Montclair State University, Adelphi University, Brooklyn College, The CUNY Graduate Center, and McGill University. Steinberg directed the Institute for Youth and Community Research at the University of the West of Scotland for two years.
Robert Garner is a British political scientist, political theorist, and intellectual historian. He is a Professor Emeritus in the politics department at the University of Leicester, where he has worked for much of his career. Before working at Leicester, he worked at the University of Exeter and the University of Buckingham, and studied at the University of Manchester and the University of Salford.
Social privilege is an advantage or entitlement that benefits individuals belonging to certain groups, often to the detriment of others. Privileged groups can be advantaged based on social class, wealth, education, caste, age, height, skin color, physical fitness, nationality, geographic location, cultural differences, ethnic or racial category, gender, gender identity, neurodiversity, physical disability, sexual orientation, religion, and other differentiating factors. Individuals can be privileged in one area, such as education, and not privileged in another area, such as health. The amount of privilege any individual has may change over time, such as when a person becomes disabled, or when a child becomes a young adult.
Joan Elise Robinson Acker was an American sociologist, researcher, writer and educator. She joined the University of Oregon faculty in 1967. Acker is considered one of the leading analysts regarding gender and class within the second wave of feminism.
Elisa Aaltola is a Finnish philosopher, specialised in animal philosophy, moral psychology and environmental philosophy.
Naomi Zack is a professor of philosophy at Lehman College, City University of New York (CUNY), having formerly been a professor at the University of Albany and the University of Oregon. She has written thirteen books and three textbooks, and she has edited or co-edited five anthologies, in addition to publishing a large number of papers and book chapters, particularly in areas having to deal with race, feminism, and natural disasters. Zack has taken on a number of professional roles related to the representation of women and other under-represented groups in philosophy. Zack is also a member of the editorial boards of multiple journals, including Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, The Journal of Race and Policy, Ethnic Studies: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Culture, Race and Ethnicity, and the Radical Philosophical Review.
Myth of meritocracy is a phrase arguing that meritocracy, or achieving upward social mobility through one's own merits regardless of one's social position, is not widely attainable in capitalist societies because of inherent contradictions. Meritocracy is argued to be a myth because, despite being promoted as an open and accessible method of achieving upward class mobility under neoliberal or free market capitalism, wealth disparity and limited class mobility remain widespread, regardless of individual work ethic. Some scholars argue that the wealth disparity has even increased because the "myth" of meritocracy has been so effectively promoted and defended by the political and private elite through the media, education, corporate culture, and elsewhere. Economist Robert Reich argues that many Americans still believe in meritocracy despite "the nation drifting ever-farther away from it."
Judith Blau is an American sociologist and professor emerita of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Most of her academic career has been devoted to teaching and writing about human rights, and she retired to Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where she continues to teach.
Siobhan O'Sullivan was an Australian political scientist and political theorist. She was an associate professor in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales. Her research focused, among other things, on animal welfare policy and the welfare state. She was the author of Animals, Equality and Democracy and a coauthor of Getting Welfare to Work and Buying and Selling the Poor. She co-edited Contracting-out Welfare Services and The Political Turn in Animal Ethics. She was the founding host of the regular animal studies podcast Knowing Animals.
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is an American sociologist and professor of sociology at Duke University. He was the 2018 president of the American Sociological Association.
George Dewey Yancy is an American philosopher who is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. He is a distinguished Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, one of the college's highest honors. In 2019–20, he was the University of Pennsylvania's Inaugural Provost's Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellow. He is the editor for Lexington Books' "Philosophy of Race" book series. He is known for his work in critical whiteness studies, critical philosophy of race, critical phenomenology, and African American philosophy, and has written, edited, or co-edited more than 20 books. In his capacity as an academic scholar and a public intellectual, he has published over 250 combined scholarly articles, chapters, and interviews that have appeared in professional journals, books, and at various news sites.
Mary Pattillo is an American professor and ethnographer of African American studies at Northwestern University. She is the Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and chair of the Department of Black Studies. As of 2016, she has served as director of undergraduate studies in African American studies and has been a faculty associate in Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research since 2004. She has formerly served as chair of Northwestern University's department of sociology.
The Florida Project is a 2017 American drama film directed by Sean Baker and written by Baker and Chris Bergoch. Starring Bria Vinaite, Brooklynn Prince, and Willem Dafoe, with Valeria Cotto, Christopher Rivera, and Caleb Landry Jones in supporting roles, it was many of the cast members' first film appearance. The slice of life plot focuses on the summertime adventures of a six-year-old girl who lives with her unemployed single mother in a budget motel in Kissimmee, Florida. Their struggle to make ends meet and stave off homelessness takes place in a surreal environment dominated by the nearby Walt Disney World, which was code-named "The Florida Project" during its planning stages. It juxtaposes this with the local residents' less glamorous day-to-day lives and the children's joyful adventures as they explore and make the most of their surroundings while remaining blissfully ignorant of the hardships their adult caretakers face.
