8.1.3: Prestige

 8.1.3: Prestige Let’s look at the third component of social class, occupational prestige. Occupations and Prestige What are you thinking about doing after college? Chances are, you don’t have the option of lying in a hammock under palm trees in some South Pacific paradise. Almost all of us have to choose an occupation and go to work. Look at Table 8.2 to see how the career you are considering stacks up in terms of prestige (the respect or regard people give it). Because we are moving toward a global society, this table also shows how the rankings given by Americans compare with those of the residents of sixty other countries. 

Table 8.2 Occupational Prestige: 

How the United States Compares with Sixty Countries Note: The rankings are based on 1 to 100, from lowest to highest. For five occupations not located in the 1994 source, the 1991 ratings were used: Supreme Court judge, astronaut, athletic coach, lives on public aid, and street sweeper. Sources: Treiman 1977: Appendices A and D; Nakao and Treas 1990, 1994: Appendix D. Why do people give more prestige to some jobs than to others? Look again at Table 8.2. The jobs at the top share four features: They pay more. They require more education. They involve more abstract thought. They offer greater autonomy (independence or self-direction). Now look at the bottom of the list. You can see that people give less prestige to jobs with the opposite characteristics: These jobs pay little, require less education, involve more physical labor, and are closely supervised. In short, the professions and the white-collar jobs are at the top of the list, the blue-collar jobs at the bottom. One of the more interesting aspects of these rankings is how consistent they are across countries and over time. For example, people in every country rank college professors higher than nurses, nurses higher than social workers, and social workers higher than janitors. Similarly, the occupations that were ranked high twenty-five years ago still rank high today—and likely will rank high in the years to come. Displaying Prestige People want others to acknowledge their prestige. In times past, in some countries, only the emperor and his family could wear purple—it was the royal color. In France, only the nobility could wear lace. In England, no one could sit while the king was on his throne. Some kings and queens required that subjects walk backward as they left the room—so that they would not “turn their back” on the “royal presence.” 236 Concern with displaying prestige has not let up. Military manuals specify who must salute whom. The U.S. president enters a room only after everyone else attending the function is present (to show that the president isn’t waiting for others). Everyone must also be standing when the president enters. In the courtroom, bailiffs, some with a gun at the hip, make certain that everyone stands when the judge enters. Status symbols vary with social class. People who are striving to be upwardly mobile flaunt labels on their clothing or carry shopping bags from prestigious stores to show that they have “arrived.” The wealthy regard the status symbols of the “common” classes as cheap and tawdry. They, too, flaunt status symbols, but theirs are things like $100,000 Rolex watches and $50,000 diamond earrings. Like the other classes, the wealthy also try to outdo one another. They casually mention the length of their yacht or that a helicopter flew them to their golf game (Fabrikant 2005). Or they offhandedly bring up the $40,000-a-night penthouse suite at the Four Seasons in New York City, asking, “Have you tried it yet? It’s ‘rather nice’” (Clemence 2013). Some hold their child’s birthday at places that charge $3,000, while others outdo them by buying their child an alligator backpack sold by Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen: just $39,000 (R. Smith 2014; Mose 2016). Then there is Shane Smith who treated a few guests to a $300,000 dinner that included $40,000 bottles of French Burgundy (Hagey 2016). How about yourself? Nothing like this, I know, but how do you try to display prestige? Think about your clothing. How much more are you willing to pay for clothing that bears some hot “designer” label? Purses, shoes, jeans, and shirts—many of us pay more if they have some little symbol than if they don’t. As we wear them proudly, aren’t we actually proclaiming, “See, I had the money (and the in-vogue taste, of course) to buy this particular item!”? For many, prestige is a primary factor in deciding which college to attend. Everyone knows how the prestige of a generic sheepskin from Regional State College compares with a degree from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or Stanford.