Social status

White, C.D., Healy, PE. and Schwarcz, H.P. 1993 Intensive agriculture, social status, and Maya diet at Pacbitun, Belize. Journu/ of Anthropological Research 49 347-375. 

As heirs to prime New Orleans real estate, a number of free African Americans became quite wealthy before the Civil War. Norbert Rillieux s cousins included members of some of New Orleans richest families. A few of his cousins were so confident of their social status and their ability to pass as white that they signed their names without the required term free man of color, or f.m.c. Many free people of color also invested heavily in slaves. When Norbert Rillieux was in his twenties, more than 700 of New Orleans free African Americans owned an average of three slaves apiece, often family members who were eventually freed. Each of the 23 richest free people of color in New Orleans owned between 10 and 20 slaves. 

In contrast to the lack of recognition for his valency theory, Frankland s work in organometallic compounds attracted considerable attention. When the city of Manchester opened England s first provincial university, Frankland was appointed its chemistry professor. Frankland was a self-made man, and Manchester was a city of self-made men made rich by Britain s textile industry. Its university was a new kind of institution for Britain. It was wholly secular, and its professors were chosen by merit, rather than by the established Church of England. Furthermore, the students—all male, of course—were admitted without regard to religion, rank, or social status. 

There is also evidence from a large number of studies that homicide and violent crime are substantially more common in less egalitarian countries. (A meta analysis carried out by Hsieh and Pugh showing violent crime and homicide rates related to income inequality covers 34 studies (Hsieh and Pugh, 1993).) All of this evidence strongly suggests that as social status differences in a society increase, the quality of social relations deteriorates. The countries studied included the US, UK, Italy, and Japan, plus a number in Eastern Europe. 

However, what is it about social status and social integration that makes them so important to health One proposal is that social status indicates social capital, and that it is a person s social capital which is most important to health. Wilkinson rejects this hypothesis, stating that social capital is an epiphenomenon and that we still have to identify the causal factors underlying it (Wilkinson 1999, p. 52). 

Wilkinson concludes, We do not really know why social affiliation matters to health, we do not know why social cohesion is associated with better health, and we have not yet identified what is inherently stressful about low social status (Wilkinson, 1999, p. 52). 

Wilkinson also notes the importance of emotional development in early life poor attachment and emotional trauma in early childhood affects health. As he notes, there are observed associations between health and social status, between health and friendship, and between health and early emotional development. All three of these must be considered prime candidates for sources of social anxiety. 

One mistake which Wilkinson urges us to avoid is to picture human characteristics as having evolved in relation only to a physical environment one of the primary hostile forces has always been other human beings. The importance of social interactions should not be underestimated. One example that he gives is that blood pressure tends to rise when people are interviewed by a higher- rather by than an equal- or lower-status interviewer. This is fundamentally a response of the sympathetic nervous system to the social anxiety induced by interacting with someone who is of higher social status. 

In sum, Wilkinson focuses his explanatory hypothesis on social anxiety. He links social anxiety to shame, depression and violence, and emphasizes that social anxiety has its roots in perceptions of inferiority, unattractiveness, failure or rejection. This helps explain why health is so closely related to lack of friends, low social status, violence and poor early emotional attachment, all of which are associated with similar patterns of raised basal cortisol levels and attenuated responses to experimental stressors. He concludes, therefore, that social anxiety is a very plausible central source of the chronic anxiety that depresses health standards and feeds into the socioeconomic gradient in health. As he puts it, the most important psychosocial determinant of population health is the levels of the various forms of social anxiety in the population, and these in turn are determined by income distribution, early childhood and social networks (Wilkinson, 1999, p. 60). Thus, social anxiety is suggested as an explanation for the links between health and friendship, health and early emotional development, health and the direct psychosocial effects of low social status, the patterning of violence and health in relation to inequality, and health and social cohesion (Wilkinson, 1999, p. 61). 

Wilkinson indicates that he considers social cohesiveness to be an epiphe-nomenon. The evidence shows that where income differences are greater, violence tends to be more common, people are less likely to trust each other, and social relations are less cohesive. However, the impression that social cohesion is beneficial to health may be less a result of its direct effects, and more of a marker for the underlying psychological pain of low social status . He believes that the biological causal pathways are Likely to center on the influence that the quality of social relations has on neuroendocrine pathways (Wilkinson, 1999, p. 48). 

We are left with many questions still unanswered. What is it about social status and social integration that makes them so important to health What are the main sources of chronic anxiety, and what are their effects on health (This is an especially promising question, since we already have a good idea about why stress affects health (Sapolsky, 1998).) What is the association between income inequality and homicide (Homicide can account for half the variation in mortality rates between states.) How does inequality affect emotional development in early life ... 

Hurst, J. L., Beynon, R. J., Humphries, R. E., Malone, N., Nevison, C. M., Payne, C. E., Robertson, D. H. L. and Veggerby, C. (2001). Information in scent signals of competitive social status the interface between behaviour and chemistry. In A. Marchelewska-Koj, D. Muller-Schwarze and J. Lepri (Eds.), Chemical Signals in Vertebrates 9, Plenum Press, New York, pp. 43-50. 

Rozenfeld, F. M. (1987) Urine marking by male bank voles (Clethrionomys glareolus Schreber, 1780 - Microtidae) in relation with their social status. Mammalia 51, 476 177. 

Kappeler, P.M. (1990b) Social status and scent-marking behaviour in Lemur catta. Anim. Behav. 40, 774-776. 

Female ability to control exposure to male scent at critical times may help to explain why similar pregnancy-blocking stimuli have produced conflicting results in different experiments. For example in one study manipulating male social status (Labov 1981a), females were housed directly below males, while a similar study (Huck 1982) housed females adjacent to males, separated by mesh. The pregnancy... 

Huck, U.W. (1982) Pregnancy block in laboratory mice as a function of male social status. J. Reprod. Fertil. 66, 181-184. 

Labov, J.B. (1981a) Male social status, physiology, and ability to block pregnancies in female house mice (Mus musculus). Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 8, 287-291. 

Hurst, J.L., Fang, J. and Barnard, C. (1993) The role of substrate odours in maintaining social tolerance between male house mice, Mus musculus domesticus relatedness, incidental kinship effects and the establishment of social status. Anim. Behav. 48, 157-167. 

Dong, Q Weisfeld, G., Boardway, R., Shen, J. (1996). Correlates of social status among Chinese adolescents. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 27,476-493. 

Boulton, M.J. Smith, P.K. (submitted). Peer social status, rough-and-tumble play and aggression social skill and behaviour. Submitted for publication. 

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