Original scientific paper
Status Incongruity in Postrevolutionary Society
Katja Boh
; Institut za sociologijo in filozofijo pri Univerzi v Ljubljani, Cankarjeva 1/IV
Abstract
To the methodological questions to which an answer was sought in the present study belong the measurement of status incongruity and the choice of adequate and relevant dimensions. The central question, however, was: 1. what does status incongruity really mean and 2. can the concept of status incongruity be applied to a society whose institutional structure has undergone fast and profound changes. And, further, is the behavior claimed by researchers to stem from status incongruity really the result of status incongruity or is it the result of the individual's feeling that one or another of his socially relevant dimensions is being discriminated against.
For the determination of the various types of status incongruity occurring among the Slovene population, the following dimensions were chosen: education, income, occupational prestige and political power. Alogether 7 types of status incongruity were obtained which differed one from another in the direction of their incongruent positions and in the distance between these. The effect of the relevant variables was checked by cross-linking each status dimension (education, income, occupation) with the respondent's participation in the National Liberation Struggle and with his attitude towards some social phenomena. For the determination of incongruent behavior, the following indicators were chosen: satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the private life and with the economic and political situation in Yugoslavia, the respondent’s critical attitude towards some social phenomena and his desire to change the prevailing social conditions. The results of the analysis revealed that in the Slovene population there was a significantly larger number of incongruent persons among veterans of the National Liberation Struggle than there was among those who had not participated in the Struggle. This seems to be due to the fact that the veterans who during and immediately after the war had risen on the political power scale and in part had improved their occupational standing, failed to readjust their incongruous status, not in the last place because this omission did not lead to conflict situations. Even though individual incongruity seems to be quite frequent among the investigated population, it nonetheless did not influence the respondent's answers. Respondents whose status was incongruent were frequently more satisfied and less critical than their counterparts, a fact supporting our fundamental thesis that in Yugoslavia the sociological relevant phenomena cannot be interpreted in the light of the concept of status incongruity as proposed by G. Lenski and others.
The reason why our findings are not in keeping with those of foreign authors might also be due to the fact that we did not treat group membership as a status dimension. Since an ethnic group is a group having its own system of values and, in turn, status system, status incongruity can be measured only within a single national group. Significant differences can be obtained when different ethnical groups are compared one with another. We believe, however, that these differences are not due to the status incongruity of the individual but the status of the ethnic group with which the individual identifies himself vis-ä-vis other ethnic groups and because of the status of which an individual in a certain status system might become overwhelmed by a feeling of deprivation.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
156424
URI
Publication date:
31.12.1974.
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