Basic, General and
Independent Roles

In a now rather ancient, but nevertheless useful introductory text on sociology, Michael Banton (1965) developed the following way of looking at social roles.

They could be seen as located on a continuum from "basic" through to "independent", with a "general" zone in the middle for the sake of convenience.
 

Basic	General			Independent
Implications for conduct of all roles to right				No implications for conduct of other roles
Ascribed				Achieved
"Can't help it"				Can help it
Impossible or very difficult to change	Changeable, but not easily			Easy to slip into and out of
Part of my sense of identity			Trivial for my identity
Liberal assumption that such roles are not grounds for discrimination			Discrimination acceptable because roles seen as voluntary
Many ways of "playing" them				Manner of "playing" restricted

Basic	General			Independent
Being Alive!	married/single				Cinema-goer
Sex	parent				Shopper at Tesco
"Race"	occupation
Age	religious commitment

This table gives just a few examples of social roles and how they may be located. Those bracketed with and are movable, depending in part on how an individual rates other roles in relation to them. Thus for some people (martyrs), religious commitment is more important than being alive itself, whereas for others it does not figure at all. Occupation may be more important than marital status, which may lead to divorce, or vice versa in which case a person may refuse to move her or his job because it would upset the family arrangements, and so on. Beware of making conventional judgements about how roles ought to be ordered based on how your own roles are ordered.
 

What about: Having a disability? Being a supporter of your football team? Economic status?

Note to lecturers: this can be developed as an interesting and revealing exercise. Get the class to suggest a number of potentially controversial roles such as the above, then set up a scale from 1 to 10 where 1=basic, 10=independent, and without conferring to rate each role on that scale. The scale permits relatively easy comparison of the results: the interesting thing is not the absolute score, but the relative scoring of, say, work vs. family roles.

BANTON M (1965) Roles London; Tavistock

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See implications for Equal Opportunities

 © James Atherton
last updated
November 2003