1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias The German sociologist Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification that defines a status group[1] (also status class and status estate)[2] as a group of people within a society who can be differentiated by non-economic qualities such as honour, prestige, ethnicity, race, and religion.
Discussion of the relationships among status groups, social class, and political parties occurs in Weber's essay "Class, Status, Party", written before the First World War (1914–18); the first translation into English, by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, was published in the 1940s.
Dagmar Waters and colleagues produced a newer English translation of the essay, titled “The Distribution of Power within the Community: Classes, Stände, Parties” (2010), published in the “Journal of Classical Sociology”; the title of the new English-language translation includes the German word “Stände” (status groups) in place of the English term.
[7] These contrast with relationships rooted in economic relations, which Weber calls "class".
Like Weber, he comments on how non-monetary means are used to confer and deny status to individuals and groups.