sociology help about social positions...what are they?

Yes, your choice of how to interpret 'social positions' is not only valid but very insightful.

Over the past 35 years there has been a lot of sociological research into the ways that gender and class (and ethnicity) intersect to create our social positions in both paid work and study in the public sphere and the unpaid work of housework and caring.

One especially interesting set of analysies developed in the 1980s in the field of social policy around the concepts of;

'caring'

'coping'

'community'

showing how these terms were 'weasel words' hiding and glossing over the extensive work and the tensions of this contradictory social positions -wife/mother/student/worker.

This research has included

-the more philosophical and historical aspects of sociology to analyse 'how we got where we are now'

-as welll as many current forms of research to understand how the lives of people occupying the complex position of being, at the same time, wife/mother/student/ worker are so contradictory, complex and often stress laden.

--and then to ask why, before the 1960s, these complex social positions were so often the 'hidden' in sociology.

Go for it. Anne Oakley would be proud.

nb the question did ask you to examine the relationships between these positions so I'm sure its not ony going to be right for you but its also what your lecturer is looking for.

ps Since then there has been some very interesting work looking at the same complexities for men and masculinity.

pps the two perspectives, funtionalism and conflict thoery tend to use different concepts on this . My answer above is from conflict theory ..different terms used, thus different research questions asked and different interpretations;

Functionalism:social position/social role/ role conflict(but the underlying reasons for this conflict not examined)

Conflict theory:historical development of the modern family/ 'contradiction '(not from the roles themselves, but from the underlying and often unspoken social rules about the separation of public and domestic spheres)/ social construction of unpaid caring work/economic invisiblility of housework/family-work life balance/

Social position is the position of an individual in a given society and culture. A given position (for example, the occupation of priest) may belong to many individuals. Social position influences social status. One can have several social positions, but only one social status.

Social positions an individual may hold fall into the categories of occupation (medical doctor, academic lecturer), profession (member of associations and organisations), family (parent, sibling, etc.), hobby (member of various clubs and organisations), among others. An individual is likely to create a personal hierarchy of such positions, where one will be a central position while the rest are perhiperal positions.

Social positions are visible if they require an individual to wear a uniform or some other kind of identifying mark. Often individual clothes or other attributes will advertise what social position one has at the moment. Non-visible social positions are called hidden. A position that is deemed the most important to given individual is called central, others are peripheral. If a sequence of positions is required to obtain a given position, it can be defined as a career, and change of position in this context is a promotion or demotion. Some social positions may make it easier for a given person to obtain others; in other cases, some positions may be restricted based to individuals meeting specific criteria.

Social position together with social role determines individual's place in the social environment and social organisation. A group of social positions will create a social class and a social circle.

A social conflict caused by interference between social positions is called a position conflict.