Status Competition

This essay examines the phenomena of the production of an overeducated underemployed society through the dissemination of the ideology that education is required for social ‘upward’ mobility coupled with the dilemma that the insurance of education is not necessarily guaranteed by the market. The topic of how certain groups within our society are disadvantaged by this phenomenon is explored. Issues of status competition over cultural hegemony and the exchange of cultural capital with material capital are presented as mechanisms underlying the production of an overeducated underemployed society. The essay concludes by exploring the implications of how these issues are currently being played out in contemporary education in the USA and the results we may expect in the future.

This introductory article delves into the assessment of status policies
and status seeking strategies of rising powers and most particularly
their status competition among themselves in multiple platforms of
global governance. Different from the competition engaged by a
rising power against an established power, status competition
among the rising peers creates different consequences in terms of
both their intergroup relations and their relations towards the
higher-status traditional powers. Status competition may also be
used as a strategy by rising powers having equal or similar level
of status in international organizations to find new fields of
cooperation and to develop new diplomatic networks. Internal
dynamics of rising powers and their leaders’ foreign policy choices
also shape the way and the degree to which they engage in
status competition in status clubs. Status competition among
rising powers may also contribute to the reinforcing of their status
recognition.