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35 Examples of a Social Location

John Spacey, October 02, 2022

A social location is the set of all social identities to which an individual belongs. These identities can include group memberships, physical characteristics, personality characteristics and anything else that is viewed as a social identity. As such, a social location can become a quite large set that may be unique to an individual. The following are examples of identities that can be included in a social location.

Age	Appearance
Attitudes	Community Memberships / Roles
Cultural Capital	Culture
Disability	Education
Employment Status	Ethnicity
Family	Gender
Health	Immigration Status
Language	Lifestyle
Nationality	Occupation
Organizational Memberships / Roles	Personality (e.g. extroverted)
Place of Residence	Political Memberships / Roles / Views
Positions	Poverty
Profession	Relational Capital
Religion	Sexual Orientation
Social Class	Social Status (e.g. popular / celebrity)
Subcultures	Super Cultures
Talents	Wealth / Income
Worldview / Ideology

Specific Example

An individual could be middle-aged, male, white, married, heterosexual, a parent, a grandparent, a volunteer, a high school drop out, disabled, a minimalist, wealthy, unemployed, a musician, French speaking, a Canadian national, socially liberal, economically conservative, introverted, living in Spain on a short-term visa, with serious health problems and a working-class background. If you were to take a single label from this set you may generate strong assumptions about the person that are incorrect if you look at all of the labels. For example, if you see that they are unemployed you may incorrectly assume that they are living in poverty or if you see that they are wealthy you may incorrectly assume they have an upper-class background.

Relevance

Social location is a recognition of the complexity of identity whereby a single label doesn't well describe an individual. For example, an individual may belong to multiple identities that are labeled "privileged" and "underprivileged" such that these labels may not be accurate when considering the complexity of actual identities.

Counterexample

Labels included in a social location must be relevant to the social position or experience of an individual. For example, most attitudes would be irreverent to your social location. If you dislike rainy days, that's probably not a big part of your identity. However, if you feel a strong sense of anomie towards society, culture and all other people --- that's probably relevant to your social experience.

Overview: Social Location
Type	Social Identity
Definition	The set of all social identities to which an individual belongs.
Related Concepts	Social Identity » Labeling » Upper Class » Attitudes » Anomie »