Honorific rewards are all about status and illustrate status processes in a way that few other social phenomena do. Why do we have so many honorific awards and prizes? Although they are a major feature of modern societies, they have received little scholarly attention. Samuel Clark argues that answering this question requires a separate historical analysis of different awards and prizes. He presents a comprehensive explanation of the origins and evolution of state honours in the British Isles, France, and the Low Countries. Examining cultural, social, and political changes that led to the massive growth in state honours and shaped their characteristics, Distributing Status also demonstrates their functions as instruments of cultural power, collective power, disciplinary power, and status power. Clark supports his conclusions with a cross-cultural statistical analysis of twenty societies. Lucid and logical, Distributing Status explicates an important historical change in Western Europe while at the same time contributing to several bodies of sociological literature, including evolutionary theory, theories of collective action, writings on discipline in modern societies, and studies of status processes.

Samuel Clark is professor emeritus of sociology at Western University and author of State and Status: The Rise of the State and Aristocratic Power in Western Europe.

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“This book is full of insights about status as a fundamental form of social power in modern western society.” - Cecilia Ridgeway, Stanford University

“Distributing Status combines theoretical sophistication with an amazing grasp of historical detail. It is a remarkable accomplishment rooted in a lifetime of thoughtful scholarship.” - Murray Milner, University of Virginia

“This impressive book makes a persuasive case for the importance of state honors in dealing with several modern issues. The results of this meticulous study will interest not only historians but also political scientists and sociologists, from whose disci

“Clark is a sociologist and approaches the study of honours from that discipline. Although the work is framed and governed by that field, it is equally accessible – and useful – to the historian and the statistician. I would also commend it to any governm

“Clark argues astutely how a chronology of events influenced and contributed to outcomes to varying degrees at different times and in different countries.” - D’Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton, University of Notre Dame

“In this broad-ranging and innovative study, enriched by methodologies drawn from the social sciences, Samuel Clark shows how honorific awards have evolved across the centuries.” - Alan Forrest, University of York