Sociologists- Social Stratification

• Davis and Moore


  1945 - Functionalist

  - argue that all societies need a way of placing individuals into the different roles or social positions that must be filled - role allocation

  - some roles are functionally more important than others

  - most people lack talent to fill functionally important roles or the motivation to train for them

  - these important roles have high pay and high status because of this

  - stratification is necessary for society to ensure talented people train for and fill most important jobs

  - societies need some degree of inequality built into them

  
  

  - many jobs that are vital to society have low pay, or low status

  - group's high pay and status may be linked to power instead
• Karl Marx


  1818-1883 - Marx

  - identified two main classes in capitalist society - bourgeoisie and proletariat

  - class membership is determined by economic factors - ownership of production

  - wealthy bourgeoisie - has own means of production and the proletariat sell their labour to the bourgeoisie in order to survive

  - proletariat experience alienation - they lack control over production and the products of their labour

  - other classes include lumpen-proletariat - criminals and petty bourgeoisie - own small businesses

  - bourgeoisie - justified by ruling-class ideology - leads to false class consciousness among proletariat - are unaware of true nature of capitalism

  - proletariat would eventually rebel leading to a revoluation
• Max Weber


  1864-1920

  - argued classes are formed in the labour market - one class of people hires labour and another sells their labour - crucial in explaining class

  - class is a group of people who have similar life chances

  - he identified 4 main social classes - property owners, professionals, the petty bourgeoisie and the working class

  - different classes have different market situations in the labour market

  - Weber saw class as based on the distribution of the importance of non-economic factors such as status and power in determining life chances

  - status groups are identified by the prestige attached to their lifestyle
• Fiona Devine


  1992

  - revisited Luton to explore how far working-class people's lifestyles were privatised in the 1980s

  - compared her own findings to Goldthorpe's - arguing that working-class has not changed as much as Goldthorpe suggested

  - her sample did not have purely privatised and home-centred lifestyles and social relationships

  - interviewees were not purely instrumental or motivated solely by the desire to improve their living standard

  - aspirations and their social and political values were not solely individualistic
• Townsend


  1939

  - aimed to discover how many people were living in poverty in UK

  - made a deprivation index to measure relative deprivation - had 12 items

  - Townsend found that almost 23% of UK population were in poverty - much higher than state standard of poverty - 6.1% and relative income standard of poverty - 9%

  
  

  - some question some of the items in Townsend's index and how they were selected

  - if index is inadequate - then statistics will also be questioned
• Charles Murray


  1984

  - examined US governments' social policies since the late 1960s that aimed to reduce poverty - focused on impact of these policies on the behaviour of members of the underclass

  - policies actually produced poverty and encouraged more people to become dependent on welfare benefits

  - associated the underclass with poor African-American and Hispanic people - argues that the underclass is growing and poses a threat to society's well-being because its members are responsible for increases in crime rates and are a burden to taxpayers
• Walby


  1990 Feminist

  - defines patriarchy as a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate and exploit women. She highlights six patriarchal structures:

  1. Paid employment - women typically earn less than men and are excluded from better types of paid work

  2. Household - husbands and partners exploit women by benefiting from their unpaid labour in the home

  3. Culture - culture differentiates between masculinity and femininity

  4. Sexuality - double standard is an aspect of male dominance

  5. Male violence against women - male violence affects women's actions and is a form of power

  6. State - state policies are biased towards patriarchal interests - has been little efforts to improve women's position in the public sphere