By extension, we might not have enough people filling society’s important jobs unless they know they will be similarly rewarded. Public Domain Images – CC0 public domain.Īs this example suggests, many people might not choose to become brain surgeons unless considerable financial and other rewards awaited them. While you have spent nineteen additional years beyond age 16 getting this education and training and taking out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, you could have spent those years shining shoes and making $150,000 a year, or $2.85 million overall. (This example is very hypothetical, but please keep reading.) If you decide to shine shoes, you can begin making this money at age 16, but if you decide to become a brain surgeon, you will not start making this same amount until about age 35, as you must first go to college and medical school and then acquire several more years of medical training. To illustrate their assumptions, say we have a society where shining shoes and doing brain surgery both give us incomes of $150,000 per year. If this is true, some people automatically end up higher in society’s ranking system than others, and stratification is thus necessary and inevitable. To encourage the people with the skills and knowledge to do the important, highly skilled jobs, society must promise them higher incomes or other rewards.Most of us would be able to do a decent job of shining shoes, but very few of us would be able to become brain surgeons. Relatively few people have the ability to acquire the skills and knowledge that are needed to do these important, highly skilled jobs.To stay with our example, it takes more skills and knowledge to perform brain surgery than to shine shoes. Some jobs require more skills and knowledge than other jobs.For example, the job of a brain surgeon is more important than the job of shoe shining. Some jobs are more important than other jobs.When applied to American society, their assumptions would be as follows: This explanation was developed more than sixty years ago by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (Davis & Moore, 1945) in the form of several logical assumptions that imply stratification is both necessary and inevitable.

In line with this view, functionalist theorists in sociology assume that stratification exists because it also serves important functions for society. Table 2.2 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes these three approaches.Īs discussed in Chapter 1 “Understanding Social Problems”, functionalist theory assumes that society’s structures and processes exist because they serve important functions for society’s stability and continuity. In general, the functionalist perspective and conflict perspective both try to explain why social stratification exists and endures, while the symbolic interactionist perspective discusses the differences that stratification produces for everyday interaction. We review what these perspectives say generally about social stratification (rankings of people based on wealth and other resources a society values) before turning to explanations focusing specifically on poverty. Why does poverty exist, and why and how do poor people end up being poor? The sociological perspectives introduced in Chapter 1 “Understanding Social Problems” provide some possible answers to these questions through their attempt to explain why American society is stratified-that is, why it has a range of wealth ranging from the extremely wealthy to the extremely poor. Understand the difference between the individualist and structural explanations of poverty.Explain the focus of symbolic interactionist work on poverty.Describe the assumptions of the functionalist and conflict views of stratification and of poverty.

Structural functional theory quizlet