Stratification Perspectives Key Terms

Different explanations of the same inequality

Social stratification means that society is arranged into a hierarchy: some groups have greater access to wealth, status and power than others. A theoretical perspective is an approach used to explain how society works. Perspectives help sociologists ask not just who has more, but why inequalities exist and how they continue.

Functionalists emphasise how unequal rewards may help society operate. Marxists emphasise ownership, exploitation and class conflict. Feminists emphasise gender inequality and male domination. Interactionists focus on social interaction and the meanings people attach to one another. These are explanations to examine and evaluate, rather than descriptions that everyone accepts.

Functionalism: inequality as an incentive

Functionalism sees society as a system of connected parts that contribute to its operation and stability. Functionalists emphasise value consensus, meaning agreement about basic values. Shared expectations can help people cooperate and maintain social order.

In Some Principles of Stratification (1945), Davis and Moore argued that stratification was a ‘universal necessity’. For society to survive and operate efficiently, all roles must be filled, the people best able to perform them must occupy them, necessary training must take place, and people must carry out their responsibilities conscientiously.

Their explanation centres on functionally important roles: positions they considered especially important to society and which require high levels of skill or responsibility. Higher rewards, including pay and prestige, encourage people to compete for these positions and undertake the necessary training. The most able people should then fill them.

For example, training to become a surgeon takes considerable time and develops specialist skills. A functionalist explanation is that desirable rewards encourage suitable people to train for a role on which patients depend. The chain of reasoning is: an important role requires skill and training; higher rewards encourage competition and preparation; suitable people fill the role; society benefits.

This connects to meritocracy, a system in which achievement and ability determine positions and rewards. However, describing a meritocratic system does not demonstrate that everyone actually has an equal opportunity to succeed.

Evaluating Davis and Moore

The theory gives a clear explanation of why incentives might matter, but it is difficult to show that existing rewards reliably reflect social importance. Nurses perform essential work, yet receive lower rewards than some other occupations. Asking whether lawyers are more important than nurses exposes the difficulty of ranking a role’s contribution to society.

An alternative explanation is that pay reflects a group’s power, not simply its usefulness. Groups able to influence decisions may secure higher rewards. Unequal access to education and training also challenges the assumption that competition necessarily selects the most able people.

Davis and Moore’s assumptions about exceptional talent can be questioned too. There is no agreed way to measure all relevant abilities, and government ministers do not have to meet a formal educational requirement. The Prime Minister also earns less than the head of a typical large company: rewards do not clearly follow a consistent scale of social responsibility.

A reasoned judgement can therefore accept that rewards may encourage training without accepting that every existing inequality is necessary.

Marxism: ownership and exploitation

Marxism explains inequality through relationships between social classes. Writing about nineteenth-century capitalism, Karl Marx argued that stratification allowed a privileged minority to exploit the majority.

Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership and production for profit. The means of production are the resources used to produce goods and services, such as land, buildings, machinery and capital. Marx distinguished two main classes under capitalism:

• The bourgeoisie own and control the means of production.
• The proletariat do not own them and must sell their labour to earn a living.

Consider a factory owner and the factory’s employees. The owner controls the productive resources; the employees provide labour in return for wages. In Marx’s explanation, exploitation occurs because workers create value beyond what they receive in wages, which the owners retain as profit. Class position is therefore about a relationship to production, not simply about how much money someone currently has.

The classes have opposing interests. Owners benefit from keeping labour costs down, while workers benefit from higher wages and better conditions. Class struggle means conflict between classes with opposing interests. Marx regarded it as a driving force of social change.

Why workers might accept inequality

Marx argued that economic power also supports political power. Ownership gives the ruling class resources and influence with which to defend its position.

Ruling class ideology means ideas that justify ruling-class domination. Presenting capitalism and the free market as natural or inevitable can make a particular arrangement of society seem like the only possible one. These ideas can encourage workers to accept inequality rather than challenge it.

False class consciousness describes workers failing to recognise their exploitation and shared class interests. For Marxists, accepting the existing system does not necessarily prove that it benefits everyone: acceptance may reflect the influence of ruling-class ideas.

Marx expected the division between workers and capitalists to become more extreme. He hoped that workers would eventually overthrow capitalism and create a communist, classless society. This was his expectation and political aim, not an outcome achieved by capitalist societies generally.

Evaluating Marx’s explanation

Marxism draws attention to ownership and asks who benefits from inequality. It challenges Davis and Moore’s claim that unequal rewards primarily serve society as a whole: they may instead protect the interests of powerful owners.

Critics, including New Right theorists, emphasise the benefits of capitalism and opportunities for social mobility. Rising living standards also raise a question: do more affluent workers become middle class in their outlook? This proposed process is called embourgeoisement.

In Affluent Workers Revisited (1992), Fiona Devine examined interviews conducted in the late 1980s with male manual workers at the Vauxhall plant in Luton and their wives. Although living standards and consumer aspirations had risen, many respondents still resented inherited privilege and extreme class inequalities. Improved living standards therefore did not necessarily mean uncritical acceptance of capitalism.

This supports the continuing relevance of class divisions, but resentment alone does not demonstrate that workers will organise the revolution Marx anticipated.

Feminism: gender and male domination

Feminism explains and challenges gender inequality. Feminists argue that focusing only on occupational rewards or ownership can overlook inequalities between women and men.

Patriarchy means a system in which men hold dominant power and women are subordinated. Gender roles are social expectations about behaviour associated with gender. Expectations that women should take primary responsibility for housework and childcare can restrict their access to paid employment and economic independence.

In Women and Crime (1985), Frances Heidensohn argued that patriarchal control operates in the home, in public and at work. Although her study concerned women’s lower levels of offending, its explanation illustrates unequal power. She highlighted men’s financial power as breadwinners, expectations surrounding women’s domestic labour, and male-dominated workplace hierarchies and sexual harassment.

In employment, the glass ceiling describes an invisible barrier preventing women from reaching senior positions despite relevant abilities or qualifications. A feminist explanation asks whether access to rewards depends on gender as well as talent. This challenges the assumption that occupational success necessarily demonstrates meritocracy.

Interactionism: meanings, labels and status

Interactionism focuses on social interaction and the meanings people attach to behaviour, identities and situations. Rather than beginning with society’s overall class or gender structure, interactionists examine how people interpret and respond to one another. This helps explain how labels can shape someone’s social standing and treatment.

In Outsiders (1963), Howard Becker argued that behaviour becomes deviant when others define it as such. Whether a label is applied depends on who acts, who observes them and the circumstances of their interaction. Police and courts have the power to make a criminal label stick.

Becker explained that this label can become a master status: an identity that dominates how others see a person. A young person labelled a criminal may be judged mainly through that label, with others assuming they have negative characteristics and excluding them from social groups. The person may also begin to see themselves in those terms. This shows how meanings and other people’s responses can shape status and exclusion, rather than status being determined only by income or ownership.

Comparing and judging the perspectives

Feminism makes gender inequality visible, but explanations must avoid treating all women’s experiences as identical. Heidensohn has been criticised for generalisations that do not apply to every woman and for insufficient research evidence for some claims. Class can also affect women’s resources and opportunities, so a gender explanation need not exclude a class explanation.

The central comparison concerns what inequality does and whom it benefits. Davis and Moore see unequal rewards as a mechanism for filling important roles. Marx sees class inequality as a mechanism of exploitation. Feminists examine how male domination shapes opportunities and rewards. Interactionists examine how meanings and labels shape people’s identities and treatment in social encounters.

A justified conclusion weighs these mechanisms against the inequality being explained. Incentives may help attract people into skilled work, but this does not explain why some essential occupations are poorly rewarded or why equally able people face different barriers. Ownership, power and gender can help explain those differences, while interactionism helps explain how people experience status and exclusion through others’ responses. No perspective should be accepted merely because it gives inequality a familiar label.