Sociological Theories And Global Inequality

“The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal.” (CITATION) When defining the concept of stratification, “stratification refers to a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy. In the United States, it is perfectly clear that some groups have greater status, power, and wealth than other groups. These differences are what led to social stratification” (“Social Stratification: Definition, Theories & Examples”, 2003-2017). However, if we divide all of the worlds wealth and assets among everyone, stratification would be evident among societies again because there will no longer be any social classes that define us of our economic status. Thus, affecting
the perspective of a conflict and functionalist on their outlook of how our society would be affected.

In the eyes of a conflict theorist, there would be no more competition for scarce resources since the elites no longer have more money nor power to control the poor and weak.
Since money and power are what make up a conflict theorist, stratification would be detrimental in their perspective. In the article “Sociological Theories and Global Inequality”, “conflict theorists argue that stratification is dysfunctional and harmful to our society. According to conflict theory, social stratification benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor” (“Sociological Theories and Global Inequality”, n.d.). Thus, it creates a system of a higher and lower classes. The people who were apart of the lower class do not have the same advantages than of the higher classes. Which is one of the main reason they are always at the bottom, they are not provided with the same opportunities than of the higher classes. Therefore, conflict theorists believe that this competitive system, together with the way the game is “fixed”, ends up creating and perpetuating stratification
systems.

On the other hand, a functionalist would soon find their new society quite different because they have adapted to having diversity in our old society. In the article “Sociological Theories and Global Inequality”, “according to structural-functionalists, stratification and inequality are inevitable and beneficial to society. The layers of society, conceptualized as a pyramid, are the inevitable sorting of unequal people. The layering is useful because it ensures that the best people are at the top and those who are less worthy are further down the pyramid, and therefore have less power and are given fewer rewards than the high-quality people at the top” (“Sociological Theories and Global Inequality”, n.d.). Though running on a society that is unequally based upon the peoples’ inequalities, an equality based society will bring forth new changes of individuals sharing the common wealth, power and ideas that a functional would never dream of experiencing.

In other words, the sociological perspective of a conflict and functional theorist would find that bringing forth equality on our society vastly different from their inequality based society. However, through the transition of becoming equal, we are able to view the deterioration of social classes and our economic status of our once prejudice based society.