Q. Does the structural-functionalist perspective on social stratification promote a status quo? Give reasons for your answer.
UPSC Sociology 2025 Paper 1
Model Answer:
The structural-functionalist perspective on social stratification, primarily articulated by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore, posits that inequality is an unconscious, evolved device ensuring important positions are filled by qualified persons. This perspective inherently promotes the status quo through multiple mechanisms.
Why Functionalism Promotes Status Quo
1. Justification of Inequality as Necessary
The Davis-Moore thesis argues stratification is functionally necessary, requiring differential rewards to motivate individuals for important roles. By framing inequality as beneficial for social order, it legitimizes existing resource distribution. For instance, it justifies CEO salaries as necessary incentives while ignoring inherited privilege.
2. Assumption of Consensus and Meritocracy
Functionalism assumes consensus on which positions are important and that rewards reflect ability. This overlooks how elites define “functional importance” to serve their interests and ignores structural barriers like inherited wealth and discrimination preventing true meritocracy.
3. Neglect of Power and Conflict
The perspective ignores power’s role in maintaining stratification. Melvin Tumin argued elites restrict opportunities to preserve advantages. Functionalism downplays dysfunctions like limited talent discovery in lower strata and fostered resentment, focusing only on stability benefits.
4. Ahistorical Analysis
Functionalism treats stratification as timeless and universal, ignoring historical processes of exploitation and colonialism that created current inequalities. It naturalizes hierarchies that emerged from specific power relations, making them appear inevitable rather than historically contingent.
5. Discouragement of Social Change
By portraying attempts at equality as potentially dysfunctional and harmful to societal efficiency, functionalism actively discourages reform movements. It suggests that challenging stratification threatens social stability, thereby supporting conservative political agendas.
Conclusion:
Structural-functionalism provides ideological justification for existing social hierarchies by presenting inequality as natural, necessary, and beneficial, thereby legitimizing and perpetuating the status quo rather than encouraging critical examination of power structures.
