Revision summary
Davis and Moore treat unequal rewards as devices to fill important positions. Parsons ties ranking to a shared value system and role allocation. That logic easily sanctifies the present hierarchy as necessary. Tumin asked who defines importance and why talent and reward match so neatly. Unpaid gendered labour and caste inheritance expose the payoff story. Merton’s dysfunctions qualify equilibrium but do not make functionalism a conflict theory.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Structural-functionalism treats society as a system of interrelated parts that tend toward order. Its theory of stratification, especially Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore, asks what inequality does for the system. The question is whether that perspective quietly defends the status quo. The honest answer is that it often does, because it reads existing rewards as functional necessities rather than as outcomes of power.
Body
The functional claim
Davis and Moore argued that some positions are more functionally important and more scarce in talent. Unequal rewards are the device that places the right people in those positions and motivates them to train. Talcott Parsons added that stratification expresses a shared value system: achievement, universalism and the ranking of roles in a modern society. Inequality, on this view, is not an accident and not mainly exploitation. It is a mechanism of allocation.
Why this promotes a status quo
If high pay and honour measure functional importance, then the present hierarchy looks deserved. The theory underplays inheritance, caste, gender and the political making of “importance”. Melvin Tumin asked who judges functional necessity, why talent is assumed scarce, and why the less rewarded must find the system legitimate. The argument can become a sociology of consolation: the poor are where the system needs them. Conflict theorists, from Marx to later critics of Davis–Moore, reply that surplus is extracted, not allocated by consensus. Feminist readers add that unpaid care is functionally vital and poorly rewarded, which already breaks the payoff rule.
- Robert Merton’s functions and dysfunctions slightly open the door: a hierarchy may stabilise one group and injure another. Classical functional stratification still leans toward equilibrium. In India, a functional story of caste as division of labour served the status quo until Dalit sociology named graded inequality. Reasons for the “yes” are theoretical and political: it naturalises winners. Mertonian dysfunctions do not make Davis–Moore a theory of radical change.
Flow diagram
Conclusion
The structural-functional perspective on stratification tends to promote a status quo because it treats unequal rewards as system needs. Tumin and conflict theory show the circularity of that claim. Functional analysis can still describe order; it is a weak theory of injustice and transformation.
Quick related
Students also ask
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What is social mobility? Critically examine the classification of 'closed' and 'open' models of social stratification
Next question on this syllabus topic (2024 · Q2(c)). View answer →
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Did all functionalists defend caste?
No, but a division-of-labour reading of caste has been used that way. The status-quo risk is in the logic, not in every author.
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Can functionalism ever criticise inequality?
Mertonian dysfunction and strain can, but the Davis–Moore core is justificatory unless heavily qualified.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2025 · Q1(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Is the social stratification theory gender-blind? Elucidate. -
2024 · Q2(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What is social mobility? Critically examine the classification of 'closed' and 'open' models of social stratification -
2021 · Q1(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Critically examine Max Weber's theory of Social Stratification. -
2019 · Q1(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Davis and Moore made it clear that social stratification is a functional necessity and also an unconscious device. Discuss -
2019 · Q6(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Why is gender dimension of social stratification ? How does gender intersect other dimensions of inequality based on caste, class, race and ethnicity ?
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