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
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
flowchart TD SF[Structural functionalism] --> DM[Davis-Moore unequal rewards] SF --> PA[Parsons value consensus] DM --> SQ[Status quo justified] TU[Tumin conflict feminism] --> SQ ME[Merton dysfunction] -.-> SQ
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
-
Do you think that the formal workspaces are free of gender bias? Argue your case.
Next question in the 2025 paper (Q5). View answer →
-
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.
-
Can functionalism ever criticise inequality?
Mertonian dysfunction and strain can, but the Davis–Moore core is justificatory unless heavily qualified.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2025 · Q1(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Is the social stratification theory gender-blind? Elucidate. -
2025 · Q3(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Compare capability deprivation approach with that of social capital deprivation in understanding chronic poverty -
2024 · Q2(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What is social mobility? Critically examine the classification of 'closed' and 'open' models of social stratification -
2023 · Q1(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Do you think that the boundary line between ethnicity and race is blurred? Justify your answer -
2023 · Q4(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
How is poverty a form of social exclusion? Illustrate in this connection the different dimensions of poverty and social exclusion -
2022 · Q1(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
How do sociologists construct gender in their analysis on social inequality? -
2022 · Q2(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Discuss social mobility in open and closed system. -
2021 · Q1(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Critically examine Max Weber's theory of Social Stratification.
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What is common sense? How are common knowledge and sociology related to each other? Explain.
Sociology
Common sense is everyday, untested knowledge that naturalises custom and blame. Sociology is related to it because it studies the same lifeworld of meanings. It differs by using systematic concepts, comparison and evidence. Durkheim on suicide and Mills’s sociological imagination show private acts as public patterns. Indian illustrations such as dowry as custom versus patriarchy and property make the contrast concrete. The task is interrogation of common knowledge, not contempt for ordinary people.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What is the relationship (similarities and differences) between sociology and history in terms of their area of study and methodology? Discuss.
Sociology as Science
Sociology and history both study power, class, belief and the state in time. Marx and Weber already worked historically inside social theory. History typically takes unique events and archival narrative. Sociology typically takes recurrent relations and comparative or survey methods. Windelband’s idiographic–nomothetic contrast still organises the syllabus point. Historical sociology shows the overlap without erasing the division of labour.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What is a variable in social research? What are their different types? Elaborate.
Works and Economic Life
A variable is a property with more than one value across cases. Independent, dependent, intervening and control names mark their role in a design. Stevens’s nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio levels mark how they are measured. Qualitative categories differ from quantitative counts and scales. A worked example is women’s education, fertility, age at marriage and wealth as control. Indian large surveys such as NFHS use this same grammar.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.