The Davis-Moore Thesis and Social Stratification
The majority societies throughout history have been created for the purpose of giving equitable and greater power to citizens. However, the economic and social subgroups of the established systems end up experiencing a less egalitarian shift. Political classes, as well as social classes, are formed in a fashion that is hierarchical in nature. However, to understand social stratification, sociologists Wilbert Moore and Kingsley Davis from the school of thought coined the Davis-Moore thesis. The main objective of the thesis is to help the society in creating social roles that are important for the different members of each class.
Debate Surrounding the Davis-Moore Thesis
Notably, the Davis-Moore thesis has created a major debate among policymakers, economists as well as sociologists. The Davis-Moore thesis asserts that social inequality social inequality is useful to society in several ways. Essentially, society attaches more reward to positions that are of greater functional importance. This breeds social stratification as the society becomes divided into different classes of people in accordance with their income levels as well as other classifications (Macionis, 2013). However, according to Moore and Davis, there are positive consequences associated with social stratification in regard to the operation of a specific society.
The Benefits of Social Stratification
Moreover, this is a strategy that is useful as it promotes efficiency and productivity since rewarding work with incentives such as power, leisure, and income prestige encourages individuals to work harder. Every individual now acquires an incentive to work hard so that they can earn as much money as those who are on top of the food chain. Social inequality is thus useful to the society as it motivates the members of the society to work harder so that they can acquire power, leisure as well as income prestige (Macionis, 2013). Basically, one will seek to acquire a job that offers greater reward even though it comes with more responsibility. This increases productivity and efficiency.
Criticisms of the Davis-Moore Thesis
Nevertheless, there are also several criticisms of this theory. One criticism towards this theory highlights that the cast elements contained in social stratification prevent individual talent from developing as one will tend to look at other people and copy what they do so that they can acquire the money and power that other people have. According to this criticisms approach, individuals should seek to develop their personal talents so that they can use them to rise up society’s ladder. Nonetheless, this is not the case as many people will ignore their gifts and talents and seek other means of earning a living that they think the society roots.
Incidentally, individuals will ignore their individual talents and not seek to improve them. Additionally, another criticism of this theory is that it tends to put too much emphasis on the essence of high paying work. The overestimation denies the society a different approach to making it in life. This means that people will put high paying work over all other aspects and as such will ignore essential things in life that are not associated with money making. Furthermore, this creates invalid assessments regarding the importance of jobs thus creating misconnection between contributions made by people as well as the awards that are given. Augmenting monetary values diminishes other more important values.
References
Macionis, J. (2013). Sociology. 15th ed. London: Pearson Publishing.
