Social stratification refers to categorization of people according to socio and economicstrata, normally it is based on their occupation and income. Inmodern society,stratification exist in two classes that is the upperclass, middleclass and the lower class, the functionalist view of stratification identifies the role they play in maintaining social order in the society, Determining the structures of social stratification arise because of the existing inequalities of status among the members of the society, for instance the greater the social complexity of the society, the more social strata exist.
Social stratification enables exclusive upper class individuals who receive elite education and typically have the essential background which further translates to ascending them to power of politics, for example, to military and corporate companies. The unfortunate individuals become the ruled hence resulting to a balance of equilibrium in leadership,on this basis, functionalist believe that the owners of production or firms and other professional in both the private and public sectors are well rewarded financially because their work is important and contributes to stability of the society
According to Oswald(1946),Structuralfunctionalist believe that societies tend to be stable and mostly held together through mutual agreement, this provide a platform for the society to function thus lessening the conflict. Sociologist believe that stratification result to cohesive functioning,for instance ,some jobs are more important than the others like the job of a brain surgeon and ajob of shoe-shining.
Moreover the views implies that people move up form economic basedladder, in general because of lack of equal opportunity, the existence of public and private school all aim at imparting knowledge to children portrays the existing difference.
On the other hand, stratification system attempts to avert conflict over the distribution of goodand services in the society. A ruling class derives its power from its ownership and hence control all the forces of production, here the capitalist exploits the subject hence resulting to unfairly competition (George, 1955). In this case ,the rich have the power to perpetrate an unfair system that works to their advantage, losers on the other side and who are at the bottom of social stratification have little opportunity to improve their situation since those at the top tend to have more political and economic power, however , this encourages people who want to succeed to proceed with their hard work.
Conflict approach believes that socialstratification benefits the rich at the expense of the poor suffering. In other words, it creates a system for winners and losers, in this aspect, thewealthy families pay low wages to the gardeners which end up not progressing, this game end up creating and perpetuating stratificationsystem. United states have rolled out the programs of empowerment to its citizens as platform of ensuring that the existinggap between the classes is reduced.(McArthur, 1955).
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