“Davis and Moore made it clear that social stratification is a functional necessity and also an unconscious device. Discuss.” (2019)
In “Some Principles of Stratification” (1945), Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore set out to explain “the universal necessity which calls forth stratification in any social system”. They called inequality an unconsciously evolved device for filling important positions with qualified people. The two phrases carry different claims and invite different criticisms.
“Functional necessity”
- The problem: every society must place individuals in positions and motivate them to perform. Stratification is their solution.
- Two determinants of rank: a position ranks high when it has great functional importance and when qualified personnel are scarce because of rare talent or long training. Importance alone does not bring high reward if a position is easily filled.
- Inducements: rewards for sustenance and comfort, humour and diversion, and self-respect and ego expansion. Unequal access to them produces unequal prestige and esteem.
- Positions, not persons: the argument concerns the system of positions, which is logically prior to who occupies them.
“Unconscious device”
- Nobody designed it. Unlike the Marxist picture of a ruling class imposing its will, stratification emerges from countless evaluations and pressures and persists because it works. In Robert K. Merton‘s terms, it is a latent function.
- Hence universality: a mechanism that arises without planning in every society, from hunting bands to industrial states, looks like a requirement of social life, not the product of one group’s design.
- Hence no justification of excess: Davis and Moore did not claim that any society’s actual degree of inequality is functional. Societies vary by specialisation, sacred or secular emphasis, and opportunity for mobility.
Indian competitive examinations illustrate the mechanism: in the Civil Services Examination 2022, over 11 lakh candidates applied for 1,011 vacancies. The rewards of a few scarce positions draw in the large pool that selection needs.
Limits of both claims
- Circularity: Melvin Tumin (1953) noted that importance is inferred from reward, so the theory proves itself.
- Conscious power: the device is often very conscious. Professions restrict entry, and caste groups guarded ritual and economic privilege by rule and sanction.
- Functional alternatives: training can be publicly funded, and motivation can come from vocation or esteem without large material gaps.
- Inheritance: stratification transmits advantage between generations, which no motivational logic explains. Walter Buckley (1958) accused Davis and Moore of explaining differentiated positions rather than stratified strata.
Conclusion
“Functional necessity” persuasively explains why some differential reward appears everywhere. “Unconscious device” rightly rejects conspiracy theories, but it hides the deliberate closure by which privileged groups turn necessary differentiation into durable, inherited hierarchy.