Malvin M Tumin was the American sociologist who has done vast researches in race and stratification on class analysis. In 1953, Malvin came up with Principles of Stratification and criticized Davis and Moore ideations on stratification.
DAVIS AND MOORE PRINCIPLES OF STRATIFICATION
- The most important roles are attained by most deserving people of the society, thus the most deserving people get the most wealth.
- They stated that a society with no stratification is just a myth, thus it is a universal phenomenon. A dream of having egalitarian society cannot be achieved.
- For a better functioning of society, the stratification is necessary. They presumed that inequality serves for a better society but they failed to explain it with examples.
But their societies were criticized by many sociologists like Durkheim and Malvin M Tumin.
Durkheim stated that the ideologies only account for ascribed status where the rich business tycoons and their children get most of the benefits but the rights of poor children gets neglected. He termed stratification as artificial hierarchy process where there is inequality on the basis of birth but merit. For example, slavery system, estate system, the class system and caste system are divisions on the basis of birth, sex or race.
MELVIN TUMIN CRITICAL THEORY ON DAVIS AND MOORE FUNCTIONALIST THEORY
He stated that the characteristic on which society is being stratified is not decisive. He believed that the basic right to education should be provided for everybody. For example in a company where an unskilled labor is appointed at a higher position and skilled engineer at a lower post gives rise to mismanagement. It hinders the growth and development of an organization. For Davis and Moore’s assumption stating that stratification is a global phenomenon, he raised a question asking whether something is practiced everywhere need not to be practiced further. He criticized the set pattern of practicing stratification which does not account for any betterment of the society. He clarified with his points that even the small payment jobs with lesser salaries also play an important role in society. For example, the jobs which acquire people just for paperwork of any company also have an important role because if any of the paper gets missing, it can bring a huge loss to the whole company.
Davis and Moore also believed that there is an only certain amount of talent and intelligence in handful amount of people, but Malvin questioned it with a basic question what are the criteria to measure the talent of a specific person. Secondly, the amount of talented people must be greater than any sociologist assumed measurement.
Davis and Moore believed that the deserving candidates will anyhow achieve the target but Malvin rejected this thought as the differentiation act as the barrier to the motivation of a person. For example, a person who could not qualify for 2-3 jobs should not sit idle at home thinking that he is not worth anything, in fact, a person should try till he achieves his/her goal. He also said that any closed system contributes to most of the barrier to utilization of talent. For example, Jamindari hereditary system made peasants poor and thus there is no scope for a peasant to become a landlord. The striving of rights was a major issue discussed by Malvin. He associated stratification as the division, where our society needs more of an integrating factor.
