Sociology: The Role Of Poverty And Society

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Poverty in Society The existence of poverty can be supported from three different theoretical perspectives. These theoretical approaches reveal the interconnection between poverty and society. For instance, the first theoretical perspective is functional analysis, which focuses on how certain parts of society depend on one another for their function. On the other hand, conflict theory addresses how inequality and power push people in society to compete. Lastly, symbolic interactionism demonstrates the importance use symbols that create a meaning in society. Based on many works of Sociology, poverty can relate to all of these perspectives. After all, just like some structures help in society, there are others that create chaos and inequality …show more content…

The perspective from the functional analysis describes poverty to being essential for the structure of society. Because poverty has always been important for the rich, it’s hard to predict how society would function if these structures changed. Overall, for functional analysis poverty is crucial in order to maintain the balance of power. As it was mentioned before, poverty helps in performing jobs that others can’t. Besides, the poor can even help the rich by their demand for jobs. However, even though poverty may be looked upon to being positive from a functional analysis perspective, the situations of the poor can be viewed to being unfair from the conflict theory perspective. Because the poor tend to have fewer advantages in society, they struggle to access resources that the rich have. Poor people are usually limited to moving up because of their environment or education. Because the rich will always have that power, it’s almost impossible for the poor to move up. Ultimately, the perspective from the symbolic interactionism shows that poverty has its stigma. For most rich people, the poor are always seen as a whole. Therefore, if a poor lady works as a stripper, then those out of poverty will assume that everyone who’s poor works at “low” jobs. That’s the image the higher class receives, and this makes them form a meaning about poverty. In conclusion, poverty is a topic that can be defined from the perspective of functional analysis, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. All of these sociological perspectives shows poverty as an essential social part for the structure of society. Though, it’s also a group that struggles for equality, which makes the rich to develop generalization based on their

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