Social inequality (contrast between UK and Brazil) - Essay Example

Differences in living standards is evident in that there are people who live in luxurious houses while others live in slums, differences in life expectancy can be associated with proper health accessed by the rich and not by the poor, conflict in the society is associated with what Karl Marx referred to as polarisation between classes resulting to a revolution and finally progress will occur in the society in that the rich will inspire the poor to become rich. The conflict perspective of inequality by Karl Marx perceives inequality as one that does not play a useful role in society, Karl argues that all societies have two groups of people the owners of resources to production and the workers, the rich exploit the workers to make more profits through more working hours and low wages, the rich want to maintain the status quo while the workers want to change the existing situation and therefore there is always conflict in the society.

2 The functionalist perspective by Davis and Moore perceive society stratification and inequality as one that plays a role in the proper working of society, according to this theory all social systems share certain functional prerequisite which must be met for the society to operate efficiently. One of these prerequisites is effective role allocation and performance and this means that all roles must be filled by those who are best able to perform them and that roles must be performed well by trained individuals.

The mechanism that ensures proper role allocation is social stratification, roles are different in terms of importance and therefore there is the need to attach unequal rewards to the role.3 Living standards in the UK are higher than those of Brazil, this is attributed by the fact that the UK is more developed and industrialised; therefore the inequalities in the UK are better off compared to cases of inequalities in Brazil. Higher incomes in the UK are one