Breaking down the question

The quotation packs two distinct claims from the 1945 Davis and Moore thesis. First, stratification is a functional necessity — every society must fill its positions, and the more important, demanding positions must be filled by the most able, which requires differential rewards. Second, it is an unconscious device — stratification is not deliberately designed by anyone but evolves as an unplanned mechanism that societies have hit upon to secure role allocation.

Discuss signals that you should explain both claims sympathetically and then evaluate them, especially through Tumin's critique. A one-sided answer that only praises or only demolishes the thesis will underperform.

How to approach it

Structure the answer in three movements: exposition, the two-fold claim, and critique.

  • State the core proposition — unequal rewards attach to positions, not persons, to motivate the ablest people to undertake the most functionally important and difficult roles.
  • Explain functional necessity: role allocation and performance are universal problems; differential reward solves them.
  • Explain unconscious device: no committee invented stratification; it is a latent, self-generating arrangement.
  • Evaluate with Tumin and others: how is functional importance measured, what of inherited privilege, and does inequality also dysfunction by blocking talent.

You may reference Theories of social stratification for the wider functionalist debate.

Model answer

In their 1945 paper Some Principles of Stratification, Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore advanced the classic functionalist explanation of social inequality. Their central puzzle was how a society ensures that its most important positions are conscientiously filled by the most qualified persons.

Their answer rests first on the idea of functional necessity. Every society faces the problem of placing individuals in a division of labour and motivating them to perform. Some positions — the physician, the governor, the engineer — are functionally more important and require scarce talent and long, costly training. To induce able people to make these sacrifices, society attaches greater rewards of income, prestige and leisure to such positions. Stratification, on this view, is the mechanism through which differential reward secures effective role allocation. It is therefore not an accident but a necessity present in every known society.

Their second claim is that stratification is an unconscious device. No individual or group sat down and designed the hierarchy of rewards; it emerged as an unplanned, latent response to the perennial problem of motivation. Society, as it were, unconsciously develops inequality because it works.

The thesis, however, drew powerful criticism, most influentially from Melvin Tumin. He argued that functional importance is impossible to measure objectively and often circular — we infer importance from reward rather than the reverse. He noted that stratification is frequently dysfunctional: inherited wealth and closed opportunity prevent gifted people from reaching top positions, so society loses talent rather than securing it. Power, not consensus, often fixes rewards. Tumin further pointed to the divisive, hostility-generating effects of inequality, which strain rather than strengthen integration.

The Davis-Moore thesis thus remains a landmark statement of why inequality might be universal, yet its assumption of meritocratic reward and its neglect of power leave it seriously contested.

Examiner's perspective

Examiners look for candidates who address both halves of the quotation — functional necessity and unconscious device — rather than only summarising the general theory. The best answers move cleanly from a fair exposition to a structured critique, with Tumin as the pivot and at least a nod to the problem of power and inherited advantage. Avoid the common error of caricaturing Davis and Moore before you have stated them fairly. A balanced verdict — the thesis explains motivation but ignores how power distorts reward — signals analytical maturity.