Ellen, Tim, and Marisa volunteer at The Kitchen, a food pantry that serves a poo

Question

Ellen, Tim, and Marisa volunteer at The Kitchen, a food pantry that serves a poor neighborhood. One afternoon, they find themselves discussing poverty. “I don’t’ think that we’ll ever completely eliminate poverty,” says Ellen. There are poor people in every society,” she continues. “That leads me to think that poverty must be serving some kind of purpose. Maybe it somehow benefits society as a whole.”

      Tim shakes his head. “I disagree,” he says. “The structure of our economy benefits some people and places others at a disadvantage.” Tim continues to make his case: “For example, women are far more likely to be poor. Generally speaking, the jobs women pay hold less than the men jobs hold. And many of the families in this neighborhood are headed by single mothers.”

      Marisa, who has been listening quietly, interjects. “You both have good points,” she says. “But I come at the issue from another angle. Think about the languages we use to talk about the different kinds of work people do.” She pauses: What do we call the people who collect trash? Garbage men. That’s degrading.” Seeing she has their attention, Marisa gives another example: “When someone cleans a house or is a fast food cook, we say they do ‘menial’ work. Surely the way we talk about different kinds of work has an effect on how much people are compensated for doing it.”

Each of these quotes represents a theoretical orientation to the analysis of poverty: Conflict theory, Structural-Functionalist, Symbolic interactionist, Feminist. Briefly describe each of these perspectives. Then indicate which orientation that Ellen, Tim, and Marissa reflect in their perspectives.

Explanation / Answer

Conflict Theory

Conflict theory views society as involved in a constant competition for power and limited resources. In this perspective, power can be viewed as control of resources or wealth or control of politics and the institutions that make up our society, and one's social status relative to others. Conflicts arise whenever resources or power are unevenly distributed among different groups of society. If we take the eaxample of any uprising against the local government for ex. in Syria, where people are fighting their government for equality and fairness. And the government is fighting its own people to keep the control or power.

Structural Functionalism

The structural-functional perspective views society as a system whose parts(social structures) work together to promote solidarity and stability. And one of the key ideas in Structural Functionalism is that society is made-up of groups or institutions, which are cohesive, share common norms, and have a definitive culture.. For ex., in the traditional setting of a family unit, the father works to provide money, while the mother nurtures the children. This in turn makes up for a coherent family made up of smaller parts, and this functioning family unit further forms the parts of a wider community, society and so on.

Thus the central idea  which structural functionalist suggest is that the way our society is organized is the most natural and efficient way for it to be organized.

Symbolic Interactionism

The central theme of the theory is how "Symbols" form a major part of human life. Symbols here refer to the culturally derived social constructs or objects which have shared meanings. These meanings are created and passed on via social interaction. For ex., "grass" means food to a goat and shelter to a dog. So, the symbol given to the current social problem, assigns a meaning and creates a perception in people's mind.

Feminism

The perspective of feminism involves political and sociological theories concerned with the issues of gender difference. It involves a movement establishing equal rights for women as well as a campaign for women's rights and interests. Feminist activists have campaigned for women's legal rights (rights of contract, property rights, voting rights); for abortion and reproduction rights, for protection from physical abuse, sexual harassment and rape and for equal workplace rights and against other forms of gender-specific discrimination which have been going on against women.

Ellen's perspective on poverty is of a Structural-Functionalist since she view poverty as a social structure which is present in every society, which makes her believe that, it must be serving a specific function. So, in its natural state society will always comprise of a group of poor people and that is the equilibrium state of the society.The functions, poverty as a social structure can serve in a society could be that they are the culture heroes and provide jobs for social scientists, social workers, etc. Apart from that some structural functionalist might argue that poverty, provides a guarantee to the status of those who are not poor thereby establishing a hierarchical society structure.

Tim's perspective clearly derives from Conflict Theory and Feminist theory too. Since he talks about how the structure of our economy benefits some people and places others at a disadvantage. And that is the classic example of control of Power. He further gives an example from feminist theory to illustrate his point.

Marissa uses symbolic interactionism perspective and talks about the symbols that we associate with the poverty and the jobs they do, such as 'menial' work or 'garbage man', and how this creates a perception in the minds of people that the jobs are lower in importance or standards and probably deserves less pay.

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