I’m studying Sociology this summer, and I’m having a little difficulty applying the Conflict Theory to the poverty problem in the US.
From what I can tell, it looks like Conflict Theorists usually see everything as a constant struggle for money or resources.
Does this basically mean that the poor are the “losers” (as opposed to the winners–rich people) in the struggle??
Anybody know beans about Sociology? Thanks for the help!!
There are no “winners” or “losers”… there are the oppressed (the poor) and the oppressors (the rich)- its basically Marxism.
So then would a conflict theorist blame the opressors for opressing the poor?
I just have a hard time applying the conflict theory.
I get the Functionalist perspective much clearer than the Conflict perspective…
Absolutely.
If you take this a little further, you get to dependency theory, where the poor remain poor because the rich set the rules to keep them that way- ie. to keep labor costs low.
You are confused becasue there is more than one school of “conflict theory”.
See here Conflict Theories explained
Here is a section of one of my own papers. The rest of the paper has virtually nothing to do with your area of interest, but in the process of explicating feminist theory’s position as a conflict theory I set up some definitions outlining conflict theory and how it differs from other sociological theory types.
(You could, however, use radical feminist theory as a conflict theory tool for studying poverty in the United States. When I say that the above paper has “virtually nothing to do with” your area of interest, that’s because I’m writing about theory and not its application to particular subject matter, and not because the theory type I’m writing about is not applicable to your subject. In fact, a paper using radical feminist theory instead of Marxist or Weberian conflict theory to analyze poverty in America would probably stand out as an unusual and provocative paper, which, depending on your instructor, could serve you ill or serve you well).