Dug-a, Princess Dianne A.

1.) Whose position will you support the functionalist or the conflict theorist? Why?

For me, I would support the conflict theorist because they try to bring awareness to
inequalities, such as how a rich society can have so many poor members. What I observed with
the current situation now, capitalists own the means of production, and a system is in place to
make business owners rich and keep workers poor. And that’s why they said rich people
become richer and poor people become poorer. For example just like the trending news about
plants where in they buy alocasia plant for 2500 pesos for a small portion but they only buy rice
for 36 pesos/ kilo in our province. I grew up in the province and I feel so sad how farmers
struggle to produce a good rice product and we only sell for a cheap price since we need to
follow the standard retail pricing.

2.) Discuss briefly the Philippine Social Stratification. Is there a need for social stratification
in the Philippines? Why?

It is fair to say that much remains unclear about social stratification in the Philippines. First,
most observers have assumed that classes exist in a form approximating a tripartite model,
example we have lower, middle, and upper classes. This alone was an answer that we have it
and imposed upon the observations rather than deriving the class structure from first-hand
observation. It is easy to observe, subjectively, that there is a range of socioeconomic statuses
in play here and to use this to propose possible stratification. It is more difficult to demonstrate
objectively how the range of statuses is broken down by the families to create exclusive layers
in our society. Only when we understand this will we understand the nature and mechanisms of
the system. One of the problem is the lack of recognition of the obvious variations in the
society, specifically, the hierarchy of central places. We have a large number of farming villages
surmounted by a hierarchy of towns and cities ranging from the protopolis, the smallest type of
city of which Kalinga is an example, to the primary city (Manila). The differences of power,
wealth, and status that generate and maintain social classes emanate from the larger central
places and these places must be studied to understand the class system that permeates the
whole society. And there will be differences in the class system in different places. But, most
certainly, towns and farming villages are not the best places to study the society's stratification.
Most of the families in these places are of the same class.

3.) Is Social Inequality good or bad? Justify your answer.

Social inequality is bad for society as it goes along with weaker social bonds between people,
which in turn make health and social problems more likely. At the same time, richer countries
have less social ills. Social inequality can give wealthier people an unacceptable degree of
control over the lives of others. Because, if wealth is very unevenly distributed in a society,
wealthy people often end up in control of many aspects of the lives of poorer citizens: over
where and how they can work, what they can buy, and in general what their lives will be
like. Also, social inequality can undermine the fairness of political institutions. If those who hold
political offices must depend on large contributions for their campaigns, they will be more
responsive to the interests and demands of wealthy contributors, and those who are not rich
will not be fairly represented.