Stephanie Hammond Assess the usefulness of conflict theories in aiding our understanding of society today.

Conflict theory is the set of theories is that attacks the differences in society and how these are the reasons for all the bad things within our society, as power is at the base of every social relationship along with resentment and hostility being a constant element in society. The main conflict theory is that of Marxism where everything in the grand scheme of things is blamed on class for example. We can use Marxism to help understand the current resistance to banking systems. The idea that the split between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat needs a revolution to bring everyone on to an egalitarian level has manifested itself in the creation of the 99% movement where only one percent of the population hold 99% of the worlds wealth. the basic Marxist principle that the working class are only held in their place to prevent them rising up and sparking a revolution is seemingly being proven as the protests against the banks have met with violent opposition from police no matter where they took place as well as serious condemnation from politicians. We can also see the Marxist principles being displayed in the Arab Spring when the people took the idea of rising up against the ruling class and removed the oppressive regimes that where running the country. So Marxism is useful in showing how we as a society are trying to show that its the voice not the people and not the politics or money that have the power to change the world. A way in which Marxism isnt useful is that it only blames one thing for causing the discontent and thats class and as we all know that in modern society there are a multitude of reasons for discontentment within society. The other main conflict theory is that of feminism. Feminism was a driving force in the 20th century giving women the vote, the right to control their own reproduction equal pay and apparently we are now equal with men within society. Feminism is the desire to have equality for both the sexes in social, economic, political arenas and is not limited to just women. Feminism is useful to understanding the place of women in society today and how far weve come and also how much work there is left to do to create an equal society. One way in which feminism isnt at all useful is in showing that despite their best efforts we are still not totally equal. In the FTSE 100 only 15% of senior board members are women compared to Norway where at least 40% of board members must be women, we have a long way to go in increasing equality in the business sector and as this would apparently go some way to increasing economic growth we obviously need to increase womens presence within the sector. Also in the current cabinet only 5 out of the 22 members are women the prime minister has been labelled sexist and patronising towards women, so after we made such progress by having a female prime minister and equality legislation it seems to have gone to pot. Functionalism is the polar opposite to conflict theory where everything is seen to work in harmony with each other, although it is known that both functionalism and Marxism are similar in almost every way except who society benefits with functionalism it benefits everyone and Marxism its the ruling class. Functionalism is only useful really in todays society as it produces all the more modern forward thinking ideologies and provides a historical context on which to base modern societal analysis. So it would seem that conflict theories are useful in understanding modern society as we have a lot of conflict currently now and the normal consensus theories provided a rose tinted incredibly ethnocentric view of the world currently and when they were actually hypothesised.