Introduction to Sociology

Conflict Perspective

To a conflict theorist, the economy is not a source of stability for society. Instead, the economy reflects and reproduces economic inequality, particularly in a capitalist marketplace. The conflict perspective is classically Marxist, with the bourgeoisie (the propertied ruling class) accumulating wealth and power by exploiting the proletariat (workers), and regulating those who cannot work (the aged, the infirm) into the great mass of the unemployed (Marx and Engels 1848). From the symbolic statement of Marie Antoinette, who purportedly said, “Let them eat cake” when told that the peasants were starving, to the Occupy Wall Street movement that began during the Great Recession, the concern with inequality is almost unchanged. Conflict theorists believe wealth and political power are concentrated in the hands of those who do not legitimately possess them. Now the wealthiest 1 percent in the United States own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. Nine percent more own another 36 percent, and just 20 percent of Americans own 90 percent of U.S. wealth.^[1] While the inequality might not be as extreme as in pre-revolutionary France, it is enough to make many believe that the United States is not the work-rewarding meritocracy it claims to be. 


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Figure 1. The wealthiest 1 percent of American households own 40 percent of the country’s wealth. The top 10 percent owns 76% of the wealth, while the bottom 90 percent owns just over 20 percent.

Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

Those working from a symbolic interactionist perspective take a microanalytical view of society. They focus on the way reality is socially constructed through day-to-day interaction and how society is composed of people communicating according to a shared understanding of symbols.

One important symbolic interactionist concept related to work and the economy is career inheritance. This concept means simply that children tend to enter the same or similar occupations as their parents, which is a correlation that has been demonstrated in research studies (Antony 1998). For example, the children of police officers learn the norms and values that will help them succeed in law enforcement, and since they have a model career path to follow, they may find law enforcement even more attractive. Related to career inheritance is career socialization—learning the norms and values of a particular job.

Finally, a symbolic interactionist might study what contributes to job satisfaction. Melvin Kohn and his fellow researchers (1990) determined that workers were most likely to be happy when they believed they controlled some part of their work, when they felt they were part of the decision-making processes associated with their work, when they had freedom from surveillance, and when they felt integral to the outcome of their work. Sunyal, Sunyal, and Yasin (2011) found that a greater sense of vulnerability to stress, the more stress experienced by a worker, and a greater amount of perceived risk consistently predicted a lower worker job satisfaction.