Is Poverty Functional to Society?

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Examine the view that poverty is beneficial to society Poverty is the social and economic state of either living below a particular standard or average. It can be defined in two ways, the first being absolute poverty which is the inability to afford the five basic essentials that are warmth, clothing, food, shelter and water. A positive for this definition of poverty is that it allows us to make comparisons with other cultures. On the other a hand a negative for this definition of poverty is that many people would feel that a lack of any of these essentials is destitution not poverty. The second way poverty can be defined is as relative poverty which is the inability to afford the average standard of living for a particular society. A positive for this definition is that it takes social expectations into consideration, however a negative of this definition is that we cannot compare results between cultures as each culture has a different set of expectations. Many sociologists would say that poverty exists solely because of the way an individual chooses to live their life and the norms and values they choose to adopt that are different to the rest of societies. On the other hand there are some sociologists that blame the inequality within society. The functionalist theory of poverty by Davis and Moore can be applied to all aspects of society. Functionalists believe that society is characterised by agreement and harmony. They also believe that everything that exists has a function otherwise it would cease to exist. An example would be Poverty. Poverty exists and continues to persist because it is a functional necessity and society could not work without it. Its main function is motivation. It makes workers work hard in order to avoid poverty. Parsons came up with the organic analogy. Functionalists liken society to a human body as like society it is a system of
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