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In 1945 Davis and Moore, following an earlier formulation by Davis, proposed a functional theory of stratification that was intended to account for what they contended was the "universal necessity" for social inequality in any social order. Beginning with an article by Tumin in 1953, the Davis-Moore theory elicited regular analysis, commentary, criticism, and debate through the 1970s. Although professional work on the theory has largely ceased since the late 1980s, the Davis-Moore theory remains perhaps the single most widely cited paper in American introductory sociology and stratification textbooks and constitutes "required reading" in hundreds, if not thousands, of undergraduate and graduate courses throughout the United States. The present paper traces the history of the debate and attempts to explain the theory's longevity and vitality in the face of what has amounted to largely negative assessments by other sociologists over the preceding fifty years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on rankings of sociology departments. Recently the American Council on Education published a volume containing a rating of the quality of the graduate faculty of 30 academic disciplines. The ranking of departments has attracted a great deal of attention. For many sociologists, particularly those who have studied the methodology of social stratification, there is the nagging question of how closely the subjective ranking of a phenomenon approximates its objective ranking. If people respond in terms of subjective rankings, or if such rankings fairly reflect a more objective measurement of a phenomenon, then they are valuable. If, on the other hand, prestige rankings lack a universality, then they are mostly relevant to those who hold them. In order to determine how much credence can be placed in the prestige rank of the 17 sociology departments that were rated distinguished or strong in the American Council on Education's report, an examination is made in this paper of how productive the doctoral graduates and the faculty of these departments are; the former is intended to reflect effectiveness of graduate training and the latter to reflect quality of faculty.

This section comments on an article by Knudsen and Vaughn, wherein they reported data that were intended to reveal the relationship between objective and subjective measures of the quality of sociology departments in the U.S. Illuminating though their study may be in some respects, it begs most of the important questions and avoids the most crucial issues. If, we consider the Knudsen and Vaughn report in the context of prestige studies, we may raise questions about their methodology and the significance and implications of their findings. They refer to the similarity between their problem and problems in the methodology of social stratification. In the study of stratification it is. of course, quite legitimate to attempt to ascertain objective indexes of prestige that correlate highly with subjective prestige ranking. Knudsen and Vaughn can be criticized for their implicit, although perhaps unintentional, legitimation of the stratification structure of American sociology. The authors' major finding was that subjective evaluation had little relationship to the objective criterion of per capita publication in the leading journals except for the top few schools. This leads them to conclude that those top schools are clearly superior institutions. It is suggested here that their methodology led almost inevitably to these findings regarding the elite schools and that the imputation of superiority is unwarranted.