Power and Social Stratification.

This paper is not intended to be yet another contribution to the Methodenstreit underlying the controversy of the last two decades over the functionalist theory of social stratification. Its purpose is, rather, to explain why efforts to synthesize functionalist and non-functionalist approaches have failed to create a qualitatively new and feasible paradigm in the sociological field of social stratification. It aims to demonstrate that scientific progress in empirically explanatory and predictive stratification theory and research can only be attained by surmounting the current "prerevolutionary stage," a progress, however, which is not necessarily tantamount to a cumulative combination of the current approaches to social stratification. After confrontation of the central elements of the contrasting "schools" and a critical investigation of Lenski's attempted but failed compromise, it shall be critically proposed and discussed that efforts in the direction of a structural power analysis of social stratification are more promising for the emergence of the desired paradigm and testable theoretical formulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]