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the detriment of others in their society. Those with more power and money have the ability to gain a higher level of services by the main institutions in our society (such as education and health), thus creating a greater level of stratification in society. This in turn creates more conflict as those who cannot get the services they need turn to deviant or dependant methods to gain the same baisc needs. Unfortunately it is a vicious circle which continues to breed contempt from both sides of the fence in our society.

Durkheim

Durkheim (1858-1917) was one of the original 'founding fathers' of positivist sociology (functional theory), his concern was how to preserve society. The basis for social order (how society hung together and worked over time) was not economic but moral for Durkheim, expressed in the type of solidarity that a society exhibited (Willis,1999).

Durkheim was particularly concerned to distinguish social facts, which he sometimes described as 'states of the collective mind,' from the forms these states assumed when manifested through private individual minds. This distinction is most obvious in cases of customs,

moral and legal rights and religious beliefs etc.

Marx

For Karl Marx (1818-1883), the transformation had to be understood primarily as a change in the economic structure of societies; a change in the means by which economic production was organised from a system called feudalism to one called capitalism (Willis 1999). Marx was a man looking to understand society, he followed many different paths and was alienated many times for his ideas. His theories on value and surplus value, accumulation, exploitation,

pauperization, crisis and appropriation, class struggle and revolution made no immediate impact on the workers' movement, until after his death in 1883 (Rius 1999).

Unemployment

We are entering a new phase in world history - one in which fewer and fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population...For the whole of the modern era, people's worth has been measured by the market value of their labour...now new ways of defining human worth and social relationships will need to be explored (Rifkin 1996). Life has changed, globalization and feminism have had a huge impact on the work environment around the world. Technology has also made many jobs redundant. Unemployment has become an issue allaround the globe, explanations of this phenomenom are plenty. How does unemployment serve a purpose, or is it just another chance for the powerful to stamp on those with less power? The government views the unemployment situation as an idividual problem. It is due to the lack of training of the individual, they now make people have training to continue to get unemployment benefits. This is a great idea as far as keeping the individual busy and increasing the self-esteem and knowledge, but what then? We are now creating alot of qualified people for positions which don't exist. We need to look at why there are not enough positions to employ these individuals. If it is not lack of skills, then what is it? Could it be that they government or us as a society are not doing enough to promotebusiness in Australia, instead sending our work load overseas for cheaper labour. We need to look at why the positions are non existant rather than assuming it is the