This essay looks at how Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim help explain globalization and social stratification, and what these ideas mean for everyday life. It draws on examples from Ireland and the wider EU – the jobs people do, the way status works, and the ties that hold communities together. The aim is to keep the writing plain, balanced, and reflective, the way a real Irish student might piece thoughts together after class.
Globalization slips quietly into daily life. A shirt stitched in Vietnam shows up on a shop rail in Cork. A call-centre in Dundalk answers questions for a company based in Berlin. It all feels connected – and a bit fragile at the same time. To be fair, some people find more opportunity through it, while others end up chasing stability that keeps moving further away. Beneath it sits social stratification, the not-so-visible ladder that decides who gets ahead and who keeps climbing without much luck.
Sociology tries to make sense of that ladder. Marx saw conflict, Weber saw order and status, and Durkheim saw the glue that holds people together. Their theories might be old, but they still whisper through Irish life – in debates about rent, work, or the loss of local ties. This essay wanders through their ideas, linking them to how global change touches ordinary routines. The tone stays open and human, as if written late in the library with half-cold tea beside the notes.
Karl Marx never stopped talking about class. He believed the world turned on the struggle between those who owned things and those who didn’t. Factories, fields, laptops – it didn’t matter. The pattern was the same. In practice, that clash shows up now in different clothes: a delivery rider under the rain in Dublin, logged into three apps at once, hoping for enough runs to pay rent. Marx called that sense of disconnection alienation – when people make things but lose the feeling that any of it belongs to them.
Max Weber looked around and saw rules stacking up. He wrote about rationalisation, how modern life gets tangled in systems and paperwork. To be fair, anyone who’s tried to claim housing support or renew a licence in Ireland knows that feeling of waiting behind invisible glass. Weber added two more layers to Marx’s class idea – status and party. Respect, education, political pull – all shaping who gets listened to. Bureaucracy keeps the lights on, but it can smother the spirit too. He called it an iron cage, and the phrase still fits.
Émile Durkheim cared more about belonging. He saw society as a living thing, stitched together by shared morals and habits. In small places, people stick close because they’re alike – he named that mechanical solidarity. Bigger, busier societies survive on organic solidarity, a sense that we depend on one another even if our lives look different. When that sense slips, an emptiness appears – anomie. It isn’t hard to spot bits of that now: long evenings spent online, messages flashing but silence in the room. Still, local GAA games, parish groups, or small volunteer cafés keep that Durkheim thread alive.
What ties them all is a simple question – how do structures shape the person, and how does the person push back? Marx saw fight; Weber saw form; Durkheim saw faith in community. In Ireland, traces of each appear side by side – from union marches in Limerick to student protests over fees, and the quiet care networks that rise when systems stumble. So it turned out that their old theories travel well into this century after all.
Globalization brings fast change. Jobs move. Prices swing. Cultures mix. For some, it feels like freedom; for others, it feels like standing on shifting sand. In Ireland, the story cuts both ways. Tech companies bring bright glass offices and steady pay, yet the same global pull leaves small towns fighting to keep young workers. A barista in Galway might serve tourists from five countries before lunch, but still struggle to pay rent by Friday.
Marx would nod at that contradiction. Capital flows wherever profit waits, but people can’t move as easily. The working class becomes flexible, disposable even. The gig economy fits his idea of exploitation dressed in digital clothes. Weber would notice the quiet authority of code – algorithms rating workers, emails replacing bosses, systems watching every click. Rationalisation, he’d say, just swapped paper files for screens.
Durkheim might ask what it does to spirit. When security weakens, so does belonging. He’d probably see traces of anomie in the stress statistics or in the hush of crowded buses where no one speaks. Yet, to be fair, Irish communities often rise when things get rough – pop-up food banks, neighbour groups checking on the elderly during floods. Those moments carry his organic solidarity, fragile but real.
The Central Statistics Office keeps pointing to income gaps and rising living costs. Weber’s layers of class and status still draw the map; Marx’s talk of capital explains the strain. But the EU Social Pillar, community education, and local initiatives hint at Durkheim’s hope that shared purpose can still mend divides. In practice, globalization and inequality dance together – awkwardly, sometimes cruelly – yet they remind society why empathy still matters.
The ideas of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim still breathe quietly through today’s sociology classrooms. In practice, they sit behind almost every modern debate, even when their names aren’t spoken. Marx’s notion of class conflict, for instance, turns up in how people talk about wage gaps or housing crises. When Irish workers protest rising rents or teachers strike for fair pay, the echo of Marx’s theory is right there — work, value, and power all pulling in different directions. It wasn’t easy for him to watch society split between owners and workers, and the same divide, in new shapes, lives on.
Weber helps explain something a bit subtler — why people follow rules even when those rules feel pointless. Bureaucracy might promise fairness, yet it can smother initiative. Anyone who’s tried to contact a service department and ended up waiting on hold for an hour might understand Weber’s iron cage better than any textbook. Still, his view of status is useful too. In Ireland’s tight labour market, credentials have become a kind of passport. Degrees and certificates decide entry. To be fair, that can reward skill, but it can also keep others shut out.
Durkheim, meanwhile, reminds society why belonging matters. After the isolation of lockdowns, his ideas on solidarity ring sharper than ever. Communities lost shared routines, and mental health took the hit. He’d have called that drift anomie. The rise in counselling, mindfulness workshops, and peer-support networks shows people trying to rebuild connection — an organic solidarity growing again from small acts. So it turned out that his hope for social cohesion still matters, just expressed through new rituals — Zoom calls, local fundraisers, and small kindnesses that keep morale alive.
Communication has changed the way power and identity move. News spreads faster, arguments last longer. One post can spark a movement, but it can also spark a storm. In Ireland, political debate often unfolds now on screens rather than in parish halls. That shift opens voices that were once ignored, yet it also breeds noise and division. To be fair, the same tool that connects neighbours can just as easily split them.
Weber would recognise the order and disorder in it — systems that claim to democratise discussion but still follow hidden hierarchies, where algorithms quietly decide who gets seen. Marx would probably point out how profit sits beneath those connections: data, clicks, and ads becoming new forms of capital. Durkheim might worry about how shared meaning survives when communication fragments into private bubbles.
Still, there’s hope in how Irish communities use digital spaces to organise — crowdfunding for flood victims, mental-health awareness drives, or student campaigns. These small circles of purpose give modern sociology proof that communication isn’t just noise; it’s still a bridge when handled with care.
Technology touches nearly every routine now. Phones wake people, guide buses, and track steps. In practice, life feels smoother, but also more watched. The workplace is no longer a single place; it’s a chat window, a spreadsheet, a constant ping. Marx might call this a new face of exploitation — the boss replaced by a device that never switches off. Weber would see fresh bureaucracy in the metrics and performance dashboards. Everything recorded, timed, rated. And Durkheim would quietly ask what all this does to belonging.
There’s also the gap between those who adapt easily and those left out. Older workers retraining for online forms, rural homes still struggling with broadband — these details show digital stratification in real time. The Irish Government’s National Digital Strategy talks about inclusion, yet access and confidence differ sharply between groups. To be fair, technology can empower too: remote study, online therapy, and small businesses finding markets abroad. The trick, as sociology keeps reminding, is balance — using tools without letting them shape every move.
So it turned out that the machines didn’t just change work; they changed what it means to be visible, valued, and connected. Classical theories help to trace those shifts. Marx exposes the power dynamics, Weber the structures, and Durkheim the moral costs.
Across time, the voices of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim still lean quietly over how people read society. The world moves quicker now, yet not always kinder. Globalisation races ahead; fairness trails behind. Class lines haven’t vanished — they’ve just learned to hide behind job titles, college degrees, or those small blue ticks on screens. Ireland shows the pattern clearly enough: open to the world, still uneven inside it. To be fair, the same currents that push some adrift can draw others together when they decide to help one another.
In practice, those old thinkers remind today’s students that progress isn’t only about growth or numbers. It’s about keeping a bit of dignity in the middle of change, finding purpose, holding onto the sense that people belong somewhere. Their theories keep sociology from turning cold. And even now, between news feeds and algorithms, their questions still hum under the noise — who gains, who’s left out, and what keeps a society stitched together when the threads start to fray.
Durkheim, E. (1893). The Division of Labour in Society. Free Press.
Durkheim, E. (1897). Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Routledge.
European Commission. (2023). European Pillar of Social Rights: 2023 Monitoring Report. EU Publications.
Marx, K. (1867). Capital, Vol. 1. Penguin.
Weber, M. (1922). Economy and Society. University of California Press.
Central Statistics Office (CSO). (2024). Survey on Income and Living Conditions, Ireland 2024. CSO Ireland.
O’Connor, E. (2022). Digital inclusion and inequality in Ireland. Irish Journal of Social Policy, 9(2), 33–48.
Al-Rawi, K. (2023). Media trust and social cohesion in Europe. European Sociological Review, 39(1), 56–71.
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