QUESTION THREE Thinking sociologically allows people to look past what is deemed as “common sense”. Social problems are often widely mis-explained due to not thinking critically about the problems we see in society. For example, when someone commits a crime and they appear on the news, people often look at the person as the main problem saying, “they must be really screwed up,” instead of looking deeper into that person’s past and how they got to that point in their life. This is what sociology aims to do, rather than diagnose the person as broken, sociology looks at society to see where it is broken and causing other problems. For example, we are so widely told that our economy is on the downward spiral due to too many illegal immigrants …show more content…
When looking at personal troubles and structural problems, they often overlap. However, the causes of each problem are what label them as personal or structural. For example, we are taught from the very beginning of life that there are distinct roles for both genders, and they should not be violated. Growing up, girls are socialized to be nice and not bicker, while males are told to beat each other up to settle a problem. My place in this world does not particularity follow those roles as I grew up in a military family with all my grandparents serving, as well as both of my parents and myself. These gender roles were never applicable to me because everyone is equal in the military. For example, society tells females that they need to prove their selves to be considered equal to males. My transition from military to civilian life was something that really opened my eyes to all the social problems facing this …show more content…
Furthermore, take the role of a priest for example, females are not allowed into this field because society tells them that there is no room for them there. Or look at a doctor’s career; it is highly dominated by males, not because females can’t be doctors, but because society tells them they aren’t supposed to. This is a socially constructed reality. For example, when looking at the problem of war, it becomes both a personal and structural problem because there are struggles with both aspects. It is a personal trouble while in the middle of it just trying to go home at the end of it all, and then the personal transition back into society. It is a structural issue when the people in charge of the country send you there and contribute to the extension of the war itself. There is nothing the soldier can do about this because the structural issue creates the personal