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Sociological Imagination: Looking At Homelessness

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The sociological imagination is thinking that is done with the realization that both the individual’s experience and the historical context which they live in must be looked at to fully gain insight about the world around them (Elwell, 2006). In other words, “the individual and society cannot be understood apart from each other” (Pyyhtinen, 2016, p. 4). The intersection of the two is where valuable information is found. The sociological imagination requires the ability to change between perspectives of biography and history (Mills, 1959). One can practice the craft of sociological thought by using the sociological imagination. Better understanding of the world around them will be gained by both thinking about personal situations and characteristics of individuals, but also by taking that thinking further and considering the institutions within their lives and how they are functioning. One way of doing this is knowing the difference between troubles and issues, which is an essential tool of the sociological imagination. Troubles are personal, private matters that impact the individual and his or her immediate …show more content…

Some people may think that homelessness is a trouble because they assume that the individual is lazy and just wants life to be handed to them. Further assumptions are made about drugs causing individuals to become homeless. While that sometimes happens, many times it is the other way around. Individuals who have become homeless feel helpless and give into the release from their reality that drugs can give them (Thompson, 2011). People that do not consider factors outside of the individual are overlooking the breakdown within many institutions including school and the family that could lead an individual to become homeless. These factors indicate that this is an issue not a

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The sociological perspective encourages us to explore societies’ problems from a non-biased perspective. When investigating controversial issues it is quintessential to keep one’s opinion out of the equation. As C. Wright Mills stated in his 1959 essay “The Promise”, “Problems and their solutions don’t just involve individuals; they also have a great deal to do with the social structures in our society” (Leon-Guerrero, 2015). Eliminating personal experiences and self-perception creates an even playing field to determine fact from fiction.

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Homeless, Not Hopeless: A Look into the Effects of Societal Classification and Location The prevalence of homelessness in America has become so mainstream that it is no longer something surprising to see. How tragic is it that when a child witnesses a person sleeping on the ground outside, there is no reaction because this is normal for them? Many studies report that the majority of homeless populations are made up of the mentally ill. These people are the ones who are unfortunate enough to live in an area which underserves the low-income population.

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Homelessness is one the most ignored problems in the United States with citizen and politician. Homeless people are walked by and ignored. Nobody ever thinks that they will be homeless. Due to the economy, people live paycheck to paycheck making house payments very difficult. Most people will want to believe most homeless people are drug addicts or alcoholics, but most people will be surprise to know that it is no all true.

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It is indiscriminate and has no concern for one’s status, race, ethnicity, background, religion, and so on. Therefore the fear of homelessness is the fact that it can happen at any time.. As a result of the United States economic situation, there is a lack of jobs and livable wages provided for growing communities. The insufficient provision of financial aid is among the factors that cause homelessness. Unable to be financially independent, the homeless tend to meet their financial needs through illegal avenues. These avenues involve the interaction with drugs and

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1.1 Introduction In this essay I will be discussing the sociological imagination and the problems of families. The sociological imagination allows us to see the difference between personal problems and public issues and be able to link them. It basically allows a person to think outside of their personal perspectives and see beyond the outer appearance. 1.2

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The term "Sociological Imagination" was introduced by C. Wright Mills in 1959. The definition of Sociological imagination from our textbook is “the ability to understand how your own past relates to that of other people, as well as to history in general and societal structures in particular”. In other words, Sociological Imagination is the ability to recognize that an individual's personal troubles are a product of public issues which aren’t always controlled by the individual. This concept can help to provide a better understanding about the current social problems our nation is facing. Sociological imagination helps an individual understand the society in which they live in by placing an individual away from reality and looking beyond the

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As defined by our in-class textbook and also a term coined by C. Wright Mills, the sociological imagination is the ability to see the relationship between individual experiences and the larger society. Sociological imagination gives us the ability to comprehend the social context of our own personal happenings. Within sociological imagination, there are two different types of troubles, personal and public issues. Personal troubles are private issues that involve the individuals and the people they associate themselves with. It is a problem that must be solved by the individual and it is not influenced by society.

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So let’s start by looking at the term ‘sociological imagination’ and what it actually means. ‘The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography

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Sociological imagination is the ability to see the one’s own problem or relations in a different perspective and to think outside the box. In the book “The Sociological Imagination” written by C. W. Mills, Mills says that sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society (Elwell,2013). While many sociologists have different understanding to this concept, so they concluded to use Mills definition of sociological imagination as “the vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society” (Crossman,2016). So what we think that are our personal problems might actually be public issues that we aren’t aware of as proven in history and the society then. Like every adult in the world,

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Homelessness is a significant complex societal problem. Many people think homelessness is an individual problem, but I think society has a large factor on why people become homeless. Individuals who are homeless are not lazy like most of society thinks. These people are struggling with societal problems such as living costs and mostly cannot support themselves financially. In my eyes, Homelessness is a factor of societal forces such as high cost of housing and living and also society having failed systems to support people who are stuck in these sorts of situations.

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In Mills’ publication, he describes the sociological imagination as “a quality of mind that will help them [humans] to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves”. (Mills, 2000, p. 5). Giddens, in his publication ‘Sociology: A brief but critical introduction’, concurs with Mills’ definition of the sociological imagination, and further states that three particular views are essential to understanding the social world: “an historical, an anthropological, and a critical sensitivity.” (Giddens, 1986, p. 13). Mills believes that the sociological imagination deals largely with two main components: the individual, and society.

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Quetext About FAQ Contact The Sociological imagination, as defined by Nilsen and Scott (2014), is the thinking or the realignment of one’s own mind into connecting the individual with the grater society even with the society’s past to better understand how the individual affects the whole, and how the whole affects rhe individual. In his book A General View of Positivism, Auguste Comte describes positivism as the use of empirical methods such as ones used in natural science to observe society in sociology. Furthermore, Mill (2005) describes Comte’s theory as the theory that made the scientific community stick with its ideals and systematic observation. In Harriet Martineau’s Society in America, she uses feminism as a perspective to re-envision

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Sociological Imagination The sociological imagination is the ability to look beyond one’s own everyday life as a cause for daily successes and failures and see the entire society in which one lives as potential cause for these things. Many individuals experience one or more social problems personally. For example, many people are poor and unemployed, many are in poor health, and many have family problems. When we hear about these individuals, it is easy to think that their problems are theirs alone, and that they and other individuals with the same problems are entirely to blame for their difficulties. Sociology imagination takes a different approach, as it stresses that individual problems are often rooted in problems stemming from aspects

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One’s personal situation is linked to current history and the society they live in. The correlation between the two is called sociological imagination created by American sociologist C. Wright Mills in his essay, Sociological Imagination. In clarity, “neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” (Mills 1). In order to develop such skills, you must be able to free yourself from one context and look at things in a different point of view. He argued that one of the main tasks of sociology was to transform personal problems into public and political issues or vice versa.

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However, in our society we need to understand the importance of sociological imagination and how it helps us understand the society as a whole. In our society we have noticed

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