Free Essay. Social Problems and the Sociological Imagination

A social problem is a situation or a characterization that has a detrimental effect on the larger society and is a common condition that needs to be addressed. Proper and early dealings with the issue of social problems help prevent possible issues that might spread to the whole society and destroy the normality and stability of the community. The major social problems that have been on the look from a global perspective are poverty, climate change, unemployment, racism, and ethnicity (Fleras, 2005). Any component qualifies to be a social problem when it harms a large population. These consequences are never directly seen but studied from different aspects of the human population and human interaction. Another element that qualifies a situation to be a social problem is the fact that there must be mechanisms that try to address the situation.

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The contention between the reality that exists in some social problems has resulted in a lot of sociological philosophies and researches. Different classes of people from different disciplines have risen to prove the existence of some social issues that affect the world. For example, the global issue of climate change has resulted in scientific discussions and conflict between the realities of the existence of the problem. Environmentalists have done many studies and several environmental researches to prove that there is the problem of climate change. It is aimed at addressing the larger aspect of urbanization and industrialization that has increased greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere (Fleras, 2005). The urban developers and investors think that this claim of environmentalists only focuses on deterring development and the advancement of the economy.

Sociological imagination is the act of viewing things from the aspect of social point and studying how they interact with each other and their influence on one another (Mills, 2000). People must be able to take themselves out of the situation and look at it from an alternative point of view. People in the current world have the desire to have an understanding of how different things affect the larger population of people. Society is made up of how people interact with their environment, and therefore, to know the behavior of people in the presence of a given situation is the best thing. The knowledge of social problems results from the study of the change of the lifestyles of people in the society in an attempt to cope with the situations. Some of the mechanisms to accommodate or correct these problems result in sociological conflicts among different parties involved. Sociological imagination helps people to see the realities of social problems (Mills, 2000). People learn how to look at an issue from more than one perspective and therefore widens the understanding. More than just understanding the current situations in society, sociological imaginations also helps to see the possibility of having certain realities in the future due to the negligence of some issues.

Social imagination mainly addresses the connection between personal problems and the larger social or public issues. For instance, a study can focus on how a personal lack of finances affects the larger community. In this example, a person may not be able to acquire the right diet for his health, which will result in illness. When these people die, they reduce the employable population and some other skills that they had to solve the issue.

Poverty is a social problem that has affected a large population of the world. It is not a problem that came and affected a given population just in a day. It is a problem that encroached from a single personal lack of finances and economic problems to the whole community. It is an excellent example of looking at a problem in a larger aspect of how it will affect the community's social life (Mills, 2000). This study is what sociological imagination teaches people to see and approach social issues.

In Canada, racism is a problem that has had its roots from ancient days. Many efforts have been implemented to solve the issue. Some have been successful and have made a significant change in the perception of racism in the state (Fleras, 2005). Racism is the social state in which people are discriminated against in society due to their ethnic background, especially the color of their skin. The Black community is the one that has the most effect of racism. Discrimination does occur not only in the streets but also in places of employment, healthcare facilities, and even in courtrooms where justice is expected. The police department deemed to be the peacemakers and social justice and right implementers are the same people who are often found on the forefront to do the opposite. They are involved in a lot of cases of racial discrimination. Some go to the extremes of murder of innocent people just because of their skin color.

Some social researchers say that racism is just a delusion that has been cultivated in people's minds, and yet to them, it is not a reality. They say that people have made themselves vulnerable to the effect that whenever a situation that has been initiated by a person of a different skin color occurs, they are quick to term it a racism. People have been blinded to look at this issue from different perspectives, even though some evidence proves the existence of racism as a social problem. Racism has affected the general economic growth or Canada because many ‘colored’ people are unemployed and live in poorly developed areas.

Reference

Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.

Fleras, A. (2005). Social problems in Canada: Conditions, constructions, and challenges. Pearson Prentice Hall.