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Sociological Perspective Of Homelessness Essay

Decent Essays

Kayla Whitaker
SOC-210-1902 (CS142317)
Class Paper 17_18

Homelessness and Sociological Perspectives
To better understand the issue of homelessness it is necessary for one to not look at it in only one way but from a few different angles. Three primary sociological perspectives could be used to help explain homelessness; Functionalist Theory, Conflict Theory, and Symbolic Interactionism.
No one really knows why, but many factors can cause one to become homeless. Losing your job, getting sick, and a lack of affordable housing can all play a major role in becoming homeless. What exactly does it mean to be homeless? The word homeless means having no home or permanent place of residence.
Functionalists view society as parts making up a whole. Each part serves to keep the whole together. The major organizations and structures in society are functional (government, the economy, families, schooling, …) …show more content…

In class, someone pointed out that there are many jobs related to providing for or managing homelessness-social workers, those who run food banks and shelters, sociologists who study homelessness… Though homelessness may indicate the presence of some dysfunction in the system, society has turned it into a functional component. Conflict Theorists would view homelessness as an inevitable sign of the imbalance of power in a capitalist system. In this view, a small group of power elite have constructed society in such a way as to give them all of the advantages-this is not necessarily a conscious conspiracy where individual wealthy people come together in a room and decide to exploit everyone else; rather, it is through a general, class driven series of choices. For example, choosing to fire 10,000 workers to maximize the efficiency of a business. The large scale, impersonal decisions have very real impacts and create or contribute to phenomena such as

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