Cw Mills Homelessness

Question 1: CW Mills believed in the theory of sociological imagination, which basically looks at the connection between a personal level of understanding one’s inner troubles and the larger society’s issues (how one’s personal life might be affected by broad changes in society). Issues come from external factors, usually uncontrollable, and affect society as a whole whereas troubles originate from the individual who is aware of them. When people think of homelessness usually they only look at the personal trouble that afflicts the homeless (e.g. laziness, not willing to work hard) by assuming that it was the individual’s fault that they were in that situation. In the eyes of CW Mills, the issue of homelessness is a public issue because most …show more content…
poverty/economic hardship, land availability, mental health).
Question 2: From an economic standpoint, which deals with the financial behaviors of homelessness, homelessness is an outcome of an inefficient allocation of resources in different communities in the form of few or no job opportunities which includes wages being low in certain areas for those who can get jobs, but usually represents unemployment. It also represents the rise in prices for housing which decreases affordability. A demographic argument would look at the population distribution amongst areas with high homelessness and determine if there are particular subpopulations that tend to be more homeless compared to others. It would also look at the rate change in homelessness of these populations in particular locations due to movement of people (“composition” of a population). Some may argue that …show more content…
each aspect of society serves a function and the collective society works together to achieve a common goal). In terms of homelessness, the consensus theory would say that certain ethnic groups, for instance, are more likely to be homeless because they have adapted to living in certain conditions that is best suited for them (differential association theory) that others may consider as homelessness or the issue of homelessness may not be as important towards the common end goal that the entire society shares (anomie). This also relates to Parsons’s analysis that social stratification (separating a society based on some social factor) is beneficial in the functioning of society as a whole. To examine the consensus perspective, one would need to consider the likelihood that certain ethnic groups would want to live in a certain condition (most likely through a survey-like data collection system) as well as determining the most important goal for this particular society. One issue with this perspective is that it assumes inequality is inevitable and therefore should be allowed to persist. From this, it also assumes structural influences (e.g. institutional factors) don’t play a large role in promoting homelessness which is