Homelessness: A Sociological Analysis

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For many years, society has looked down upon the homeless because of their social status. People have been given the notion that the homeless are in the situation that they’re in because of many taboos that society looks down upon like alcohol, drugs, and gambling. People should be showing the homeless compassion and offer help, instead are met with mean actions and awful words towards their way of life. Not all homeless people are in their situation because of addictions. There are a great number of homeless people out there who are veterans that struggle with mental disorders that they received from past wars, such as PTSD, that do not allow them to live a normal life. There are also homeless people who lost their jobs and was unable to get a job in time to meet the deadline of bills, eventually losing everything and the family out on the streets.
The people in the upper class tend to act more hateful towards the homeless because of the sense of a higher status than those that are homeless. From what I’ve seen in my big city hometown, which is majorly occupied by people of the white collar society; I have seen the upper-class spit, abuse, curse, trick, and had the
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Marx’s works of the two classes are known as class conflict theory. Marx labeled the two classes as the bourgeoisie (higher class) and the proletariat (lower class). The bourgeoisie pictures the people below them the proletariats including the homeless as inferior to them, by status, skill, and initiative. The bourgeoisie is not able to understand how people became homeless because they are so high in status and in wealth, they are unable to relate to those who struggle. Karl Marx hated and shuttered at the thought of a capitalist society to see people of the greatest society, human kind, be trampled under the feet of a few

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