Homelessness and Sociological Perspectives
Uploaded by spootyhead on Mar 05, 2007
Homelessness And Sociological Perspectives
'I've detached myself from everyone and have become anonymous. I don't participate in life, nor do I care to participate in life. I'm just an observer,’ said a homeless guy on the street. He looks hopeless and hungry and walks off. Here we are in the 21st century and still in this great nation of ours we face a dilemma of problems. What are these problems? These problems range from drugs to terror and even to homelessness. Over the past year, over 2 million men, women, and children were homeless and this number is sure to go up in coming years. Why is this? No one really knows why but many factors can cause one to become homeless. Losing ones job, becoming ill, and a lack of affordable housing can all play a major role in ones becoming homeless. What exactly does it mean to be homeless? The word homeless means having no home or permanent place of residence. 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. You have to look at the way that different homeless people act and behave in a society; you have to look at it from a sociological perspective point of view. Within sociology, there is not a single theoretical perspective, but many theoretical perspectives. The three main perspectives are the functionalism, the conflict theory, and the symbolic interaction perspectives.
The functionalism theory is about social organization and how this organization is maintained throughout the society. This theory emphasizes the importance of stability and integration in a society. The ideas come from natural sciences and look at society like a biologist would look at a living organism. They both try to identify the various parts or structures and see how they work and/or function. In this theory homelessness is viewed as inevitable and basically a must for the society to well, “function.” Individuals occupy specific, fixed roles in the society. Homelessness is just looked at as nothing more but a social class which is needed. It is believed that once one is part of this class, one will remain with this class for as long as he or she lives but if there ever is change and one moves up in class, the change will be very slow and gradual. The functionalism...