Sociological Imagination

In this essay, we are supposed to use Sociological Imagination to identify the inseparable connections between the personal and the social. This paper will cover the topic of being unemployed and the impact of unemployment as a broad issue. In the matter of unemployment, it is not experienced by just one person and possibly that person’s family but by all of those in the community. If a business closes down, it isn’t just one person who is laid off. It is all of the people who worked for that business. Now because they are unemployed, each of these individual people, and their families if they have them, will spend less money at other businesses. If drastic enough, this could lead to more businesses closing and then mo

Other times unemployment may be due to a lack of education. Another connection between the personal and the social concerning unemployment is that of race. Many circumstances of society can contribute to unemployment and make it difficult, for one who is unemployed, to overcome. At times, more than one issue can be a contributing factor and can make it that much harder to get out of being unemployed. From my background, you are trained to perform a specific job in the military. They weren"tmt put in the position because they were lazy or incompetent but because the government decided to downsize the military and they lost a career that they were specifically trained for. When the military is downsized, some people are "laid-off" from the military. Even though, many times the victim of unemployment is blamed for being unemployed because they are considered to have a lack of motivation. While some of the unemployment there can be attributed to the failure of the individual, it is also the social problems due to the history of slavery, segregation and discrimination that contribute to the problem. An example of this, from some personal experience, is when the US government downsizes the military. Many times unemployment is due to cyclical structure of the capitalist economic system and is beyond the control of the unemployed individual. When examining black unemployment, specifically, we see that on average it is two to three times higher that it is for Caucasians. While unemployment can be the fault of the individual, it is not always the individual"tms fault.