Poverty: Using Sociological Imagination By C. W Mills

Poverty explained using Sociological Imagination

Introduction

Sociological imagination is a concept by C. W Mills, who defines it as a situation where individuals become aware of their personal experiences, but choose to think away from their everyday life and routines to viewing their actions and situations from a 3rd party’s perspective. (Mills, 2000) This can also be described as the realization of how personal experiences relate to the wider society. Miller continues to say that men in this life are living, feeling like their everyday life is made up of traps which their daily worlds cannot help overcoming these troubles in the traps. This is the point where he brings the idea that human beings live in circles or private orbits where our

It varies in definition from one person to another. (Mills, 2000) However, the kind of poverty I will be talking about is the situation that comes to one’s mind on hearing the word; lack of basic needs and living from hand to mouth. This was a situation that I was in some time back not out of choice though. I was unlucky just as many kids born in a poor family where my parents aren’t really earning much and in that event one of the parents or both dies.

Before losing my father, he fell ill for some time and his sickness limited him from working anymore. This added the burden to my mother with her several children and a husband to take care of. Deep down I felt so unfortunate in an era where children at school would be driven to and from school, carry expensive bags and definitely lead an expensive life-style. This comparison made me feel even poorer than we already were. We really never slept hungry at any point, but we almost did on several occasions, but by hard work of my mother to keep us alive and feed. During our hard times, I learned to walk to and from school. This was because this was the only way for me to get to school. I attended a school where, one that did not care if students had uniform or not, whether they walked barefooted or with

Apart from the reasons I thought that brought about poverty and the state of lack to us, other reasons are found away and out of my personal experience and thoughts to thinking from a 3rd party’s’ line. This is from the chapter, the sociological imagination

Society at large had such a great part to play in my situation. (Mills, 2000) It is the one that had brought this poor state. For instance, the society and the community did not actually realize that most of its people were in need and hence had taken this to be a norm. Working so hard and earning little was the way of life. Therefore, the society had made us feel comfortable in that state that we were in, and I believe that it was how people at some point lived even if they became rich later.

The society also had its cultural practices which played a big role in my situation. This setting brought out a culture where women were to always stay at home and wait for the men to go get food and do the hard work leaving the women behind taking care of children and carrying out the house chores. This provision only increased the poverty in the area and especially in my personal experience where my father dies and my mother who was used to staying at home as the custom, is now the one who will struggle getting a job that which will take a woman for an