Final Exam in Principles of Sociology - Essay Example

The lungs of the asthma patients shrink considerably, and when they breathe they feel like ‘breathing through a straw’. Stratification makes it difficult for many asthma patients to receive timely health care and many low income class people find it almost impossible to afford effective treatments for the disease. The huge amount of money spent on medical treatment and medical bills make it impossible for them to have other necessities of life such as good hosing and healthy living conditions.

All these add to their personal troubles and miseries. An understanding of Mills’ perception of the sociological imagination is important in understanding the macro-level forces that contribute to public issues like asthma. Mills perceives sociological imagination as a way of thinking that believes that human behavior is shaped through social interaction; according to him, one’s personal experiences are always linked to the social contexts such as the prevailing milieu, the connection between history and biography, and the realization that one’s personal troubles are often the results of public issues of social culture.

He believes that the sociological imagination would enable one to “understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning from the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals” (Cargan & Ballantine 30). The social forces that contribute to asthma are the unequal distribution of power and income, the psychological and social constraints that the asthma patients are subject to in the American society. While medical practitioners hold that asthma can be prevented through “right medication, clean air, and a reasonably stress-free life”, many low-income asthma patients feel that this is “both well-intentioned and useless” (Corbett 59).

The low-income asthma patients are very often unable to pay the huge amount of medical bills and these unpaid medical bills cause mental and psychological