REFLECTION PAPER - Assignment Example

However, we do not usually define the troubles we endure in terms of historical forces and institutional contradiction. Our major characteristic as humans is that we think of our world in personal and moral terms. When we have problems, we usually see them in personal and emotional terms. Our view is limited to our immediate situation and we often put up defense mechanisms to protect our views, and most of us are convinced that our views and feelings are right, and the others’ are wrong. This self-protective attitudes and defenses are major hindrances to understanding social problems because we fail to see the broader context in which our problems arise.

In this paper we discuss the impact of social forces on our everyday life and how sociological imagination help in understanding social problems (Fairchild, 1970 p227).  . The Impact Social Forces on Social Problems Historical forces that are changing our society also have an impact on our own lives. Some of the impact is positive and some of it is negative. The society is often analyzed in terms of social forces and trends. According to (Mills C. W, 1959), neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.

This social context, comprise of historical era and very broad social events i.e. the broad factors that influence our lives extensively, such as our gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and social class, and the narrow factors such as our age, health, job, associates and our family relationships. These forces combine to make up the social force that shapes the way we look at life and the world around us. Social force refers to an effective urge or impulse that leads to social action or social change (Fairchild, 1970).

It is a consensus, basic drive or motive on the part of society’s members to bring about social action or social change. Mills, 1959 identified society’s problems in terms of personal troubles and social issues where personal troubles constitute personal challenges while social issues are larger societal challenges. These are key principles which provide us with a basis for understanding the hidden social forces that transpire in an almost invisible manner in our societies which often manifest in terms of concerns for change (Mills, 1959 pp32).

  According to (Lindstrom, 2008), understanding the social forces that contribute to social problems is necessary for designing strategies to ameliorate the social problems. A social problem is a particular norm is the community that people are concerned about and would like to change it. Social problems have two key components – the objective condition, this can be experienced and measured and the subjective concern, the feeling about things that are experienced in the objective condition.

Social systems evolve due to everyday needs and the balancing of social structures for example the US housing crisis triggered financial instability in many areas, but people across the world and institutions created reforms to counteract the crisis (Merton, 1968. p. 25-38). Social problems affect every society, great and small. This is due to the fact that any members who coexist closely will always have