The aim of this essay is to look at how social inequalities affect a person`s experience of drug and alcohol dependency and their potential for recovery or successful treatment. Due to social inequality people are ostracised from society, these individuals who are stigmatised and suffer discrimination are often the poor as opposed to the hierarchy who have better opportunities in life. Social Inequality refers to the way individuals in society are labelled regarding their status. This could be their citizenship, location or other factors such as age, gender or class. This essay will look at social inequalities and who experiences them, however the main focus will be on those with drug and alcohol dependencies and how stigma and marginalisation are attached to them. Additionally the essay will look at some of the reasons why the stigma attached to someone dependent on drugs or alcohol can create barriers to accessing treatment and impact on their recovery.
There are two main areas for social inequality, one being the equality of conditions, the other being income and material possessions. (Lewis 2011) The poor are being blamed for their own poverty and have been labelled as scroungers who prefer to receive benefits than earn a living. In actual fact a large number of people living in poverty are working, these are usually long hours for minimum wages. Housing is also typical of social inequality, in particular the homeless or those who are in hostels. The poorer communities
Class divisions can result in tensions between people and different regions. Wage disputes between workers and employers in which workers try to improve their income levels are a common cause of dispute. These divisions can sometimes lead to social and economic instability. As shown earlier, inequality leads to poverty problems but the facts have not been explored. Australia has a very high level of relative poverty with 12.2% of Australians living below the poverty line, defined as receiving an income below 50% of the median income level. Poverty tends to trap families into a vicious cycle of low incomes and limited economic opportunities. High poverty levels also tend to be associated with increased levels of crime, suicide, disease and reduced life expectancy.
|inequality between gender and class and also, the extent of poverty in the current British context. I will also cover causes of |
It is a commonly accepted that inequality is increasing throughout the globe, with startling statistics such as the recent Oxfam report indicating that the richest 85 people in the world own more wealth than the poorest 3.5 billion people(Oxfam Australia Media, 2014). Inequality is thought of as disparities or gaps, such as the distance between a low income and a high income household, or the ratio of their incomes (Divided We Stand, 2011). Domestic inequality refers to inequality within a country and
Social inequality is the issue pertaining to the lack of housing, health care, education, employment opportunities, and status. It is the dismissal of people from participation in what we, the members of society distinguish as being valuable, important, socially desirable, and personally worthwhile. There are many different perspectives on social inequality within our society; the three areas I am going to focus on are those of the Functionalist, Conflict and Symbolic-Interactionist.
When the resources in a society are distributed unevenly it leads to social inequality. Often inequality is understood as being socio-economic and it is now closely associated with social inequality. “Social inequalities are differences in income, resources, power and status within and between societies. Such inequalities are maintained by those in powerful positions via institutions and social processes.” (Warwick-Booth, 2013 p.2)
The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology defines inequality as ‘the unequal distribution of opportunities, rewards, and power among and between individuals, households and groups’(1). It goes on to say that ‘the subfield of social stratification has as its main task the description and analysis of inequalities, or the makeup of the stratification system of any given society’.(1) From this one definition, we can already begin to see the strong links that lie between inequalities and social stratification. As we delve deeper into the topics, we can begin to see both the inevitability and the functionality of stratification
Social inequality can practically be made apparent at any moment of someone’s life – whether at work or school amongst peers or simply watching the news in the morning. According to Dalton Conley, social inequality is narrowly defined as “a condition in which a difference in wealth, power, prestige, or status based on nonnatural conventions exist” (2017 p.241). Moreover, social inequality is a process whereby society can determine how a class of people is expected to coexist within predetermined social, political, and economic boundaries. The affected class will live within the predefined constraints, and the affected class will then pass the predefined constraints on to future generations. It is imperative to understand that social inequality is a result of social stratification, which according to
In the documentary “Poverty in America: Born with a Wooden Spoon” we get an in depth look about what it is like to live in poverty in America. In the early moments of the documentary we are informed that the poor people of America are a diverse group of people. These people can be put into sub group and each of them has certain different characteristics. The first and most obvious group is the homeless or otherwise known as the urban poverty. These people are scattered around inner cities and it is very easy to see how hard their life is and what kind of struggle they are going through. The next group is the group of situational poverty. Situational poverty comes about when something abrupt occurs in someone’s life that causes him or her to be forced into poverty. Examples of this can be divorce, losing ones jobs, or sudden illness. Another different kind of poverty is the working class poverty. These are the people that have jobs but make so little that they cannot get themselves above the poverty line. Next are immigrants they provide cheap necessary labor for the country to flourish but yet they are still consider to be apart of poverty. They often do not even work for themselves, they leave their homelands and live on their own just so they can get jobs to send back money home to their families. The middle class can also have people in poverty. They try to cover it up by getting themselves into loads of credit card debt and eventually fall below the poverty line to the
The term ‘social problem’ refers to certain problems that are socially recognised by society and are felt to threaten certain values cherished by the public. This essay will investigate the different types of poverty that occur in the U.K and will explore the sociological arguments as to how poverty links with social problems such as social exclusion, gender discrimination in the work place, lone-parenting and disability and look at how these problems are perceived in today’s society.
Living with a poverty level income is a difficulty facing many people around the world; poverty is a cultural universal, or trait found in every known culture – not an expression of individual differences. The most basic explanation for this is the trend towards social stratification, the system by which society organizes itself into a hierarchy. In some cultures this is manifest in the form of a caste system in which people who are in poverty have little to no chance of escaping it. In the United States the system is more in the form of a class system in which there is at least some degree of social mobility, and less status consistency allows people in poverty to have the possibility of changing their social status, but rarely the
Poverty is a global issue that has been at the forefront of economic debate for over a century. Left wing politicians and anti-poverty organisations around the world still adamantly fight for a more equal economic split, pointing towards research showing the disadvantages poverty creates for those living in it. This research has grown rapidly since the 1970’s and many different factors have been targeted in the attempt to examine the
Social inequality is defined as the unequal distribution of social and economical resources. There are unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions and statuses within a group or society. Because there is social inequality, people have less life chances meaning less educational and occupational opportunities, which prevents movement on the social ladder. This gives authority to the rich because the rich own the means of production, giving capitalists the power to exercise it by exploiting the poor working class. An individual interest and not that of a community drive the rich. Such differences degrade and stigmatize the social class with less money and opportunities causing social stratification.
the paper I will address these issues along with sociological views of poverty. Poverty is a social
In briefly evaluating the classical and modern explanations of social inequality, it is essential that we step outside the realm of our own lives, class position, and discard any assumptions we might have about the nature of inequality. This process of critical pedagogy allows us to view our world, not from our perspective, but from a wider, more critical analysis of inequality's nature. Also, it should be considered within this wider perspective that all theories of inequality have a class perspective, where the theorist, based on the position their theory takes, is making claims from (or for) a particular class (whether they want to or not). With this in mind, it seems that most of these theories come
Society holds many structures that mould human performance and produce opportunities for some, but inequalities for others (Morrall, 2009). These structures in society are organized by the hierarchies of class, ethnicity and gender (Crossman, 2016). Due to having a society based on hierarchies, social inequalities are inevitable. Social inequality refers to the ways in which a group or individual of a certain social position may receive unequal opportunities or distribution of ‘goods’ such as education, income, living conditions and healthcare (Walker, 2009). These unequal opportunities may be given to someone because of their ethnicity, gender, income, religion or social class (Walker, 2009). For example, people in a high social class will be able to pay for their children to go to a good private school for a good education, whereas lower-class or working class people will struggle to afford the same education.