Social order according to Bartos and Paul (13) is brought about by the domination of one group of people to other groups.
Sociologists such as Karl Max saw the society to be fragmented into different small groups of people that try to compete with each other to acquire both social and economic resources. The emphasis of conflict theory is on the role played by coercion in bringing social order. Problems that lead to homelessness increases and consequently, people remain homeless for a long time. The needs of the needy people increases, yet there are few available opportunities to solve them. Even the people who are supposed to be caring about their partners have grown apart, making the people poorer. This has increasingly alleviated the problems that people face in the society. The only attachment that is currently in existence in the society is the family, which is also breaking apart with time. This has been as a result of the broken structures. There is little assistance accorded to the poor by the rich and the able people in the society. With the increase in individualism, more people are becoming poor. Isajiw (102) observes that people are increasingly being more independent from each other, breaking the structures already set by the rules of functionalism. However, this is not the case altogether. This is the essence of the society in which all people ought to be mindful of one another. As the individual cares about other people in the family, the family cares about the clan. As social institutions keep on developing, people are expected to be careful about one another. Relationships developed by these structures are supposed to be the pillars in which the society is built upon. According to the theory, the significance of an individual is not is not vested in his or her individuality, but in the status that he has accorded to his own status, his opinion in social relation patterns and the kind of behaviours associated with that particular status. The clan is part of the larger society, and through relationships developed by the individual people in the society, the result is strong solidarity among these people. Building blocks of the society in the view of these sociologists are the family as well as the clan. The complex nature of the society has been associated with complexity of the institutions. They consider the society to have evolved through such processes, making the structures function together to achieve a common goal, which is developing together (Isajiw 38). The functionalist approach compares the evolution of the society with that of an organism, combining all parts of that organism together to make it whole. In giving solutions to these problems, sociologists have pointed out on the three sociological theories.įunctionalist sociologists associate the complexity of the society with the problem of poverty and lack of finances to acquire proper housing. These factors that have been associated with mental illness, drug abuse, physical or sexual abuse as well as lack of money due to poverty. Homelessness has been defined as the lack of regular and decent housing among individuals in a society or in some parts of the society. It will also try to verify whether there are any efforts by the society in trying to address the problem and whether these efforts have been successful. This essay will analyse how sociologists articulate these theories to the problem of homelessness. According to sociologists, symbolic interaction, functionalism, and conflict theory are the major causal factors to the homelessness problem. Sociologists have used three theoretical perspectives to explain the causes of homelessness in the society. Apart from poverty, various other factors have been associated with the problem of homelessness. Although poverty has been cited as the major cause of homelessness among the people, the reality is that poverty as a problem is not caused by nature. Homelessness as a problem is however not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Moreover, due to poor living conditions, homeless people suffer from other types of diseases caused by poor hygiene.
Reports indicate that contagious and respiratory diseases have been rampant among the homeless people. The challenges that the homeless people face in the society are mostly caused by illnesses due to poor housing facilities or coldness and overcrowding. Homelessness is a social problem which is associated with numerous social problems.
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