“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” C. Wright Mills. Mills (1959) used a concept called the sociological imagination to describe the ability to “think yourself away from the familiar routines of everyday life” and gauging them from an entirely new point of view. Mills’ definition of sociological imagination as “the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.” For one to develop such expertise or skills set, he/she must be in a position to freely look at things or situations from a new perspective. Mills, in his thoughts, sociology can show us the society is mostly liable for our problems and not our failings and foibles (2000). He argued the main duty of sociology was transforming personal problems into political and public issues.

Remote and impersonal historical forces may be linked to an individual’s life incidences. For instance, people may see their personal problems and experience as the workings of society and social issues. Mills argue that the various challenges faced by individuals and shared by many others have roots in the society. The roots of the problems are related to the changes within and the structure of the community. As a result, it is significant for social scientists and sociologists to demonstrate the sociological causes of the problems thus enabling individuals to understand their biographical links to the history and structure of the society. The sociological imagination helps people to differentiate between their personal problems and public issues (Mills, 2000).  As such, persons living in poverty may link their present conditions to the social forces in the society. In his recommendation, Mills states that instead of specializing in one area of social science, social scientists should concentrate overall field.

The Stickup Kids

The Stickup Kids is a book written by Randol Contreras that chronicles the collapse of the drug trade in South Bronx and his childhood friends who were trying to make a living out of it. Contreras is offering both theoretical and personal account for the Stickup Kids. The author and his friends (Gus, Pablo, Melissa, and others) grew up witnessing how the Dominican drug dealers made money and wanted to be like them (2013). The drug dealers were making money hand over fist and flashy. The author and his friends wanted to live the high life and realize the American dream. Unfortunately, the market had already dwindled by the time the author and his friends were ready to take part in the drug dealing business. Having failed to become a drug dealer, Contreras took solace in academia. His academic work took him back many years later to research the fate of the friends he left in South Bronx.

In the book, Contreras focuses on his buddies, the neighborhood and tracing the drug careers of Melissa, Pablo, Gus and others from the beginning up to the present. The author mainly covers the time he lived in 167^th street stop not far from the Yankee Stadium. The place is full of empty parking lots, industrial businesses, and public housing. Although there have been attempts to return the area to its past glory, the trash, graffiti, barred windows and police are still omnipresent. The area run-down by problem schools, low-employment, and high-crime was built for the middle class in the 1920s. Despite having plenty of people working legally, these jobs were a dead end and low-waged. As a result, people institutively understood they had little opportunity for getting rich.

The drug dealers of Dominican origin were the exception to the rampant poverty in the neighborhood. They were the emblem of the American dream. They had plenty of women, expensive cars, and nicest clothes. The drug trade peaked between 1987 and 1989 before starting to shrink. City’s officials celebrated the decline in business, but it had inadvertent consequence of intensifying crime rates (Contreras, 2013). When the Stickup Kids were no longer making money by selling drugs, they turned to robbery. They robbed the wholesalers and drug dealers to maintain their high lifestyles. The robbery went unreported for the obvious reasons.

Unlike other men (alive and not jailed) who outgrow their criminal life when they reach their late -20s, the Stickup Kids found new ways of making money through violence. In some instances, when they tried setting up legal business with the earnings from robbing the drug dealers they faced problems such as lack of experience in managing a business and criminal records (Contreras, 2013). For instance, Pablo asked the author to become the face of his new business because he was poor in public speaking. When the business failed, Pablo went back to crack dealing. The author refuses to give a detailed account of his friends due to the ongoing federal investigations.

In his book, Contreras sums up his observation of the drug trade cycle that New York underwent in the 1990s as the Greek tragedy that unfolds in three stages (Contreras, 2013).

“When a drug market rises, a struggling college student becomes a drug dealer; a tough kid, an enforcer; a poor building superintendent,  a lookout; and a dishwasher, a drug kingpin. When a drug market expands, a mother mourns her dead dealer son; a dad laments his drug-using daughter; a child visits a parent imprisoned by the state. When a drug market peaks, an ill-affected sibling becomes a social worker; a storefront preacher, a community organizer; a stay-at-home mom, an after-school volunteer.”

 

The decline of the market proves little improvement for the few. The book continues to say an ex-con will be unemployed perpetually, the recovered addict will forever be humiliated, and the New York mayor was praised and applauded for doing nothing.

Social Class

Social class is defined as a model in political theory and social sciences that are centered in social stratification in which people are classified in hierarchical social groups, the lower, middle and upper classes. Although there is no single definition of class, it is an essential object of analysis for social historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists.

Social Stratification

Social stratification is the way a society categorize people into socioeconomic strata based on their wealth, derived power (political and social), social status, income, and occupation. As a result, stratification is the relative social position of an individual within the social unit, region, category or group. Modern Western societies social stratification has distinguished three social classes namely, the lower class, the middle class, and the upper class. Each class can be subdivided into new strata, for example, the lower stratum, middle stratum or upper stratum. Furthermore, social stratum may be formed based on caste, kinship, or both. Social stratification occurs in all societies ranging from feudal to tribal to polycentric to complex societies that are based on the socio-economic relationship between the peasants and the nobles.

Social Inequality

Social inequality occurs when resources in a particular society are allocated and unevenly distributed resulting in different socially defined classes of people. It is where access to social goods are differentiated in the society due to age, gender, ethnicity, race, prestige, kinship, religion or power. There are five types/systems of social inequality, which include membership inequality, life inequality, political inequality, responsibility, and treatment inequality and wealth inequality. More significantly, economic inequality, gender inequality, ethnic inequality and racial inequality are linked to social inequality. Social rights of persons include education, freedom of speech, healthcare, political participation and representation, the source of income and labor market.

Social inequality can be classified as a stratified society, ranked society, and egalitarian societies. For instance, stratified society has horizontal levels of lower class, middle class, and upper class. The classification is regarding prestige, power, and wealth. The upper class are mostly the most influential in the society thus most are leaders. An individual can inherit the social class and move from one stratum to the higher or lower one. The ranked society that is prevalent in agricultural communities. They cluster people regarding prestige and status and not by access to resources and power. The chief is the most influential individual followed by the family members and relatives. Egalitarian societies are communities that advocates for equal rights and opportunities resulting in no discrimination. Leaders have influence but not power. People are equal even if they have special talents or skills. There are simply no classes.

Private Issues and Private Issues

In liberal democracies, there is a strong tendency in looking at human behavior regarding individual preferences, choices, abilities and characteristics. People tend to think their experience is private and unique and consider what happens to other people to be private and exclusive to them. These are regarded as private troubles. On the other hand, sociologists study the relationship between individual lives and the macro political, economic and social changes behind or underneath those happenings. When sociologists look at the social structures and processes that give a widespread pattern of the private troubles accordingly turn them into public issues. For instance, when a person is unemployed, it is a private problem, but when there are young unemployed graduates in the country, it is a public issue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Contreras, R. (2013). The stickup kids: Race, drugs, violence, and the American dream. Univ

of California Press.

Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.