Seeing Poverty from Sociological View Essay Example

Poverty seems to be recognized by many people nowadays from various kinds of mass media. However, do we really understand what poverty is, why it appears and how it affects one’s life? There are much bigger problems than we could imagine from just seeing the surface of poverty on daily news. Eli Khamarov, a social theorist, says, “Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn’t commit” (Raphael 7). People in poverty are not always poor because of themselves. The reasons are more likely to be in society we live in and political policy we accept. Poverty is not only a matter of finance. Financial problem is the direct cause of poverty, but the effects come from that are unfortunately much more problematic. It is one of the biggest problems that the modern society has to deal with, because it is strongly related with social exclusion, poor bashing and blaming victims, and social determinants of health. Those are sometimes seen as more obvious, problematic phenomena than poverty itself. First of all, it is known that poverty causes social exclusion to the poor. Percy-Smith says, “This analysis of social exclusion is primarily concerned with the societal processes that lead to groups systematically being denied the opportunity to participate in commonly accepted activities of societal membership” (Raphael 90) Social exclusion in employment situations against the poor, who are eager to work, often comes from language problems, lack of knowledge and skills, health problems, domestic problems, disabilities, being aboriginal, being women, being colored, and being recent immigrants. Many of them are not changeable, nor optional. People with those factors tend to have problems of being employed much more than those who are not with any of them. It seems very unfair and wrong that bourgeoisies, who have power, take advantages of proletariats, who do not have. However, in modern capitalism society, even if it is unfair and wrong, as Karl Marx claims, “capitalism exists