Understanding Social Problems

This essay elaborates on the ideas of social construction and sociological imagination and applies them to understand the issue of unemployment in Australian society.

Running head: UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Understanding Social Problems
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1UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Fulfilment of being employed gives a sense of importance, a purpose and a role to the
individuals and this further aids to their physical and mental health positively as it is widely
opined that the mental and physical health of individuals are improved through work
(Hyland, Lee and Mills 2015). However, the rate of unemployment in Australia among the
people from the age range of 15 to 24 has been hovering at about 12.5%, which is more than
double the normal rate and this is making it a serious social problem in Australia.
Unemployment is commonly regarded as a situation where the able-bodied people who
search for job cannot find any. As per the ABS (Australian Bureau Statistics), the rate of
unemployment eased to about 5.4% from 5.6% in the month of April (Tradingeconomics.com,
2019). According to Gould-Werth (2016), unemployment verbatim comments ranges from the
shortage of employment and jobs opportunities that are available, job security, permanent
hobs getting replaced with the contractual ones and the problems of automation. This essay
shall elaborate on explaining the ideas of “social construction” and the “sociological
imagination” and applying them on how the issue of unemployment is understood as a social
problem in the Australian society.
It is to mention that the subjective fact of social issue tends towards how a problem
finally comes to an end, characterised as a great difficulty. This is the idea that is based on the
notion of social improvement of facts. Sociological imagination is “the vivid awareness of
the relationship between experience and the wider society” (Panjwani and Brown 2019) It is
the way in which people realise the relationship in between their experience of society and
their own experience of reality as a whole. Such realisation allows them to make a sense of
the world around them. It is to mention that when a person applies the sociological
imagination, they strip their own personal experiences from their thoughts for analysing the
social world around them. It further allows them to gain a good understanding of the diverse
perspectives of the world without a narrow lens of their personal experiences and the biases.

2UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PROBLEMS
It is particularly more important in the contemporary society. For example, in the field of
politics, it is very important for holding back the personal belied when it comes to the
question of making laws. The politicians refrain from applying their own moral beliefs to
their political agenda in an attempt of creating a better society and in this way, they make use
of social imagination. They remove their personal perspectives of the world for seeking the
views of the society as a whole and act accordingly. In simpler words, social imagination is
all about “taking the role of others” for gaining a wider understanding of different perspective
(other than one’s own).
According to Lilley, Barker and Harris (2015), social imagination has described a
mind-set for doing sociology that focuses on being able to link the individual experiences and
the societal relationships. The three different elements that frames the sociological
imagination are social structure, biography and history. It is to mention that the social
structure is about the way in which different institutional orders in a society take place, which
among them are dominant, how they held together and the way they might be changing.
Biography on the other hand is all about the nature of “human nature in a society”, the kinds
of people who inhabit a specific society. Lastly, history is about how society came to be, the
way it is changing and how the history is being made in it.
It is to note that the influences one’s society and their personal experiences aid to the
ways in which individuals interpret the world and this is called the social construction of
reality. Social constructionism, which is also known as social development of the fact, is
actually a hypothesis for understanding the human technological correspondence and know-
how that looks at the growth and development together that is developed comprehension of
the entire world. According to Michailakis and Schirmer (2014), “social constructionism is
characterised as a viewpoint that considers that there are loads of human lifestyles that exists
due to relational and social influences, regardless of the social additives and hereditarily

3UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PROBLEMS
received elements that are grinding away inside the meantime”. Asch (2017) in this regard
has opined that the concept of social construction sees individuals as key to the social,
political and chronicled development, in particular, the spots and circumstances and this is
why it resituates the psycho-coherent processes diversely, in the transient and social settings.
It is the theory of knowledge in the field of sociology and is a communication theory, which
examines the growth and development of the collectively constructed deep understandings of
the society or the world as a whole that develop the basis for the shared assumptions about
the reality.
Notwithstanding the above mentioned facts, it is to mention that unemployment is one
of the significant public issues in contemporary society. There are several reasons why many
people are unemployed. In majority of the cases, unemployment is because of the economy.
When economy is in recession, the rate of unemployment gets increases. As per Porter and
Kramer (2019), when an economy face the issue of recession, low business sales and
decrease in revenues, it cause businesses to stop the expansion. Also, when the demand is not
high, businesses begin reporting losses and try to decrease their costs by means of lowering
down the wages and keeping wages where they are and ceasing to hire new staffs, which
further maximizes the rate of unemployment. Apart from this, the modern people are living in
a world full of technological innovation. Technology has made the lives of people easy but
has also influenced the society negatively. The employees at different workplaces are
substituted by machines and robots and this has further created unemployment. Majority of
the industries prefer using machines for avoiding paying wages, saving money, time and
producing and manufacturing in larger quantity. With the same, most of the business owners
believe that technology boosts the production, but they ignore this fact that this is affecting
the society. Hinds, Neeley and Cramton (2014) have opined that the sense of being employed
creates a sense of power over people or over environment in which a person life his or her

4UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PROBLEMS
life. But, once he or she is unemployed, it leads to a powerless and a sense of being desperate
for the available income.
As per the recent studies, Australia is regarded to be one of the top countries to face
high level of unemployment among its residents in the territorial boundaries. As per the data
of Kolves, Potts and De Leo (2015), the present rate of unemployment in Australia is 5.4%.
Very recently, the Australian economy added about 41,100 jobs but the total number of
unemployed rose by 800 to 712,900. Individuals searching for full-time jobs have increased
to 516,700 by 26,300, while the ones looking for only part-time jobs have decreased to
196,200 from 25,500. Notwithstanding these facts, it is to mention that the issue of
unemployment in Australia has resulted in the conditions where the labour force is being
waster for shortage of proper employment of workforce. Hence, the issue of unemployment is
one of the main problems that is affecting the Australian individuals and the society as a
whole.
It is to mention that the issue of unemployment is an example of the concept of social
construction that claims that the way in which individual present themselves to other people
is shaped by their interactions with other people along with the life experiences. The need of
earning is a social construction. Such a socially constructed elements bear a significant
difference from the current elements in the different factors that are in relation to the
independent existence of the socially constructed elements, without the existence of the
society as a whole. As per Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi (2017), “unemployment of the residents
of the county proves to have several effects on the social position of the concerned person”.
High rate of unemployment results in maximising the level of isolation from all the social
events that influence the psychological issues and factors that are all maintained by the
concerned individual.

5UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Hence, from the above analysis it is to conclude that the problem of unemployment in
Australia is one of the major social and public issues that is not only harmful for an
individual and his family but also for the overall society as a whole. It can be caused by
varieties of factors like recession in the state economy, the rate of technological change as
well as shortage of education. However, it is basically an issue of social construction. The
sense of being unemployed usually leads people towards a pathway of a depressive mind-set
and negatively affected physical well-being. Hence, the Australian government should put
forth some actions for the inclusion of the Australian residents for preventing this condition
of unemployment and thereby, saving them from being socially isolated.

6UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PROBLEMS
References:
Asch, A., 2017. Critical race theory, feminism, and disability: Reflections on social justice
and personal identity. In Disability and Equality Law (pp. 143-176). Routledge.
Gould-Werth, A., 2016. Workplace Experiences and Unemployment Insurance Claims: How
Personal Relationships and the Structure of Work Shape Access to Public Benefits. Social
Service Review, 90(2), pp.305-352.
Hinds, P.J., Neeley, T.B. and Cramton, C.D., 2014. Language as a lightning rod: Power
contests, emotion regulation, and subgroup dynamics in global teams. Journal of
International Business Studies, 45(5), pp.536-561.
Hyland, P.K., Lee, R.A. and Mills, M.J., 2015. Mindfulness at work: A new approach to
improving individual and organizational performance. Industrial and Organizational
Psychology, 8(4), pp.576-602.
Kolves, K., Potts, B. and De Leo, D., 2015. Ten years of suicide mortality in Australia:
Socio-economic and psychiatric factors in Queensland. Journal of forensic and legal
medicine, 36, pp.136-143.
Lilley, K., Barker, M. and Harris, N., 2015. Exploring the process of global citizen learning
and the student mind-set. Journal of Studies in International Education, 19(3), pp.225-245.

7UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Michailakis, D. and Schirmer, W., 2014. Social work and social problems: A contribution
from systems theory and constructionism. International journal of social welfare, 23(4),
pp.431-442.
Panjwani, F. and Brown, N., 2019. Teaching for 3Cs: Centering Imagination in Teacher
Education. Social Theory for Teacher Education Research: Beyond the Technical-Rational,
p.105.
Porter, M.E. and Kramer, M.R., 2019. Creating shared value. In Managing sustainable
business (pp. 323-346). Springer, Dordrecht.
Stiglitz, J.E., Sen, A. and Fitoussi, J.P., 2017. Report by the commission on the measurement
of economic performance and social progress.
Tradingeconomics.com. (2019). Australia Unemployment Rate | 2019 | Data | Chart |
Calendar | Forecast. [online] Available at:
https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/unemployment-rate [Accessed 12 Sep. 2019].