Personal – Socioautobiography
As a Black woman working as a nurse in Silver Spring, Maryland, a complex interplay of sociocultural structures has impacted my life. There are a number of sociological concepts that I will apply to try and explain my experiences and the way they have impacted both my personal and professional life. The first sociological concept is intersectionality, which happens between my gender, profession, and race. Intersectionality is crucial to understanding how my diverse social identities, including gender, race, and class, overlap and how I navigate the challenges that come with these identities. For example, as an African American with a career in the healthcare system, I have had personal experiences with the inequalities that exist in the organization, predominantly towards minority groups. These disparities are not based on personal choices but are rooted in structural inequalities due to social stratification and institutional racism.
Subsequently, social stratification means that there are people who can afford healthcare whenever and wherever they want because they have the resources. The system favors them to have these resources. On the other hand, others lack healthcare access because the system is oppressive or discriminatory to them, and therefore, they cannot afford these basic needs. Furthermore, discriminatory behaviors in the healthcare system result in inadequate services provided to minority groups, resulting in greater incidence of chronic illnesses, shorter life expectancy, and overall poorer health outcomes for African Americans (Kendall, 2016). These experiences have deepened my understanding of these matters and serve as a motivation to advocate for better policies that address inequalities and better training for medical professionals to prepare them for the diversity of patients they meet.
Another sociological concept I am familiar with as a nurse is the classical perspective of social class, specifically that of Karl Marx, the capitalist society. According to this perspective, societies can be capitalist whereby they are made up of two classes, including the capitalist class, which is made up of those who own the production means, and the working class, which comprises people who sell their labor to the capitalist so that they can earn a livelihood (Kendall, 2016). One of the main traits of this system of inequality and exploitation is that the capitalists exploit the workers in order to maximize their profits, pay them less than they worked for, and then sell the products for high prices. As a nurse, I have witnessed how capitalism affects health outcomes. Firms have market power, which equates to an increased ability to impose marks upon the prices of their products; this increase then reduces access to healthcare, especially to people ranking in the lower classes of social stratification (Perry & Bernasek, 2024).
Lastly, yet importantly, another sociological concept connected to my life is that of family, specifically the postmodernist perspective of family. My family can be viewed from this perspective because it rejects the structural constraints imposed by society. I have been encouraged to be independent from a young age, and the nuclear families in our extended family are made up of many forms. This concept also applies to gender roles for me as a woman because, in nursing school, there is an emphasis on skills like resilience, empathy, and care, which are fundamental for the career. Notably, such skills or values are usually gendered due to the fact that nursing has historically been perceived as a woman’s role. Admittedly, considering how family as a respected and noble duty has modeled caregiving to me, my career choice may have been slightly influenced by these gendered expectations. But as my career progressed, I realized that nursing is highly undervalued, and this is mainly because it is feminized.
In conclusion, looking at my life through such sociological perspectives helps me recognize the way external sociocultural structures impact my life. From my professional experiences to how my race, gender and social class intersect, my journey as a black female nurse is molded by the multifaceted interactions of both internal and external forces. By developing an understanding of said interactions or interplays, I become well-equipped to navigate the challenges I face and contribute to a more just and equitable society.
References
Perry, T., & Bernasek, A. (2024). Profits over care? An analysis of the relationship between corporate capitalism in the healthcare industry and cancer mortality in the United States. Social Science & Medicine, 349, 116851.
Kendall, D. (2016). Sociology in Our Times: The Essentials. United States: Cengage Learning.
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Question 
Instructions
In the discipline of sociology, there is a strong tradition of creating both biographies and autobiographies that focus on exploring a person’s life from a sociological point of view.
Personal – Socioautobiography
For this assignment, you will reflect on your own life story, making connections between your everyday life/life story and the broad sociocultural structures within which you live. To begin this assignment, consider your own life as you review all the textbook readings and online weekly lessons and decide which sociological concepts you wish to explain in connection to a part or parts of your own life story. Focus on vocabulary words in bold in your textbook reading, for example, and decide which terms apply to you and to your life story.
Please note that you do not need to include, and should not include, intimate or sensitive information about your background in this assignment. There are many very general sociological concepts that apply to each person’s life. If you have an extenuating circumstance, please contact your instructor for additional guidance.
Your paper must contain scholarly support in the form of paraphrases *only* with respective citations from the assigned reading (the textbook/lesson) and the outside scholarly source that you identify on your own. Do not directly quote from sources for this paper, but instead, paraphrase in your own words from source material and cite the sources with parenthetical in-text citations and with full APA-style references on a reference page at the end of your essay.
Writing Tip: Focus
As Kanagy and Kraybill (1999) wrote in their book, The Riddles of Human Society, the socioautobiography is “not a diary” or a “point-by-point account” of life since birth (p. 287). Feel free to focus on only a part or parts of your life story.