Download The Study of Social Problems

STUDYING SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
SUMMARY
Social problems are behavioral patterns or social conditions that warrant public concern, harm individuals
or groups in society and may lead to collective action and social change. An example of a social problem is
violence, which is the use of physical force to cause pain, injury, or death to another, or damage to their
property. Social problems such as violence involve discrepancies between societal ideals and actual
behavioral patterns. Sociology is the academic and scholarly discipline that engages in systematic study of
human society and social interactions. The sociological imagination allows us to evaluate seemingly
personal problems within a larger social context using both micro and macro level analysis. Sociologists
study social problems in order to determine causes, effects, and solutions. Using three primary theoretical
perspectives (Functionalist, Conflict and Symbolic Interactionist), and a variety of research methods
(field research, survey research and secondary analysis of existing data), sociologists systematically
examine society and social problems.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading Chapter 1, students should be able to:
1. Define sociology and explain its primary characteristics.
2. Distinguish between society and culture.
3. Identify various social problems (discrimination, hate crime, urbanization).
4. State the sociological definition of a social problem and distinguish between subjective awareness and
objective reality of social problems.
5. Explain the sociological imagination and the connection between individual problems and their
connection to large-scale societal patterns.
6. Distinguish between micro level and macro level analyses of social life.
7. Explain the functionalist perspective on society and state how functionalist theorists believe that social
problems arise.
8. Explain the conflict perspective on society and state how conflict theorists (using different approaches
under this perspective) believe that social problems arise.
9. Explain the symbolic interactionist perspective on society and state how interactionists believe that
social problems arise.
10. Discuss, and distinguish between, the different sociological research methods.
11. Describe how sociological theory and research is used to investigate social problems such as violence.
KEY TERMS
capitalism
conflict perspective
culture
discrimination
field research
functionalist perspective
hate crime
industrialization
lifestyle-routine activity
approach
macrolevel analysis
microlevel analysis
norms
perspective
secondary analysis of existing data
self-fulfilling prophecy
situational approach
social disorganization
social problem
society
sociological imagination
sociology
subculture of violence
hypothesis
survey research
symbolic interactionist
perspective
theory
urbanization
values
violence
Studying Social Problems in the Twenty-First Century
OUTLINE
I. USING SOCIOLOGICAL INSIGHTS TO STUDY SOCIAL PROBLEMS
A. Sociology is the academic discipline that engages in the systematic study of human society and
social interaction. Sociologists often study social problems such as violence because of the harm it
inflicts on individuals, communities and the nation. Violence is the use of physical force to cause
pain, injury, or death to another or to property and is a significant social problem around the world.
II. WHAT IS A SOCIAL PROBLEM?
A. A social problem is a social condition (such as poverty) or a pattern of behavior (such as
substance abuse) that harms some individuals or all people in a society and that a sufficient
number of people believe warrants public concern and collective action to bring about change.
B. Social phenomena such as violence become defined as social problems when they systematically
disadvantage or harm a significant number of people or when they are seen as harmful by a number
of significant people who wield power, wealth, and influence in a group or society.
1. Problems that disadvantage or harm a significant number of people include violence, fear
of crime, environmental pollution, and inadequate access to health care.
2. Culture helps us define what we think is right or wrong and to identify the kinds of
behavior we believe should be identified as a social problem. Public perceptions of what
constitutes a social problem change over time
C. A sociological examination of social problems primarily focuses on society and are socially
constructed by culture.
1. Some social problems (e.g., violence or hate crimes) may be viewed as conditions that
affect all members (directly and/or indirectly) of a population.
2. Other social problems (e.g., racial discrimination) may be viewed as conditions that affect
some members of a population more than they affect others.
D. Social problems often involve significant discrepancies between the ideals of society and their
actual achievement. One example is discrimination, which is actions or practices of dominant
group members (or their representatives) that have a harmful impact on members of subordinate
groups. Discrimination maybe directed toward individuals or groups on the basis of class, race,
gender, age, nationality, sexual orientation, or other characteristics that are devalued by those who
discriminate.
1. Discrimination may be acted out in the form of violence and is referred to as a hate
crime. Such crimes are physical attacks against a person because of assumptions regarding
his or her racial group, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, or
ancestry.
III. THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS
A. According to sociologist C. Wright Mills, the sociological imagination is the ability to see the
relationship between individual experiences and the larger society.
1. The sociological imagination enables us to evaluate the connection between personal
troubles to public issues.
2. Personal troubles are private problems of individuals and the networks of people with
whom they associate regularly. For example, one person's unemployment is a personal
trouble facing the individual, other family members, and friends.
3. Public issues are matters beyond a person's control that originate at the regional or
national level and can be resolved only by collective action. For example, unemployment
rates may increase due to economic instability, corporate downsizing or job deskilling.
4. The sociological imagination helps us place seemingly personal troubles, such as being a
victim of violence, into a larger social context. In other words, we shift our focus to see how
personal troubles are related to or influenced by public issues.
B. Sociologists make connections between personal and public issues in society through microlevel
and macrolevel analysis. Using micro level analysis, a sociologist might investigate how fear of
unemployment affects workers and their immediate families. Macro level analysis looks at large
scale social processes, organizations, and social institutions (the “big picture”).
1. By taking a global perspective on social problems, we realize that the lives of all people are
intertwined and that any one nation’s problems are part of a larger global problem.
IV. DO WE HAVE A PROBLEM? SUBJECTIVE AWARENESS AND OBJECTIVE REALITY
A. Subjective awareness tends to be expressed as a feeling of uneasiness or skepticism about
something, but the feeling is not founded on any concrete evidence that a problem actually exists.
When a social problem (such as a specific act of violence) occurs, our subjective awareness shifts to
being an objective reality.
1. For example, subjective awareness that the potential for violence exists in public venues
even when there have been no violence such settings. However, when new acts of violence
take place, subjective awareness shifts to objective reality.
2. Facts allow us to move beyond subjective awareness to objective reality by supporting our
beliefs and perceptions about our social worlds.
3. Individuals may question the validity of the facts or may dispute facts in order to
demonstrate a different perspective. Objective conditions may or may not be considered
social problems by everyone.
V. USING SOCIAL THEORY TO ANALYZE SOCIAL PROBLEMS
A. Sociologists develop theories and conduct research to determine how social life is organized.
1. Theories are sets of logically related statements that attempt to describe, explain, or
predict social events. Theories help us interpret social reality in a distinct way by giving us a
framework for organizing our observations.
2. Sociologists refer to a theoretical framework as a perspective - an overall approach or
viewpoint toward some subject.
3. Three major theoretical perspectives have emerged: functionalist, conflict and symbolic
interactionist.
B. The Functionalist Perspective
1. According to the functionalist perspective, society is a stable, orderly system composed
of a number of interrelated parts, each of which performs a function that contributes to the
overall stability of society.
2. These interrelated parts are social institutions (such as families, the economy, education,
and the government) that a society develops to organize its main concerns and activities so
that social needs are met. Each institution performs a unique function, the contribution that
each part makes to the overall stability of society and the well-being of individuals.
3. Social institutions perform two different types of societal functions: manifest functions (the
intended and recognized consequences of an activity or social process) and latent functions
(the unintended consequences of an activity or social process that are hidden and remain
unacknowledged by participants).
4. From the functionalist perspective, social problems arise when social institutions do not
fulfill the functions they are supposed to perform or when dysfunctions (undesirable
consequences of an activity or social process that inhibit a society's ability to adapt or adjust)
occur.
5. According to functionalists, dysfunctions in social institutions create social
disorganization, causing a breakdown in traditional values and norms that serve as the
social control mechanisms which, under normal circumstances, keep people from engaging
in nonconforming behavior. Although values provide ideas about behavior, they do not state
explicitly how we should behave; norms do state explicit rules of behavior or standards of
conduct.
6. Social disorganization is intensified by rapid social change that disrupts the stability of
society. Early sociologists examined the relationship between social problems and
industrialization and urbanization in Britain, Western Europe, and the United States in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
7. Functionalists provide several explanations for violence in societies. One approach is
known as the subculture of violence hypothesis, which states that violence is part of the
normative expectations governing everyday behavior among young males in the lower
classes. Another functionalist explanation of violence is the lifestyle-routine activity
approach.
C. The Conflict Perspective
1. The conflict perspective is based on the assumption that groups in society are engaged
in a continuous power struggle for control of scarce resources.
2. According to conflict theorists, certain groups of people are privileged while others are
disadvantaged through the unjust use of political, economic, or social power. This
perspective consists of a variety of related approaches that hold differing views regarding the
most important form of conflict.
3. According to value conflict theorists, social problems are conditions incompatible with
group values.
a. Value clashes are ordinary occurrences in families, communities, and the larger
society, where people commonly hold many divergent values. Although individuals
may share certain core values, they do not share all values or a common culture (the
knowledge, language, values, customs, and material objects that are passed from
person to person and from one generation to the next in a human group or society).
b. Discrepancies between ideal (the values and beliefs people claim they hold) and
real culture (the values and beliefs they actually follow) are a source of social
problems in all societies.
4. According to critical-conflict theorists, social problems arise out of major contradictions
inherent in the way societies are organized.
a. Some of these approaches focus on class inequalities resulting from capitalism,
while others focus on inequalities based on race/ethnicity or gender.
b. According to early German economist Karl Marx, members of the capitalist class
(the bourgeoisie) control the means of production (e.g., the land, tools, factories, and
money for investment) and are at the top of a system of social stratification that
affords them different lifestyles and life chances from the members of the working
class (the proletariat), who must sell their labor power (ability to work) to capitalists.
In the process, the capitalists derive excessive profit from the workers' labor.
c. Marx believed that capitalism led to workers experiencing increased levels of
poverty and alienation—a feeling of powerlessness and estrangement from other
people and from oneself. He predicted the workers would overthrow the capitalist
economic system.
5. Some critical-conflict approaches focus on racial and gender subordination instead of
class-based inequality.
a. Theorists who emphasize discrimination and inequality based on race or ethnicity
note that many social problems are rooted in the continuing exploitation and
subordination of people of color by whites.
b. Theorists who use a feminist approach focus on patriarchy—a system of male
dominance in which males are privileged while women are oppressed. From this
perspective, male domination in society not only contributes to domestic violence,
child abuse, and rape, but also to poverty and crimes.
c. Some critical-conflict theorists emphasize that race, class, and gender are
interlocking systems of privilege and oppression that result in social problems.
6. In regard to violence, critical conflict theorists believe that in capitalist societies the
wealthy engage in one form of violence (e.g., police power to protect themselves and their
property) whereas poverty-level people engage in other forms of violence as a reaction against
the unjust social and economic conditions they experience daily.
D. The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective
1. The symbolic interactionist perspective focuses on a micro level analysis of how people
act toward one another and make sense of their daily lives, viewing society as the sum of the
interactions of individuals and groups.
2. Most symbolic interactionists study social problems by analyzing the process whereby
certain behavior is defined as a social problem and how individuals and groups come to
engage in activities that a significant number of people view as a major social concern.
3. A founder of the symbolic interactionist approach, German sociologist George Simmel
investigated the impact of industrialization and urbanization on people's values and behavior
within small social units. He noted that rapid changes in technology and dramatic growth of
cities produced new social problems by breaking up the "geometry of social life."
4. According to Simmel, alienation is brought about by a decline in personal and emotional
contacts. How people interpret subjective messages they receive from others, as well as the
situations they encounter in their daily life, strongly influences their behavior and their
perceptions of what constitutes a social problem.
5. Other symbolic interactionists examine how people impose meanings on others. According
to sociologist Howard Becker, moral entrepreneurs are persons who use their own views of
right and wrong to establish rules and label others as deviant.
a. Labeling theory suggests that deviants are people who have been successfully
labeled as such by others. It raises questions about why some individuals and types
of behavior are labeled deviant but others are not.
b. According to some interaction theorists, many social problems can be linked to the
social construction of reality—the process by which people's perception of reality is
shaped largely by the subjective meaning that they give to an experience.
6. Sociologist Robert Merton has suggested that when people view a situation in a certain
way and act according to their perceptions, the end result may be a self-fulfilling
prophecy.
7. To analyze the problem of violence, symbolic interactionists focus on social interaction—
human behavior is learned through interaction. Reducing violence requires changing societal
values that encourage excessive competition and violence. Such changes must occur at the
microlevel, which requires that socialization agents must transmit different attitudes and
values toward violence.
VI. SOCIAL RESEARCH METHODS TO STUDY SOCIAL PROBLEMS
A. Sociologists conduct research into social problems such as violence, war or terrorism by using
scientific research methods. Methods may produce qualitative or quantitative data. There are three
major types of research methods:
1. Field research may consist of participant observation - field research in which researchers
collect systematic observations while being part of the activities of the group they are
studying. Part of field research may be unstructured interviews—extended, open-ended
interactions in which researchers pursue avenues of inquiry as they emerge.
2. Survey research is based on a sample of people who represent the attributes of the larger
population from which they are selected. Survey data are collected by using selfadministered questionnaires or by interviewers who ask questions of people in person or by
mail, telephone, or Internet. Survey research allows sociologists to study a large population
without having to interview everyone in that population and yields numerical data that can
be compared between groups and over periods of time.
3. Secondary analysis of existing data includes public records such as birth and death
records, official reports of organizations or governmental agencies such as the Census Bureau, and
information from large data bases such as the General Social Surveys. It often consists of content
analysis—a systematic examination of cultural artifacts or written documents to extract thematic
data and draw conclusions about some aspect of social life. For example, the National Television
Violence Study incorporated content analysis of violence in television programming, which allowed
researchers to conduct an in-depth evaluation of a specific topic of concern.