Chapter 1: Understand Social Problems Overview
After reading this chapter, students should be able to accomplish the following objectives:
1. Explain the difference between personal and social problems.
2. Understand the model used to explain social problems.
3. Discuss the fallacies of thinking, including how they have been used to explain social problems.
4. Explain the meaning of social research.
5. Give examples of different kinds of social research and describe how they have been used to study social problems.
Introduction
The Sociological Study of Social Problems
1. Sociology: the study of social behavior and human society
2. Most likely to examine systematically social problems such as poverty, social discrimination, crime, and so on.
3. The phrase “social problems” as generally understood by current sociologists has a long history; it originally referred to the problem of unequal wealth distribution but shifted to include many issues.
4. Additional work by sociologists drew attention to the subjectivity and the consequences of social problems.
Social problem: a social condition, event, or pattern of behavior that negatively affects the well-being of a significant number of people (or a number of significant people) who believe that the condition, event, or pattern needs to be changed or ameliorated.
Social problems are behaviors or conditions that are caused by factors external to individuals and that detract from the quality of life. Social scientists do not arbitrarily decide which problems are social. Rather, they focus on those conditions that arise from contradictions in society and that diminish people’s quality of life.
A social problem is any condition or behavior that has negative consequences for large numbers of people and that is generally recognized as a condition or behavior that needs to be addressed. This definition has both an objective component and a subjective component. The objective component is this: For any condition or behavior to be considered a social problem, it must have negative consequences for large numbers of people, as each chapter of this book discusses. How do we know if a social problem has negative consequences? Reasonable people can and do disagree on whether such consequences exist and, if so, on their extent and seriousness, but ordinarily, a body of data accumulates—from work by academic researchers, government agencies, and other sources—that strongly points to extensive and serious consequences. The reasons for these consequences are often hotly debated, and sometimes, as we shall see in certain chapters in this book, sometimes the very existence of these consequences is disputed. A current example is climate change: Although the overwhelming majority of climate scientists say that climate change (changes in the earth’s climate due to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) is real and serious, fewer than two-thirds of Americans (64 percent) in a 2011 poll said they “think that global warming is happening”(Leiserowitz, et. al., 2011).
Personal versus Social Problems
Defining a particular problem as personal or social is important because the definition determines the causes you identify, the consequences of the problem, and how you cope with the problem. Both the problems seek to address the fundamental questions of why and how one should respond to such problems. One must be aware of the potential confusion of social problems with personal problems to deal more effectively with either or both. This section deals with such confusion through related causes, consequences, and coping efforts, with particular reference to the functions of attitudes, communication, and power structure.
A Model for Understanding
The authors define a social problem as a condition or pattern of behavior that (1) contradicts some other condition or pattern of behavior and is defined as incompatible with the desired quality of life; (2) is caused, facilitated, or prolonged by factors that operate at multiple levels of social life; (3) involves intergroup conflict; and (4) requires social actions to be resolved. They use the major insights of structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism to construct a model of mutual influence between structural, social-psychological, and social interactional factors. These factors are used to explain how problems affect the quality of life, how problems are manifested at multiple levels of social life, and why problems require social action for their resolution.
Critical Thinking: Recognizing Fallacies
The study of society and social problems is a tricky business. Human beings as individuals, as collectivities, in groups, or in organizations are elusive subjects for serious study. One way to appreciate the elusiveness is to examine oneself as a mythmaker who is led astray by various fallacies of thinking. These fallacies cloud rather than clarify key issues with which students of social problems must deal. One should be alert to at least nine types of fallacies: (1) dramatic instance, (2) retrospective determinism, (3) misplaced concreteness, (4) personal attack, (5) appeal to prejudice, (6) circular reasoning, (7) authority, (8) composition, and (9) non sequitur. The fallacy of dramatic instance refers to the tendency to overgeneralize, to use a single case or a few cases to support an entire argument. The fallacy of retrospective determinism is the argument that things could not have worked out differently. Also referred to as ad hominem, the fallacy of misplaced concreteness refers to making what is abstract into something concrete (reification). The fallacy of personal attack involves diverting attention from the issue and focusing on the personality. The fallacy of appeal to prejudice involves using popular prejudices or passions to convince others of the correctness of one’s position. The fallacy of circular reasoning refers to using conclusions to support the assumptions that were necessary to make the conclusions. The fallacy of authority involves an illegitimate appeal to authority. The fallacy of composition involves arguing that what is true of the part is also true of the whole. The fallacy of non sequitur means “it does not follow,” and the fallacy of non sequitur involves using statistics in a misleading fashion as though the data speak for themselves. The media contribute to misunderstandings by committing or facilitating the various fallacies. Media reports can be categorized into the fallacies of dramatic instances and authority based on the way a story is reported and people’s belief that the media represent authority in the matter of information. Students need to be alert, thoughtful, and cautious about the things they read and hear about social problems.
The Sources of Data: Social Research: Patterns and Trends
1. The discussion on social problems covers conditions, events, or behaviors that occur locally, nationally, or globally and cause or threaten to cause harm to all or some segment of the population.
2. Because social problems affect large numbers of people, sociologists typically discuss them in terms of patterns and trends and use measures of rates to describe how frequent and pervasive their occurrence is.
3. Sociologists and criminologists rely on certain data sources when studying rates of crime.
4. Data sources: collections of information
5. Patterns and trends can be visually presented in a variety of formats, including charts, tables, and graphs.
If one has to separate fact from myth, one must develop valid and reliable techniques of social research. Social scientists are still learning how to achieve higher levels of validity and reliability. If one wants to achieve a valid understanding of social problems, he or she must employ a valid methodology. For instance, when speaking of a specific research instrument, one asks whether it measures what it is supposed to measure (e.g., prejudice). That is a question of validity. Or, one may inquire about the instrument’s consistency. Does one obtain the same result with repeated instrument application? That is a question of reliability. Of course, if there has been a real change, say in prejudice, a reliable measure would accurately reflect the degree of attitude change.
The Natural History of a Social Problem
We have just discussed some of the difficulties in defining a social problem and the fact that various parties often try to influence public perceptions of social problems. These issues aside, most social problems go through a natural history consisting of several stages of their development (Spector & Kitsuse, 2001). Stage 1: Emergence and Claims Making A social problem emerges when a social entity (such as a social change group, the news media, or influential politicians) begins to call attention to a condition or behavior that it perceives to be undesirable and in need of remedy. As part of this process, it tries to influence public perceptions of the problem, the reasons for it, and possible solutions to it. Because the social entity is making claims about all these matters, this aspect of Stage 1 is termed the claims-making process. Not all efforts to turn a condition or behavior into a social problem succeed, and if they do not succeed, a social problem does not emerge. Because of the resources they have or do not have, some social entities are more likely than others to succeed at this stage. A few ordinary individuals have little influence in the public sphere, but masses of individuals who engage in protest or other political activity have a greater ability to help a social problem emerge. Because politicians have the ear of the news media and other types of influence, their views about social problems are often very influential. Most studies of this stage of a social problem focus on the efforts of social change groups and the larger social movement to which they may belong, as most social problems begin with bottom-up efforts from such groups.
Social Research: Definition
Social Research is a method used by social scientists and researchers to learn about people and societies so that they can design products/services that cater to various needs of the people. Different socioeconomic groups belonging to different parts of a county think differently. Various aspects of human behavior need to be addressed to understand their thoughts and feedback about the social world, which can be done using Social Research. Any topic can trigger social research – new feature, new market trend or an upgrade in old technology.
Experiments
Experiments are the primary form of research in the natural and physical sciences, but in the social sciences they are for the most part found only in psychology. Some sociologists still use experiments, however, and they remain a powerful tool of social research.
The major advantage of experiments, whether they are done in the natural and physical sciences or in the social sciences, is that the researcher can be fairly sure of a cause-and-effect relationship because of the way the experiment is set up. Although many different experimental designs exist, the typical experiment consists of an experimental group and a control group, with subjects randomly assigned to either group. The researcher does something to the experimental group that is not done to the control group. If the two groups differ later in some variable, then it is safe to say that the condition to which the experimental group was subjected was responsible for the difference that resulted.
Most experiments take place in the laboratory, which for psychologists may be a room with a one-way mirror, but some experiments occur in the field, or in a natural setting (field experiments). In Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the early 1980s, sociologists were involved in a much-discussed field experiment sponsored by the federal government. The researchers wanted to see whether arresting men for domestic violence made it less likely that they would commit such violence again. To test this hypothesis, the researchers had police do one of the following after arriving at the scene of a domestic dispute: They either arrested the suspect, separated him from his wife or partner for several hours, or warned him to stop but did not arrest or separate him. The researchers then determined the percentage of men in each group who committed repeated domestic violence during the next six months and found that those who were arrested had the lowest rate of recidivism, or repeat offending (Sherman & Berk, 1984). This finding led many jurisdictions across the United States to adopt a policy of mandatory arrest for domestic violence suspects. However, replications of the Minneapolis experiment in other cities found that arrest sometimes reduced recidivism for domestic violence but also sometimes increased it, depending on which city was being studied and on certain characteristics of the suspects, including whether they were employed at the time of their arrest (Sherman, 1992).
As the Minneapolis study suggests, perhaps the most important problem with experiments is that their results are not generalizable beyond the specific subjects studied. The subjects in most psychology experiments, for example, are college students, who obviously are not typical of average Americans: They are younger, more educated, and more likely to be middle class. Despite this problem, experiments in psychology and other social sciences have given us very valuable insights into the sources of attitudes and behavior. Scholars of social problems are increasingly using field experiments to study the effectiveness of various policies and programs aimed at addressing social problems.
1. The major types of research on social problems include surveys, experiments, observational studies, and the use of existing data.
2. Surveys are the most common method, and the results of surveys of random samples may be generalized to the populations from which the samples
3. Observation studies and existing data are also common methods in social problems Observation studies enable the gathering of rich, detailed information, but their results cannot necessarily be generalized beyond the people studied.
Research on social problems should follow the scientific method to yield the most accurate and objective conclusions:
The Objective and Subjective Aspects of Social Problems
1. The objective aspect of social problems: the concrete data of social problems
2. The subjective aspect of social problems: what people define as a social problem
There is often a close link between the objective and subjective aspects of a problem. For example, Awareness of an increase in the murder rate leads to subjective concerns about safety.
But even without a direct interaction between the objective and the subjective, people can be troubled about a particular social condition, event, or pattern of behavior.
Even if one troubling condition is more pervasive or more detrimental than another (and even if there’s factual information indicating this), that doesn’t necessarily mean people will perceive the condition as more problematic. Another subjective aspect of social problems is the relativity with which people identify them.
a. The time and place impact if something is viewed as a social problem.
b. Some segments of the population may experience the social problem while others do no, or experience it to a different extent.
Social constructionism: the social process by which people define a social problem into existence. A significant number of people must conceptualize a condition as problematic. Some people and groups have more influence in deciding which conditions are problematic.
1. Types of Action
2. Social structure: pattern of interrelated social institutions
3. Social movements: collective efforts to realize the social change in order to solve social problems
Actions for improving a problematic condition usually consist of helping those in need.
Material relief necessary for physical survival
1. Nonmaterial services
2. Counseling, dispute resolution, education, and professional consultation
3. The Sociological Imagination
4. In order to understand personal hardships and individual feelings, it’s necessary to be aware of the larger forces of history and of social structure.
5. Sociological imagination: a form of self-consciousness that allows us to go beyond our immediate environments (of family, neighborhood, work) and understand the major structural transformations that have occurred and are occurring
6. Requires a global perspective: the comparison of our own society to other societies in all the world’s regions
Sociological Research
1. Sources for social scientific data
2. General Social Survey (GSS)
3. Quantitative research: the empirical investigation of social problems through statistical analysis
4. Research methods: techniques for obtaining information
Survey Research
1. Survey: a technique in which respondents are asked to answer questions on a written questionnaire
2. A questionnaire is a set of questions a researcher presents to respondents for their answers.
3. Questionnaires typically ask questions that measure variables, such as attitudes, behaviors, and statuses, and are administered in a variety of ways.
Participant Observation
1. Participant observation: a method in which the researcher observes and studies people in their everyday settings
2. The researcher collects data through direct observation and in this way gains a deep understanding of and familiarity with the workings of a particular group, community, or social event.
Interviewing
1. Interviewing: the form of data collection in which the researcher asks respondents a series of questions
2. Responses can be treated quantitatively, where researchers assign numerical values to them, enter the values into a data analysis program, and then run various statistical commands to identify patterns across responses, or qualitatively as guided conversations that let respondents talk at length and in detail.
Mixed Methods
1. Sociologists often combine methods to achieve a fuller picture of the social problems they are studying.
Three Sociological Theories
1. Theory: a collection of related concepts
2. Concepts: ideas sociologists have about some aspect of the social world
3. Building blocks of theory, where a theory is an attempt to articulate the relationship between concepts
4. Paradigms: theoretical perspectives
Structural Functionalism
1. Structural functionalism (or functionalism): the sociological theory that considers how various social phenomena function or work in a positive way, to maintain unity and order in society
2. Dates back to the beginnings of sociology
3. Herbert Spencer: Viewed society as an integrated system made of different social institutions
Functions: positive consequences
1. Talcott Parsons
2. The most famous theorist of structural functionalism
3. “The problem of order”
4. Society needs to maintain social order for it to function smoothly as a social system.
· Best achieved by having them abide by the same shared norms or rules, and values or beliefs
4. Robert K. Merton believed that social institutions and social structures can also have dysfunctions or negative consequences.
Conflict Theory
4. Conflict theory: the sociological theory that focuses on dissent, coercion, and antagonism in society
5. Karl Marx
6. Engaged in critiquing capitalism
7. Capitalism: the economic system that includes the ownership of private property, the making of financial profit, and the hiring of workers
Two main antagonistic social classes
4. Capitalists: the economically dominant class that privately owns and controls human labor, raw materials, land, tools, machinery, technologies, and factories
5. Workers: own no property and must work for the capitalists in order to support themselves and their families financially
6. Ralf Dahrendorf
7. Looked to the conflict between interest groups
8. Interest groups: organized associations of people mobilized into action because of their membership in those associations
9. Social inequalities have their basis not only in economic differences but also in political power.
Symbolic Interactionism
4. Symbolic interactionism: the sociological perspective that sees society as the product of symbols (words, gestures, objects) that are given meaning by people in their interactions with each other
5. Focuses on social interaction: the communication that occurs between two or more people
6. George Herbert Mead
7. Interested in understanding the relationship between mind, self, and society
8. Mind: the internal conversations we have within ourselves
9. Symbols: objects that represent something else
· The social self: the process by which we are able to see ourselves in relationship to others
1. Looking-glass self: idea that we see ourselves as we think others see us
2. Self-fulfilling prophecy: the social process whereby a false definition of a situation brings about behavior that makes the false definition “come true”
Applying the Three Theories to Social Problems
1. Structural Functionalism and Suicide
2. Émile Durkheim’s classic study on the social problem of suicide
3. Social integration: a certain degree of unity
4. The opposite of social integration is social disintegration, which leads to the collapse of society.
5. Social regulation: societies need to have a certain degree of control over the behavior of their members to maintain social order
6. The opposite of social regulation is a social disorder, which may lead to anomie or a state of normlessness.
Four types of social suicide
1. Altruistic suicide: due to too much social integration, group members sacrifice their lives for the group
2. Egoistic suicide: due to too little social integration, persons in certain populations kill themselves because of extreme isolation
3. Fatalistic suicide: due to too much social regulation, members of certain groups end their lives because they see no escape from their oppressive situation
4. Anomic suicide: due to too little social regulation, people kill themselves because they lack rules to give them social direction for meeting their needs
5. Conflict Theory and Alcohol Consumption
6. Culture: the style of life
Joseph R. Gusfield’s examination of how rural, middle-class evangelical Protestants tried to reform and control the drinking habits of urban, lower-class Irish and Italian Catholics and German Lutherans.
1. Initial attempts used persuasion, but the middle-class Protestants switched to coercive reform through the use of legislation.
2. Symbolic Interactionism and Precarious Living
3. Waverly Duck’s examination of a poor African American neighborhood
4. Interaction order: a lifestyle that shaped residents’ everyday interactions with each other in order to help them cope with their poverty and racial isolation.
5. The interaction order made it possible for residents to move safely through their community’s organized drug trade, to educate themselves and their children, and to make money.
6. Social Policy
7. Social revolution: a total and complete transformation in the social structure of society
8. Social policy: a more or less clearly articulated and usually written set of strategies for addressing a social problem
Types of social policy
1. Legislation: makes some condition or pattern of behavior legal or illegal
2. Organizational guidelines
3. Service Sociology and Social Problems
4. Early days of U.S. sociology: the beginning of the 20th century
5. Two basic forms
6. The study of sociological theory
The practice of ameliorative reform and service
1. Settlement houses: neighborhood centers providing services to poor immigrants
2. Service sociology: socially responsible and mission-oriented sociology of action and alleviation
3. Culture of service: including various forms of civic engagement, community service, and volunteerism
Key Terms
Attitude: A predisposition about something in one’s environment
Conflict theory: A theory that focuses on contradictory interests, inequalities between social groups, and the resulting conflict and change
Contradiction: Opposing phenomena within the same social system
Critical thinking: The analysis and evaluation of information
Dependent variable: The variable in an experiment that is influenced by an independent variable
The fallacy of appeal to prejudice: Argument by appealing to popular prejudices or passions for example: Influencing people to want to disassociate with something. Examples: “You’d be stupid if you did that.” (you don’t want to be considered stupid.)
The fallacy of authority: Argument by an illegitimate appeal to authority. For example, considering something to be true simply because a perceived authority said it is so (without evidence) or because it was said to be true by citing authority figures who are qualified in that field. For example, Coronavirus Expert Dr. Fauci.
The fallacy of circular reasoning: Using conclusions to support the assumptions that were necessary to make the conclusions. For example: When Blacks contrasted the experience of the Tuskegee experiment to the COVID 19 vaccine, syphilis was caused by the Tuskegee experiment and black people got syphilis because they participated in the experiment.
The fallacy of composition: The assertion that what is true of the part is necessarily true of the whole. For instance, because of the Tuskegee experiment, black people became afraid of the COVID 19 vaccines when the media extended this idea to a whole community to which those people belong.
The fallacy of dramatic instance: Overgeneralizing, for example, this fallacy is our tendency to stereotype people according to our assumptions about race, nationality, gender, etc, Making something abstract into something concrete
The fallacy of non-sequitur: Something that does not follow logically from what has preceded it. For example, since COVID 19 is an autoimmune disease that occurs in the absence of immunizations, it is unlikely that COVID is a major cause of immunizations.
The fallacy of personal attack: Argument by attacking the opponent personally rather than dealing with the issue. When the government presented the mask and the mandates for social distancing, but did you see how they did not keep to the same standards?
The fallacy of retrospective determinism: The argument that things could not have worked out any other way than they did. Blacks are more prone to COVID 19 due to Genetic determinism.
Frequency distribution: The organization of data to show the number of times each item occurs
Ideology: A set of ideas that explain or justify some aspect of social reality
Independent variable: The variable in an experiment that is manipulated to see how it affects changes in the dependent variable
Institution: A collective pattern of dealing with a basic social function; typical institutions identified by sociologists are the government, economy, education, family and marriage, religion, and the media
Interaction: Reciprocally influenced behavior on the part of two or more people
Mean: The average
Median: The score below which is half of the scores and above which are the other half
Norm: Shared expectations about behavior
Participant observation: A method of research in which one directly participates and observes the social reality being studied
Personal problem: A problem that can be explained in terms of the qualities of the individual.
Reification: Defining what is abstract as something concrete
Role: The behavior associated with a particular position in the social structure
Social problem: A condition or pattern of behavior that contradicts some other condition or pattern of behavior; is defined as incompatible with the desired quality of life; is caused, facilitated, or prolonged by social factors; involves intergroup conflict, and requires social action for resolution
Socioeconomic status: Position in the social system based on economic resources, power, education, prestige, and lifestyle
Stratification system: Arrangement of society into groups that are unequal with regard to such valued resources as wealth, power, and prestige
Structural functionalism: A sociological theory that focuses on social systems and how their interdependent parts maintain order
Survey: A method of research in which a sample of people are interviewed or given questionnaires in order to get data on some phenomenon
Symbolic interactionism: A sociological theory that focuses on the interaction between individuals, the individual’s perception of situations, and the ways in which social life is constructed through interaction
Test of significance: A statistical method for determining the probability that research findings occurred by chance
Values: Things preferred because they are defined as having worth
Variables: Any trait or characteristic that varies in value or magnitude
Assignment: no reference or sources need for this assignment it it strictly based off of knowledge from chapter and open discussion/opinion.
Have you ever heard someone say, ‘You’ve got your truth and I’ve got mine? “It is easy to forget that scientific evidence should not easily be selected based on convenience or prejudices in this age of “alternative facts.” Sorting through a series of assertions is much more difficult to decide what the truth really is. Sadly, the result is that it is possible to accept theories or false concepts as facts. The claims that support myths are founded on fallacies in many cases. Fallacies are logical flaws that render an argument unsound. Fallacies have been used in the case of vaccines to knowingly deceive American individuals seeking knowledge to make sound choices about their lives.
In this assignment you will engage in a discussion with your classmates, in understanding social problems, you will indicate whether you favor or oppose the COVID 19 vaccination. Should the government force Americans particularly minorities to take the vaccine since it is guaranteed to save lives? Further, you will explain the rationale behind your opinion. You must pick a side either you favor or oppose the idea, there are no in-between answers. Finally, you will then determine and explain if it is a personal problem or a social problem that some people in society believe the vaccine is a hoist. You must use at least one common type of fallacies from the chapter, as well as provide an example of how you can use it to argue if the COVID vaccine is safe or not safe.
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