OneClass find more resources at www.oneclass.com Social Problems — Chapter 1 What is a social problem? * Acondition/pattern of behavior that warrants public concern/collective action . What is sociology * Systematic study of societies « sociology is well- equipped to help us inform ourselves about current problems and their possible solutions * sociology is an engaged, progressive, and optimistic discipline founded on the notion that we can improve society through research and the application of research-based knowledge * No field is more likely than sociology to force us to make connections + sociology has always been about social change, social conflict, and social cohesion—and all of these are connected to social problems # Goal: use knowledge to improve socal life ‘progress’ included indus- trialization and urbanization; inventions and scientific discovery; and exposure to new and different ideas and cultures. ‘Progress’ also meant the possibility of social improvement or social ‘amelioration’. Sociologists then believed that social life could be improved through the systematic study of social issues: by applying knowledge and expelling ignorance, superstition, prejudice, and blind custom. They believed deeply in the value of social research as the means for diagnosing social problems and for inventing and evaluating solutions. ‘They believed that social change could be directed to good ends; that social con- flict could be resolved in just ways; and that the social order could be re- established around new principles of organization. Note that an objective of sociology is also to find and test natural laws about these sub- jective beliefs and their consequences. The rise of sociology itself coincided with the rise of modern societies There are two aspects to social problems 1) Objective Elements + Measurable features of a negative social condition (eg crime, sexual abuse, pollution) * This activity is based on a philosophical premise, sometimes called ‘positivism’, of a material reality we can perceive with our senses; and what we call ‘science’ is the systematic attemptto find and test natural laws through measurements of this reality. OneClass find more resources at www.oneclass.comOneClass find more resources at www.oneclass.com 2) Subjective Elements * Our evaluations of objective conditions and the processes that influence their evolution (eg moral labels) «and the accounts they give for these acts and situations. These moral or aesthetic judgements reflect people’s beliefs and tastes the beliefs become an aspect of social reality-Beliefs set in motion actions that have social consequences These ‘subjective’ aspects of social problems affect and reflect our emotional reactions to information we receive about the world. econd, our ‘subjective’ or emotional responses often lead to what we call the ‘social construction’ of social problems—including a search for vil- lains, moral panic, crusades for better behaviour, a demand for improved laws, and so on. A central feature in the social construction of social problems is called ‘claims- making’—a process by which people try to capture attention and mobilize public opinion around par- ticular problems and their solutions.\As we will see, our formulation of social problems is influenced both by changes in meas- urable reality and by changes in our perceptions of measurable reality. By bringing together the objective and subjective elements, we can define a social problem as both a condition—an empirically observed condition that threatens the well-being of a significant part of society—and a process—the sequence of events by which members of society come to see a condition as a social problem that warrants and needs collective remedial action. Sociological Imagination >. Wright Mills * The ability to see connections between one’s life (micro events) and the social world (macro events) * This enables people to distinguish between personal troubles and public issue «This connection is made by closely analyzing reality at two levels © Microsociology: interactions between individ- uals in small groups. This approach studies people’s understanding and experience of social problems at the local, personal level © Macrosociology: major bureaucratic organization and social institutions It explores the ways that social trends occurring within major bureaucratic organizations and social institutions, such as the economy or the govern ment, affect the population as a whole * The sociological imagina- tion makes a connection between the conditions of our personal lives and the larger social context in which we live. ° OneClass find more resources at www.oneclass.comOneClass find more resources at www.oneclass.com Present unemployment results in part from so-called ‘globalization’, a process that sends high-wage Canadian jobs to low-wage counries, We need both levels of analysis for a proper understanding of social problems and to see that many private troubles are essentially public issues. Take the case of street youth, or homeless youth, written about in a classic work of sociology by John Hagan and Bill McCarthy (see Box 1.1). Hagan and McCarthy (1998) take a purely objective, positivistic approach to the study of homeless youth. They show no doubt whatever that (1) there are identifiable homeless youth they can study; (2) they can find out all the necessary facts about the lives of these homeless youth; and (3) they can devise explanations or theories about the reasons these young people live on the streets. This is sociology in the traditional, scientific manner. An alternative approach might be to ask the youth to give personal accounts of their homelessness, then analyze and compare their narratives to understand why some youth accounted for homelessness in one way, while others did so in another way. This is called a post-modern approach. Finally, Hagan and McCarthy might have carried out the study a different way: to determine the reasons why few people consider youth homelessness a major social issue, despite the efforts by some to raise public awareness about this issue. This is called a subjectivist or constructionist approach. As you can see, each approach would involve collecting and analyzing different kinds of information. our human efforts to improve society sometimes backfire no other century in human history combined as much technological progress with as much organized killing and environmental destruction as the twentieth century Those soci- ologists who study social problems often think of themselves as engaged in a moral enter- prise whose goal is to improve human societies through social change. Therefore, much of the sociological research on social problems is guided by seven value preferences (Alvarez, 2001): + life over death; + health over sickness; + — knowing over not knowing; + co-operation over conflict;+ freedom of movement over physical restraint; + self-determination over direction by others; «freedom of expression over restraint of communication. much of the research on social problems simply criticizes the existing social order. Much of the social problems literature aims at change society, to protect the vulnerable and redress the injustices done them. Sociologists identify the social-structural conditions that make people vulnerable to these so-called personal troubles we find the media turning ‘public issues’ into ‘private troubles’. OneClass find more resources at www.oneclass.com