Ch. 1. Sociology and Social Problems Flashcards
Social Institutions
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS – any set of persons cooperating together for the purpose of organizing stable patterns of human activity.
Cohort
COHORT – a group of individuals of similar age within a population who share a particular experience.
- EX: Those who grew up during the Depression.
- EX: Those who graduated high school during the Covid Pandemic.
Demographic Factors
DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS – social characteristics of a population – in particular, race, age, and gender.
Intersectionality
INTERSECTIONALITY – ways in which several demographic factors combine to affect people’s experiences.
- EX: We would consider how his age (young adult), race (black), gender (male), and social class (working class) combine to shape his life.
Social Class
SOCIAL CLASS – a category of people whose experiences in life are determined by the amount of income and wealth they own and control.
Sociology
SOCIOLOGY – the study of social behavior and human society.
- Sociology is the field most likely to examine systematically social problems such as poverty, social discrimination (on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, age), crime, drug abuse, immigration, climate change, terrorism, and more.
Social Problem
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.
Patterns and Trends
PATTERNS and TRENDS – 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.
- EX: Crime Rates – In studying rates of crime, sociologists and criminologists rely on certain, or collections of information, like the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports
Objective and Subjective Aspects of Social Problems
OBJECTIVE ASPECT OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS – measuring the rate of crime – or, for that matter any measurable rates of things like divorce, population growth, or sex trafficking – we are able to call attention to the objective aspect of social problems.
- Data allow us to show, concretely, how much crime is really out there.
SUBJECTIVE ASPECT OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS – Here we are talking about what people define as a social problem. Something is a social problem only if they define it as a social problem. If there is a condition, but no group of people consider it a problem, then it’s not a problem (or at least not a recognized social problem.)
There is often a close link between the objective and subjective aspects of a problem.
- EX: People are made OBJECTIVELY aware (usually through official data) that the murder rate in their community has doubled over the past 5 years, and, as a consequence, they SUBJECTIVELY become concerned about their safety and that of their community.
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EX: Objectively the problem of auto fatalities causes twice as much harm to people and society than AIDS, but Subjectively people are much more concerned about the problem of AIDS.
- In other words, 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.
Objective aspects of social problems: Those empirical (Data-driven) conditions or facts that point to the concreteness of social problems “out there.”
Subjective aspects of social problems: The process by which people define social problems.
Relativity (subjective aspect of social problem)
RELATIVITY – Another subjective aspect of social problems is the relativity with which people identify them. First, what is viewed as a social problem in one time and place may not be viewed as a social problem in another time and place.
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Relativity ensures that some segments of the population experience the social problem and others do not, or they experience it to a different extent.
- EX: The pervasiveness of assault rifles in U.S. society is a social problem to advocates of stricter gun laws, but not to supporters of gun ownership rights.
Social Constructionism
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM – Is a theoretical approach that describes the social process by which people define a social problem into existence.
- “Social problems are what people think they are”
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CLAIMS-MAKERS – those who are able to get an issue defined as a social problem.
- A critical mass must be concerned about the troubling or objectionable situation to call attention to it.
- Some people and groups have greater influence than others.
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The more the powerful segments of society—such as politicians, bankers, and corporate executives—are concerned about an issue, the greater the probability that laws will be created to address the issue.
- Conversely, there will be fewer laws to prohibit behaviors like profiting from campaign financing, insider trading, and price-fixing. According to Quinney, definitions of crime align with the interests of those segments of society with the power to shape social policy.
Types of Action– Social Structure, Social Constructionism, Social Movement
SOCIAL STRUCTURE – The pattern of interrelated social institutions.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM – The social process by which people define a social problem into existence.
SOCIAL MOVEMENT – The collective efforts of people to realize social change in order to solve social problems.
Ameliorate
AMELIORATE – make something that is bad or unsatisfactory better – improve a problematic condition, usually aimed at helping those in need.
- This may mean providing the material relief necessary for physical survival (money, food, clothes).
- In most cases, however, it means providing nonmaterial services, such as counseling (employment, parenting), dispute resolution (peace talks, mediation), education (instruction and encouragement), and professional consultation (on specific troublesome issues).
Sociological Imagination
SOCIAL IMAGINATION – is 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.
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C. Wright Mills – was a leading critic of U.S. society in the 1950s and made contributions to the sociological perspective known as CONFLICT THEORY.
- Mills says that in order to understand our personal hardships and our own individual feelings, we must be aware of the larger forces of history and of social structure.
- To gain this awareness we should use a way of thinking that he calls the sociological imagination.
- Mills says that in order to understand our personal hardships and our own individual feelings, we must be aware of the larger forces of history and of social structure.
- Some of these transformations have to do with family patterns:
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Increased inequality of income and wealth.
- some of the structural changes that have occurred during the past 30 years that in many ways operate against the working-class’ attempts to create stable and predictable adult lives include:
- Rise of the service economy (which is detrimental to the uneducated)
- Declining social mobility
- Depressed wages
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Increased inequality of income and wealth.
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Sociological imagination allows us to see our personal troubles as social problems – meaning that many of our personal troubles are not necessarily attributable to our personal characteristics, such as work ethic, level of education attained, or living environment, but rather these personal troubles are experienced because they are actually the result of a set of much larger social problem in which we are enveloped.
- This perspective helps us confront social problems, and make us aware of the social problems’ origins.
- We come to understand that what we see and feel as personal misfortunes (for example, our inability to achieve the milestones of adulthood) are predicaments shared by many others and difficult for any one individual to solve.
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE – Comparing our own society to other societies in all the world’s regions.
- Sociological imagination requires that we take a global perspective,
Sociological Research
SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH (OBJECTIVE) – Sociologists look at patterns and trends in regard to police brutality, poverty, the opioid epidemic, auto fatalities, and so on. In order to identify these patterns and trends, they require numerical facts, like rates, percentages, and ratios.
- GENERAL SOCIAL SURVEY (GSS) – One of the largest sources for social scientific data in the United States. GSS includes data on social trends, demographics, behaviors, opinions, and attitudes.
- QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH – Research that studies social problems through statistical analysis of collected data.
SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH (SUBJECTIVE) – When it comes to the subjective aspects of social problems, sociologists tend to be less interested in facts and figures and more interested in the ways people define, experience, or understand problematic situations.
- QUALITATIVE RESEARCH – Research that studies how people define, experience, or understand problematic situations.
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE – viewpoint from which we compare our own society to other societies around the world.
RESEARCH METHODS – Techniques for obtaining information.
SURVEY – A research method that asks respondents to answer questions on a written questionnaire.
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Steven J. Tepper (2011) – People fear social change – Tepper’s hypothesis is that citizens are most likely to feel offended by certain forms of art, and will protest them when they feel their lifestyles and values are being threatened.
- He relied extensively on survey research in his study examining controversies over cultural expressions.
- In other words, people will want to ban certain films, books, paintings, sculptures, clothing styles, popular music, and television programs when they have a fear or anxiety about social change.