Chapter 1: Social Problems

Question 1

What Is a “Social Problem”?

Answer 1

A social condition or behaviour that is thought to warrant public concern and collective action.

Question 2

Sociology’s founders:

Answer 2

Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber

Question 3

“Masters” of sociology:

Answer 3

Herbert Blumer, Erving Goffman, and Howard Becker —contributed significantly to the symbolic interactionist approach.

Question 4

The rise of sociology itself—like the rise of the study of social issues—coincided with:

Answer 4

The rise of “modern” societies in the nineteenth century. During this time, Western Europe and North America shared the idea of “progress.”

“Progress” included industrialization and urbanization. Inventions, scientific discoveries, and new ideas were proliferating rapidly.

“Progress” also meant the possibility of using knowledge to bring about social improvement or social “amelioration.”

Question 5

What are Objective elements of social problems?

Answer 5

The measurable features of a harmful social condition. Such harmful conditions might include crime, poverty, or alcohol abuse.

They’re also what we might call the problem’s scientific (or empirically verifiable) aspects. We know about a problem because we can measure it and measure the harm it does.

Question 6

What are Subjective elements of social problems?

Answer 6

Beliefs and evaluations that influence people’s behaviour. They include the moralistic labels that people apply to particular acts or situations and the accounts they give of these acts and situations.

Question 7

What is “Positivism”?

Answer 7

The philosophical premise called “positivism” says that we can know material reality with our senses: we can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste it.

What we commonly call “science” is the systematic effort to find and test natural laws through measurements of this observed reality.

Question 8

What is a subjective reality?

Answer 8

Social Constructs

Question 9

Sociological imagination is:

Answer 9

A term used by sociologist C. Wright Mills in his 1959 book, The Sociological Imagination, to describe the sociologist’s ability to connect large-scale public issues to people’s personal experiences.

It’s the acquired ability to see connections between one’s own life (micro-events) and the social world in which one lives (macro-events).

Question 10

Microsociology is:

Answer 10

Also known as micro-level analysis, focuses on the interactions between people in small groups. This approach studies people’s understanding and experience of social problems at the local, personal level

Question 11

Macrosociology is:

Answer 11

Also known as macro-level analysis, focuses on society and its institutions. It explores the ways that changes in major organizations and institutions affect the population as a whole (e.g. effect of economy on families).

Question 12

Social Reality is:

Answer 12

How people perceive the world around them. It is continuously changing. Social reality is (almost) infinitely flexible and always open to interpersonal influence (Searle, 2006).

The flexibility and changeability of social life is a central finding of research on religion, culture, ideology, mass communication, propaganda, and social media.

Question 13

Social constructionism:

Answer 13

A sociological approach that examines the way people create a shared interpretation of social reality.

Question 14

Moral entrepreneurs:

Answer 14

Crusading reformers who are disturbed by particular social problems they see in the world. They set out to correct the problem by constructing and publicizing stories about it.

Question 15

Claims-making:

Answer 15

Promoting a particular moral vision of social life that identifies who or what is a problem and what people should do about it.

Question 16

Social Construction:

Answer 16

• An idea that has been created and accepted by people in a society
• Social reality is constantly changing, changes from person to person
• The social construction of reality often revolves around the work of moral entrepreneurs (people who try to bring attention to deviant behaviours)

Question 17

To call attention to something they consider a problem, claims-makers rely on:

Answer 17

On common idioms and styles of speaking that reflect core cultural values.

Often, they urge people to avoid certain types of risk above all else.

For example, political and other leaders may call on people to act to protect their homeland, their families, and their “way of life.” They also use emotional images to sway public opinion.

Question 18

Whistle-blowers are:

Answer 18

Unusual claims-makers who speak out against their immediate interests and those of their employer.

They gain influence from their inside knowledge/courage. Often whistle-blowers, blacklisted in their industries, have to turn to social movements for employment.

Question 19

Moral panics:

Answer 19

Public expressions of feeling based typically on false beliefs that a named group of people (often, a minority group) poses a menace to society.

• Brief and intense moments.
• People who caused these were called folk devils

Question 20

structural functionalism:

Answer 20

This theoretical model highlights the way each institution works to fulfill the needs of society. Also called “functionalism,” this macrosociological approach uses a societal, not individual, level of analysis.

Question 21

Manifest functions

Answer 21

The obvious and intended goals or effects of social structures and institutions.

Question 22

Latent functions

Answer 22

Hidden, unstated, and unintended consequences of activities in an organization or institution.

Question 23

Young people are less likely than older people to vote because:

Answer 23

they’re less likely to have confidence in electoral politics and the government (Wattenberg, 2015). This means that the political system is less representative of public views and less able to serve effectively.

Question 24

According to Structural functionalism, the political system _______________.

Answer 24

works to supply society with leadership and goal-setting.

Question 25

According to functionalists, the cause of most social problems is

Answer 25

A failure of institutions to fulfill their roles.

This failure is most likely to occur during times of rapid change, which produces social disorganization and disrupts traditional ways of doing things.

Question 26

French sociologist Émile Durkheim introduced the term anomie to describe…

Answer 26

the condition of disorder that causes social norms to be weak or uncertain.

Question 27

Conflict Theory:

Answer 27

A theoretical approach, drawn from the writings of Marx and Engels, that highlights conflict and change as permanent features of society. It has its roots in the primary division between “haves” and “have-nots.”

Conflict theorists criticize functionalist sociologists for ignoring the inequality, conflict, and disagreement that exist among members of society. Instead, conflict theorists view society as a collection of varied groups struggling over unequally distributed wealth and power.

Is based on social institutions like structural functionalism.

Question 28

(Conflict Theory) Marx notes that in an industrial, capitalist society, two broad groups emerge:

Answer 28

the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

The bourgeoisie owns the means of production and the proletariat, the working class, must sell their labour to the bourgeoisie in exchange for a living wage.

The capitalists use their power and influence to ensure they remain in positions of dominance over the workers.

Question 29

Where do social problems mainly stem from according to conflict theory?

Answer 29

Conflict theories propose that social problems stem mainly from the economic and political inequalities that exist between social classes.

Question 30

Conflict theorists contend that workers in a capitalist system feel:

Answer 30

alienated from the processes and products of their labour.

Capitalists have exploited them: denied them a fair and just payment for the value they produce through their labour.

Question 31

Non-Marxist conflict theories propose that:

Answer 31

many social conflicts are based on non-class-based interests, values, and beliefs.
These include ethnic, racial, and religious differences, for example.

Critics point out the Marxist approach has stressed the importance of economic inequality at the expense of these other types of inequality.

Question 32

Symbolic interactionism:

Answer 32

This sociological approach studies the ways people interpret and respond to the actions of others. For symbolic interactionists, society and its problems are products of continuous face-to-face interaction.

Unlike conflict theory and structural functionalism, which both focus on social institutions, symbolic interactionism focuses on small-group interactions.

An early interactionist was the German sociologist Georg Simmel (1976), who studied the unsettling effects of urbanization on mental health.

Question 33

Social constructionism:

Answer 33

Closely related to labelling theory.

Focusses on the ways people create a sense that something is a problem (or not)

The goal of social constructionism is to examine how people interact to create their shared social reality.

Question 34

Labelling theory

Answer 34

rests on the premise that something is a social problem mainly if groups of people define it as such.

Question 35

Herbert Blumer (1971) proposed that people construct social problems in stages:

Answer 35

1. The first stage is social recognition, the point at which a given behaviour is identified by moral entrepreneurs as a social concern.
2. Second, social legitimating takes place when a person in authority recognizes the activity as a serious threat to social stability. With drug use, this stage might occur when public officials discover a connection between marijuana smoking and the failure to do homework, for example.
3. The third stage, termed mobilization for action, is the point at which social organizations begin planning ways to deal with the problem.
4. The final step is developing and carrying out an official plan, such as a government-sanctioned “war on drugs.”

Question 36

Critics of the symbolic interactionist perspective propose that:

Answer 36

social problems may exist even when people fail to recognize them as problems. Date rape and domestic violence, for example, weren’t considered social problems more than a few decades ago despite an absence of public attention and labelling.

Many parents who in the past considered marijuana smoking to be a problem may no longer do so now that the federal government has decriminalized marijuana possession.

Question 37

George Herbert Mead wrote:

Answer 37

children learn to interact with others by acquiring a shared system of rules and symbols that allows them to share meanings. With shared meanings, they can play together, perform complementary roles, and relate to the social group as what he called a “generalized other.”

For Mead, this ability is the basis of all social order. Social life, for Mead, is thus the sharing of rules and meanings—that is, the cooperative social construction of reality.

Question 38

Feminism theory:

Answer 38

There are varieties of feminist thinking: liberal feminism, socialist feminism, radical feminism, ecofeminism, and others. However, feminist thinking tends to focus on gender inequality and the relations of dominance and subordination between men and women.

Men’s and women’s biological differences don’t explain, let alone justify separate social roles, rights, and responsibilities. Instead, gender inequality is a result of socio-economic and ideological factors.

Patriarchy - control by men - controls most societies.

Question 39

3 stages of feminists history:

Answer 39

1. The first wave, occurring at the start of the twentieth century, promoted women’s suffrage.
2. The second wave, beginning in the 1960s, fought to establish legal, cultural, and social equalities for women, including reproductive rights and the right to equal pay.
3. The third wave of feminism began in the 1990s and was a reaction to second-wave feminism. Many third-wave feminists proposed that second-wave feminism mainly addressed the concerns of highly educated white women.

Question 40

Patriarchy:

Answer 40

A form of social organization in which men are the rulers of the household, community, and society. In everyday sociological use, it means domination of women and children by adult men.

Question 41

Post-modernism

Answer 41

A school of thought that denies the validity of universal, sweeping statements about the world or groups of people within the world, and analyzes the motives behind such statements and the consequences of people believing them.

Question 42

Post-structuralism

Answer 42

A concept related to post-modernism focused on analytical deconstruction.

Post-structuralism can help us to think of new ways to solve old problems, and it makes finding the truth seem impossible. Post-structuralism might also help sociologists recognize the biases and perspectives reflected in their work.

Question 43

population health perspective

Answer 43

a broad approach that aims to improve the health of society and to reduce health inequalities between social groups

Question 44

determinants of health include:

Answer 44

income and social factors, social support networks, education, employment, working and living conditions, health practices, health services, stress, coping skills, gender, and culture

Question 45

Two types of solutions are:

Answer 45

individual and collective

Question 46

Four Key Assumptions under social construction

Answer 46

1. The world does not present itself objectively to the observer (known through human experience and subjective reality)
2. Historical and cultural importance (context of a particular phenomenon is vital)
3. Knowledge is sustained by social process (our knowledge at a given point in time is based on that which is occurring at that time)
4. Knowledge and social action go together (each does not work in a vacuum)