Test 1 - Chapter 1

Question 1

what are examples of personal troubles and how can they be connected to pubic issues?

Answer 1

1. unemployment - deskilling, job market, global pandemic
2. addiction - trauma, lack or resources/support
3. illness - lack of access to medical
4. education - poor system, alternative reason for dropping out

Question 2

definition of social problems

Answer 2

Any condition or behaviour that has negative consequences for large #’s of people and that is generally recognized as a condition or behaviour that needs to be addressed. To address it you must be persistent, but change is possible.

Question 3

Subjective component of Social Problems

Answer 3

Involves the perception. There must

be a perception that a condition or behavior needs to be addressed for it to be considered a social problem.

Question 4

Objective Component of Social Problems

Answer 4

Involves empirical evidence of the negative consequences of a social condition or behaviour. For any condition or behavior to be considered a social problem, it must have negative consequences for large numbers of people.

Question 5

3 ways to start to see a change

Answer 5

1. People need to get involved through volunteering, public service, activism, etc
2. Policy makers pass laws or enact policies
3. Learning/being influenced by other countries

Question 7

4 stages of social movements

Answer 7

1. Preliminary stage
2. Coalescence stage
3. Institutionalization stage
4. Decline stage

Question 8

What happens during the Preliminary stage in social movements?

Answer 8

People become aware of the issue and leaders in the movement begin to emerge

Question 9

What happens during the Coalescence stage in social movements?

Answer 9

The group organizes to publicize the issue and plans to begin to raise awareness

Question 10

What happens during the Institutionalization stage in social movements?

Answer 10

The movement is now an established organization with people in roles/duties (perhaps even paid staff).

Question 11

What happens during the Decline stage in social movements?

Answer 11

The Movement successfully brings about the change it sought (unless it failed/faded out in a previous stage). Members lose interest &/or adopt a new movement.

Question 12

What is the theoretical perspective - structural functionalism?

Answer 12

Views on society:

• Society = structure + function
• structures: organized social arrangements
• functions - how the needs of a society are met
• Can compare the body to society - all parts are connected & work together to serve functions and meet needs
• Society’s social institutions perform important functions to help ensure social stability.

Views on social problems:
- some social problems may meet the needs of society, for ex. crime in community creates jobs in society (police, judges, jail employees, etc)
- Social stability is necessary for a strong society
and adequate socialization and social integration
are necessary for social stability.
- Slow social change is desirable, but rapid social change threatens social order.
- Social problems weaken a society’s stability but do not reflect fundamental faults in how the society is structured.

Question 13

What is the theoretical perspective - conflict theory?

Answer 13

• Conflict (competition) over power/resources
  
  • Marxism: economic power by controlling means of production, how we turn resources into what we need, shared beliefs/norms/practices/emotions
  • Feminism: patriarchal power by leveraging unequal gendered relations, gender differences is the central focus, gender relations = social problem

View on society:
- Society is characterized by pervasive inequality
based on social class, race, gender, and other
factors.

View on social problems:
- Social problems arise from fundamental
faults in the structure of a society and both
reflect and reinforce inequalities based on
social class, race, gender, and other
dimensions.
- Intersectionality - problems are all combined, no single issue struggle ( we do not live single issue lives)
- Far-reaching social change is needed to
reduce or eliminate social inequality and to
create an egalitarian society.

Question 14

What is the theoretical perspective - symbolic interactionism?

Answer 14

Act toward things based on the meaning that things have - meanings derived from social interactions - dependant on and modified by an interpretive process of the people who interact with one another.

View on society:
- People construct their roles as they interact; they
do not merely learn the roles that society has set
out for them.
As this interaction occurs, individuals negotiate their definitions of the situations in which they find themselves and socially construct the reality of these situations.
- rely heavily on symbols such as words and gestures to reach a shared understanding of their interaction

View on social problems:
- Social problems arise from the interaction
of individuals.
- People who engage in socially problematic behaviors often learn these behaviors from other people.
- Individuals also learn their perceptions of
social problems from other people.

Question 15

Society - Social Institutions

Answer 15

Traditional:

• family
• religion
• education
• gov’t
• economy

Emergent:

• sports
• mass media
• science/medicine
• military

Question 16

Society - Statuses and Roles

Answer 16

Ascribed status:

• race, ethnicity
• age
• gender
• class

Achieved status:

• education
• occupation
• income

Question 17

Society - Social Groups

Answer 17

Primary groups:

• family members
• close friends
• peers

Secondary groups:

• school
• church
• corporation

Question 18

Material culture

Answer 18

• physical objects that are a part of a culture
• dress, style
• artifacts
• art work

Question 19

Non-Material Culture

Answer 19

• religion
• values
• morals
• language
• norms: folkways, mores, taboos, laws

Question 20

4 stages of Natural History of a Social Problem

Answer 20

1. emergence & claims making
2. legitimacy
3. renewed claims making
4. development of alternative strategies

Question 20

What are 3 theoretical perspectives we cover?

Answer 20

1. Structure functionalist
2. conflict theory
3. symbolic interactionist

Question 21

4 stages of Natural History of a Social Problem - Emergence and Claims Making

Answer 21

• begins to call attention to a condition or behavior that is undesirable
  and in need of remedy
• tries to influence public perceptions of the problem, the reasons for it, and possible solutions to it
• 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

Question 22

4 stages of Natural History of a Social Problem - Legitimacy

Answer 22

• tries to persuade the government (local, state, and/or federal) to take some action—spending and policymaking— to address the problem
• tries to convince the government that its claims about the problem are legitimate—that they make sense and are supported by empirical (research-based) evidence

Question 23

4 stages of Natural History of a Social Problem - Renewed Claims Making

Answer 23

• social change groups often conclude that the action is too limited in goals or scope to be able to successfully address the social problem
• reasserting their claims and by criticizing the
  official response they have received from the government or other established interests
• may involve a fair amount of tension between the social change groups and these targets of their claims

Question 24

4 stages of Natural History of a Social Problem - Development of Alternative Strategies

Answer 24

• social change groups often conclude that the government and
  established interests are not responding adequately to their claims
• may realize that these claims may fail to win an adequate response from established interests
• realization leads them to develop their own strategies for addressing the social problem

Question 25

Observation - research method

Answer 25

Advantages:
- may provide rich, detailed information about the people who are observed.

Disadvantages:
- do not involve random samples of the population, their results cannot readily be generalized to the population

Question 26

Existing data - research method

Answer 26

Advantages:
- the researcher does not have to spend the time and money to gather data
Disadvantages:
- The data set that is being analyzed may not contain data on all the variables in which a sociologist is
interested or may contain data on variables that are
not measured in ways the sociologist prefers.

Question 27

Survey - research method

Answer 27

Advantages:
- many people can be included, can be generalized to the population
Disadvantages:
- expensive, time consuming

Question 28

Experiments - research method

Answer 28

Advantages:
- if random assignment is used, experiments provide convincing data on cause / effect

Disadvantages:
- because experiments do not involve random samples of the population and most often involve colleges students their results are not general to the population