CH.

1 Sociology and the Study of Social Problems

- Globalization is defined as the of increasing transborder connectedness, whether economically,

politically, environmentally or socially.
- Often times in debates whether casual or heated, is filled with explanations based on our opinions,
experiences, or guesses rather than being from firsthand data collection.
- Sociology provides us with a form of self-consciousness, an awareness that our personal experiences
are often caused by structural or social forces.
- Sociology is the systematic study of individuals, groups, and social structures.
- A sociologist examines the relationship between individuals and society, which includes such social
institutions as the family, the military, the economy, and education.

USING OUR SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATIONS

- The sociological imagination can help us distinguish between personal troubles and public issues.
- The sociological imagination links our personal lives and experiences with out social worlds.
- The sociological imagination challenges that the problem is “natural” or based on individual failures,
instead reminding us how the problem is rooted in society, in our social structures themselves.
- The sociological imagination emphasizes the structural bases of social problems, making us aware of the
economic, political, and social structures that govern employment and unemployment trends and the cost
of higher eduction.

WHAT IS A SOCIAL PROBLEM?

- A social problem is a social condition or pattern of behavior that has negative consequences for
individuals, our social world, or our physical world.
- A social problem may negatively affect someones life or health, along with the well-being of their family and
friends.
- A social problem has objective and subjective realities.
- A social condition does not have to be personally experienced by every individual to be considered a social
problem.
- The objective reality of a social problem comes from acknowledging that a particular social condition
does exist.
- EX. HIV/AIDS data
- The subjective reality of a social problem addresses how a problem becomes defined as a problem
- This idea is based on the concept of the social construction of reality.
- The term refers to how our world is a social creation, origination and evolving through our everyday
thoughts and actions.
- We apply subjective meanings to our existence and experience.
- Social problems only become real when they are subjectively defined or perceived as problematic. This
perspective is known as social constructionism.
- There are four stages to the subjective process of social constructionism.
- Stage 1: is the transformation process. It takes a private trouble and transforms it into a public issue.
- Normally in this stage, influential groups, activists, or advocates call attention to and define an issue
as a social problem.
- Stage 2: is the legitimatization process. It formalizes the manner in which the social problems or
complaints generated by the problem are handled.
- For example, an organization or public policy could be created in order to respond to the condition.
Also an existing organization may be charged to take care of the situation.
- In either instance, these organization would legitimize the problem by implementing a formal
response to the issue at hand.
- Stage 3: is the conflict stage. When stage 2 routines are unable to address the people, activities,
advocates, and victims of the problems experience a sense of distrust and cynicism toward the formal
response made by the organizations.
 - Stage 3 has the readjusting of the formal response system by renegotiating the procedures,
reforming practices, and engaging in administrative or organization restructuring.
- Stage 4 begins when group believe that they can no longer work within the established system.
- Advocates or activists are face with two options, to radically change the existing system or to work
outside of the system.
- EX. as an alternative to the government and public health agencies’ response to HIV/AIDS,
numerous independent advocacy and research groups were formed.

UNDERSTANDING THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

- A society consists of individuals who live together in a specific geographic area, who interact with each
other, and who cooperate for the attainment of common goals.
- The software is our culture. Each society has a culture that serves as a system of guidelines for living.
- A culture includes norms (rules of behavior shared by members of society and rooted in a value system),
values (shared judgments about what is desirable or undesirable, right or wrong, good or bad), and
beliefs (ideas about life, the way society works, and where one fits in).
- The hardware comprises the enduring social structures that bring order to our lives. This includes the
positions or statuses that we occupy in society (student, athlete, employee, roommate) and the social
groups to which we belong and identify with (your family, your local place of worship, your workplace).
- Social institutions are the most complex hardware. Social institutions, such as family, religion, or
education, are relatively permanent social units of roles, rules, relationships, and organized activities
devoted to meet human needs and to direct and control human behavior.
- Based on a theory (a set of assumptions and propositions used for explanation, prediction, and
understanding) sociologies begin to define the relationship between society and individuals to describe the
cause and consequences of social problems.
- Theories vary in their level of analysis, focusing on a macro (societal) or a micro (individual) level.
- Four theoretical perspectives: functionalist, conflict, feminist, and interactionist.
- Functionalist Perspective:
- Society is like a human body. Society has its own organs: institutions such as the family, religion,
education, economics, and politics. All these social institutions are essential and have specialized
functions.
- The function of society was to control individual actions.
- During the state of normlessness or anomie, society was particularly prone to social problems. As a
result, social problems cannot be solved by changing the individual, rather, the problem has to be solved
at the societal level. The entire social structure or affected part of the social structure needs to be
repaired.
- The functionalist perspective examines the function or consequences of the structure of society.
- Functionalists use a macro perspective, focusing on how society creates and maintains social order.
- Social structures can have positive benefits as well as negative consequences, which he called
dysfunctions.
- A social problem such as homelessness has a clear set of dysfunctions but can also have positive
consequences or functions. One could argue that homelessness is clearly dysfunctional and
unpleasant for people who experience it. Yet a functionalist would say that homelessness is
beneficial for at least one part of society, or else it would cease to exist. The population of homeless
people supports and industry of social service agencies, religious organizations, and community
groups and service workers.
- Conflict Perspective:
- Conflict theories examine the macro level of our society, its structures, and institutions.
- Those holding a conflict perspective consider how society is held together by power and coercion for
the benefit of those in power.
- In this view, social problems emerge from the continuing conflict between groups in our society—based
on social class, gender, race, or ethnicity—and in the conflict, the dominant groups usually win.
- The perspective offers no real solutions to social problems. he system could be completely overhauled,
but that is unlikely to happen.
- Karl Marx focused on the conflict based on social class created by the tension between the proletariat
(workers) and the bourgeoisie (owners).
- Marx argued that a capitalist society created a man alienated from his species being, from his true
self.
- Alienation occurred on multiple levels: Man would become increasingly alienated from his work, the
product of his work, other workers, and finally, his own human potential.
- Workers need to achieve a class consciousness, an awareness of their social position and
oppression, they could unite and overthrow capitalism, replacing it with a egalitarian socialist and
eventually communist structure.
- Widening Marxs emphasis on the capitalist class structure, contemporary conflict theorists have
argued that conflict merges from other social bases, such as values, resources, and interests.
- Mills argued that the existence of a “power elite”, a small group of political business, and military
leaders who control our society.
- The conflict of interest is inherent in any relationship because those in powerful positions will always
seek to main their dominance.
- Conflict creates and maintains group solidarity by clarifying the positions and boundaries between
groups.
- Feminist Perspective:
- The feminist theory is not one, but many, theories or perspectives. Each feminist theory or
perspective attempts to describe women’s oppression to explain its causes and consequences,
and to prescribe strategies for women’s liberation.
- By analyzing the situations and lives of women in society, the feminist perspective defines gender
(and sometimes race or social class) as a source of social inequality, group conflict, and social
problems.
- For feminists, the patriarchal society is the basis of social problems. Patriarchy refers to a society in
which men dominate women and justify their domination through devaluation; however the definition
of patriarchy has been broadened to include societies in which powerful groups dominate and
devalue the powerless.
- Feminist theory treats the experiences of women as the starting point in all sociological
investigations, seeing the world from the vantage point of women in the social world and seeking to
promote a better world for women and for humankind.
- Interactionist Perspective:
- An interactionist focuses on how we use language, words, and symbols to create and maintain our
social reality.
- This micro level perspective highlights what we take for granted: the expectations, rules, and norms
that we learn and practice without even noticing.
- The term symbolic interactionism can be emphasized as how the existence of mind, self, and
society emerges from interaction and the use and understanding of symbols.
- We act based on our past experience and based on what we have come to accept as definitions of
each role.
- Social problems can be argued to have been learned from others.
- Social problems emerge from the definitions themselves.
- Objective social problems do not exist; they become real only in how they are defined or labeled. A
sociologist using this perspective would examine who or what group is defining the problem and
who or what is being defined as deviant or a social problem.
- Interactionists stress human agency—the active role of individuals in creating their social
environment and in defining and addressing social problems.
- The solutions to social problems also emerge from our definitions.
- Social construction of target populations influences the distributions of policy benefits or policy
burdens.
- Target populations are groups of individuals experiencing a specific social problem; these groups
gain policy attention through their socially constructed identity and political power.
- Advantaged target populations are positively constructed and politically powerful (likely to
receive policy benefits).
 - Contenders are politically powerful yet negatively constructed (likely to receive policy benefits
when public interest is high).
- Dependent target populations have positive social construction but low political power (few
policy resources would be allocated to this group).
- Deviant target populations are both politically weak and negatively constructed (least likely to
receive any benefits).

THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY

- Sociology research is divided into two areas: basic and applied.
- The knowledge we gain through basic research expands our understanding of the causes and
consequences of a social problem.
- Conversely, applied research involves the pursuit of knowledge for program application or policy
evaluation.
- All research begins with a theory to help identify the phenomenon we are trying to explain and
provide explanations for the social patterns or causal relationships between variables.
- Variables are a property of people or objects that can take on two or more values.
- The relationship between variables can be stated in a hypothesis, a tentative statement about how
the variables are related to each other.
- We have identified a defendant variable (the variable to be explained) along with an independent
variable (the variable expected to account for the cause of the dependent variable).
- Research methods can include quantitative or qualitative approaches or a combo.
- Ex. survey research, qualitative methods, historical and comparative methods, secondary data
analysis.

THE TRANSFORMATION FROM PROBLEM TO SOLUTION

- Solutions require social actions—in the form of social policy, advocacy, and innovation—to problems at
their structural or individual levels.
- Social policy is the enactment of a course of action through a formal law or program.
- Policy making usually begins with identification of a problem that should be addressed; then, specific
guidelines are developed regarding hat should be done to address the problem.
- Social policies are always being enacted.
- Social advocates use their resources to support, educate, and empower individuals and their communities.
- Social innovation may take the form of a policy, a program, or advocacy that features an untested or
unique approach.

MAKING SOCIOLOGICAL CONNECTIONS

- The first connection is between personal troubles and public issues.
- Each sociological perspective highlights how social problems emerge from our social structure or social
interaction.
- The second connection is between social problems and social solutions.
- The most important value of sociology was in its potential to enrich and encourage the lives of all
individuals.

MAIN POINTS OF CHAPTER (P. 24-25)

- Sociology is the systematic study of individuals and social structures. A sociologist examines the
relationship between individuals and our society, which includes institutions (the family), organizations (the
military), and systems (our economy). As a social science, sociology offers and objective and systematic
approach to understanding the causes of social problems.
- The social problem is a social condition that has negative consequences for individuals, our social world, or
the physical world.
- A social problem has objective and subjective realities. The objective reality of a social problem comes from
acknowledging that a particular social condition negatively affects human lives. The subjective reality of a
social problem addresses how a problem becomes defined as a problem. Social problems are not
 objectively predetermined. They become real only when they are subjectively defined or perceived as
problematic. This perspective is known as social constructionism.
- Problems do not just appear overnight; rather, as Spector and Kituse (1987) argue, the identification of a
social problem is a process.
- Sociologists use four theoretical perspectives: functionalist, conflict, feminist, and interactionist. The
functionalist perspective examines the functions or consequences of the structure of society.
Functionalists use a macro perspective, focusing on how society creates and maintains social order. A
social problem is not analyzed in terms of how “bad” it is for parts of society. Rather, a functionalist asks
how the social problem emerges from the society.
- Conflict, according to Marx, emerged from the economic substructure of capitalism, which defined all other
social structures and social relations. Marx focused on the conflict based on social class, created by the
tension between the proletariat (workers) and the bourgeoisie (owners). He argued that a capitalist society
created a man alienated from his species being, from his true self. Alienation occurred on multiple levels:
Man would become increasingly alienated from his work, from the product of his work, from other works,
and finally, from his own human potential.
- By analyzing the situations and lives of women in society, feminist theory defines a gender (and sometimes
race or social class) as a source of social inequality, group conflict, and social problems. For feminists, the
patriarchal society is the basis of social problems.
- An interactionist focuses on how we use language, words, and symbols to create and maintain our social
reality. This perspective highlights what we take for granted: the expectations, rules, and norms that we
learn and practice without even noticing. In our interaction with others, we become the products and
creators of our social reality. This perspective highlights he role of human agency, the active role of
individuals in creating their social environment and how social problems and their solutions are created and
defined.
- Solutions require social action—in the form of social policy, advocacy, and innovation—to address
problems at their structural or individual levels. Social policy is the enactment of a course of action through
a formal law or program. Social advocates use their resources to support, educate, and empower
individuals and their communities. Social innovation may take the form of a policy, a program, or advocacy
that features an untested or unique approach. Innovation usually starts at the community level, but it can
grow into national and international programming.