A Sociological Approach to Social Problems (RLE Social Theory)

Noel Timms

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317651024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The topics covered in this book are directly related to much of the misunderstanding of what sociology is about. It is usual nowadays to label as sociological any discussion concerned, however loosely, with 'Society'. But a careful reading of Mr Timms' treatment of the problem areas he has chosen should make clear the difference between this use of the adjective in everyday speech, and its more vigorous technical use. In dealing with his subject Mr Timms makes use of the concepts of sociology such as 'role', 'norms', 'social control', 'class', and 'family'.

1

Sociology and social problems

Definitions have their place, and this is, more often than not, at the conclusion rather than the beginning of a study. Yet the attempt to make a sociological approach to social problems involves us at the outset in problems of definition of two distinct kinds. An approach that is decisively sociological needs to be identified among the increasing number of viewpoints that are described by that name, and to be distinguished from the contributions that can be expected from the neighbouring discipline of psychology and the field of study known as social administration. We also need to consider the part played by the process of social definition in the delineation of certain aspects of social life as problems. In other words, we are raising in terms of definition two important kinds of question: Are ‘social problems’ simply ways of referring to aggregates of deviant individuals? Are these problems purely those ‘evils’ that a society at a particular time defines as a social problem by taking a variety of measures to cure or prevent it?

A sociological approach

The adjective ‘social’ is now used in connection with such a very wide variety of subjects that it is nearly drained of meaning. The same could almost be said of sociology. On television, for example, any investigation, however slight, into people’s habits, any report of their spontaneous replies to scarcely formulated questions is classed as ‘sociological’. Durkheim’s words in regard to the misuse of the term ‘social’ are as relevant today as they were at the end of the last century: he observed that it ‘is currently employed for practically all phenomena generally diffused within a society, however small their social interest. But on this basis there are, as it were, no human events that may not be called social’ (Durkheim, 1894). The attempt to remedy this situation, and to anchor the ‘social’ and the ‘sociological’ more securely faces the fact that sociologists themselves are divided on a number of key issues. Is the sociologist primarily concerned with the investigation of social problems with a view to finding solutions, or with the investigation of problems relevant to the testing of hypotheses deduced from gradually developing theories about society? Does the sociologist aim at investigating society as the natural scientist studies non-human phenomena, or should he hope to understand the views and ideas of those who participate in any particular social system? Is sociology a profession or a discipline? As a professional the sociologist would be seen as someone trained in the methods which alone equip people to study ‘sociological’ problems, but if sociology is seen as a discipline then reference is to the study of society by any appropriate method, and the methods are open to anyone provided they can use them effectively.

These are large questions which will be more fully discussed in other works in this series. What concerns us here is not the delineation of the features of sociology with a loving and time-consuming attention to the precise form and place of each distinguishing mark, in order to distinguish rigidly between, for instance, history and sociology. Rather our concern is with those features of sociology that might justifiably claim to constitute a distinctive approach to the study of social problems. The case can rest on such specifically sociological concepts as those of the social relation and social structure. It is these concepts that most readily establish the contribution of sociology to the understanding of social problems compared with that of psychology and social administration. These disciplines play an important part in the study of social problems, but there has been a tendency, particularly in the case of psychology, to assume that social problems can be most easily understood in terms of the actions of maladjusted individuals. The influence of psychological maladjustment is considerable, but we cannot simply assume that psychological factors are always primary. Ideally, we should perhaps hope for a combined sociological and psychological understanding of social problems, but this assumes that we are relatively clear about the distinctive nature of each approach.

Social relations

The most fruitful discussion of social relations is to be found in Weber (1962). He begins with a consideration of social conduct. This is seen essentially as conduct orientated towards the conduct of others, whether this is in the past, the present or the future. The others to whom we are orientated may be known or unknown or they may constitute an indefinite quantity. As an example of this last possibility Weber cites the exchange of money. In this activity an individual’s conduct is based on the expectation that in the unspecified future numerous but unknown and undertermined ‘others’ will accept money as a means of exchange. The definition of social conduct offered is very wide, but not every kind of conduct can properly be described as social; there are limits. Conduct is non-social if it is orientated exclusively to the behaviour of inanimate objects; subjective attitudes are to be considered as social behaviour only if they are orientated to the behaviour of others. The social character is not bestowed on every type of contact between human beings, but only where the individual’s conduct is meaningfully related to that of others.

On the basis of this idea of social conduct Weber proceeds to characterise the social relation or social relationship. He states that ‘the term “social relationship” will be used to designate the situation where two or more persons are engaged in conduct wherein each takes account of the behaviour of the other in a meaningful way and is therefore orientated in these terms. The social relationship thus consists of the probability that individuals will behave in some meaningfully determinable way’ (p. 63). This is a general characterisation of the social relationship, but the content of any particular relationship will, of course, vary. ‘Its content may be most varied: conflict, hostility, sexual attraction, friendship, loyalty or market exchange; it may involve the “fulfilment” or “evasion” or “severance” of an agreement; economic, erotic, or any other form of “competition”; a sharing of occupations or membership in the same class or nation’ (p. 63).

The idea of the expectation of social action is in itself significant, but two important points need to be kept in mind. The first is that the social relation is not itself directly observable. The phenomena that are observable, and from which the existence of a social relation may be deduced, have been listed as follows by Rex (1961, p. 53):

(1)the actor’s purpose or interest,

(2)his expectations of ‘the other’s’ behaviour,

(3)the other’s purposes and the actor’s knowledge of them,

(4)the norms which the actor knows the other accepts,

(5)the other’s desire to win and keep the actor’s approval.

Secondly, it must not be assumed that in every or even in most cases there will be complete and harmonious reciprocity between the actor and the other. Weber himself stated—and more weight should have been given to this—’A social relationship in which the attitudes are completely and fully oriented toward each other is really a marginal case’ (Weber, p. 65).

The concept of the social relationship directs our attention to important areas in the study of social problems. It helps us to see that society is not somehow a total phenomenon set over and against ‘the individual’, and that the individual is in dynamic interaction with other social beings and not simply responding to overwhelming pressure or moulding some inert environmental mass. The concept also helps us to distinguish a specifically sociological contribution from that of the student of social administration. If we take the question of money, already mentioned, we shall find that whereas the psychologist may be interested in its symbolic significance, or the development of attitudes towards money in particular groups (e.g. children), the student of social administration is characteristically concerned with the distribution of income. This concern arises primarily from an interest in the incomes, assumed inadequate, of the ‘underprivileged’. Data on the national income is collected not so much in order to understand the social system—for example, how money comes to be associated with privilege and how privilege shows itself in a particular society—but in order to demonstrate unfairness and to show how those who are unfairly treated might be compensated. If income was ever equitably redistributed the interest of the student of social administration would shift. If he were to persist in his study on the grounds that such a redistribution would be impermanent, this would demonstrate clearly that he was working on certain assumptions about his society, which would require closer investigation. It is these assumptions that are the sociologist’s centre of interest. For the sociologist data on the distribution of income is but a starting point for exploring the positions in the system of the social relations of production of individuals with incomes of varying size.

This kind of difference between sociology and social administration can be illustrated from a fairly recent study of so-called ‘problem families’ (Wilson, 1962). This work describes very well the economic pressures on the ‘problem family’, and advocates certain changes in such matters as the policy of the National Assistance Board. Yet the factors influencing the families are judged primarily from a humanitarian viewpoint which, valid though it may be, has no necessary place in sociology. Sociology today often appears to provide a moral criticism of society in terms which seem to be more or less acceptable to the age, but when it is most moral it is in danger of being least sociological, since it is often using unexamined assumptions about the society in which it is situated. In this study of the problem family data on family budgets, on income and on such facts as the handicap of one or both marriage partners are important from the viewpoint of administrative action, but the pattern of social relations in this data is left uninvestigated.

Social facts

Yet, when due allowance is made for the importance of social relationships and for their complexity, must it not be admitted that such relationships occur between individuals, and that in the last analysis societies are nothing but groups of individuals? If this is the case, should we not look to psychology for our basic understanding of people and, therefore, of their problems? Some sociologists have based their denial of this position on the existence of ‘social facts’ that exist independently of any individuals influenced by them. Durkheim, for example, argued strongly for social facts as a distinct class of facts that constituted the social determinants of behaviour, and were external from the point of view of the actor. He spoke, for example, of ‘currents of opinion’ as social facts. ‘Currents of opinion, with an intensity varying according to the time and place, impel certain groups either to more marriages, for example, or to more suicides, or to a higher or lower birth rate etc. These currents are plainly social facts. At first sight they seem inseparable from the forms they take in individual cases. But statistics furnish us with a means of isolating them’ (italics not original) (Durkheim, 1894). The concept of ‘social facts’ is a way of referring to the sociological determinants of behaviour, but the search for such facts existing independently of all individuals in a society can hardly hope to be fruitful. As Rex (1961) has suggested, the social determinants of behaviour are external from the point of view of the actor whose actions are being explained, but they are not external to all individuals.

Social structure

Perhaps a more fruitful way of expressing the idea of sociological determinants is to think not so much of the individual (the individual is after all a highly complex and abstract concept), but of the various positions that he comes to occupy in any society, and of the different and often competing groups of which he is a member. The positions or roles that a person occupies are to be found in any society in significant clusters which we call institutions. These social institutions and the most important groups in a society constitute a society’s social structure, which, to use a phrase of the Webbs (1932, p. 17), ‘can be known and described as such, irrespective of the human beings whom it concerns, though not without them’. It is this idea of social structure that often distinguishes the work of the sociologist from that of the psychologist or social psychologist. For instance, Klein (1965, Vol. II, p. 631) sums up the position in society of the deprived or submerged group as follows: ‘The characteristic culture patterns of other levels of the society will not have had any great direct effect on the individuals of this sub-culture, though of course their unfortunate position is maintained by the general social and economic arrangements of the total society’ (italics not original). In fact the position of these individuals as deprived or submerged can only be understood in relation to some notion of the structure of their society. Relationships are moreover likely to exist on a two-way basis between a submerged section or group and other groups and social institutions. A similar kind of criticism has been raised in connection with the important psychological study, ‘The Authoritarian Personality’ (Hyman and Skeatsley, 1954). The argument of this work was that a person’s political, economic and social convictions form a coherent pattern which is the expression of deep-seated personality traits. In particular, the personality structure which gives rise to anti-minority sentiments is derived from actual early family experiences. These sentiments, it is argued, could not be derived solely from such external factors as social status, group membership or religion. It has been suggested, with some plausibility, that the sample on which the study was based enabled the investigators to discount the social, cultural and personality differences associated with social class differences, and that the complexity of social structure was reduced in the study to a question of membership of a few groups.

Criticisms of this kind, however, should not be taken to imply that a sociological is somehow better than a psychological approach. Each has a distinctive contribution to make. Yet the social determinants of behaviour must always be recognised. Even Freud noted the influence of social class factors, though he did not develop much curiosity about them. He described (Freud, 1935, p. 308–9) what he considered to be the differential results of mutual sex play on two children, one the child of the caretaker and the other of the owner of the house. The final result/wrote Freud, ‘will be very different in the two children. The caretaker’s daughter will continue masturbation, perhaps up to the onset of menstruation, and then give it up without difficulty … she will be unharmed by the premature sexual activity, free from neurosis, and able to live her life. Very different is the result in the other child. She will very soon, while yet a child, acquire sense of having done wrong; after a fairly short time, she will give up the masturbatory satisfaction, though perhaps only with a tremendous struggle, but will nevertheless retain an inner feeling of subdued depression. … When the time comes for a man to choose her as a wife, the neurosis will break out and cheat her out of marriage and the joy of life.’ The story suggests the importance of class differences in child rearing, but it should not be supposed that the ways of bringing children up can be easily changed or manipulated. Argyle, for example, in a recent study (1964, p. 117) suggests that ‘If society encouraged some kinds of child-rearing technique and discouraged others, it would be possible to have fewer delinquents and mental patients and a greater number of happy, effective and creative individuals.’ This, however, neglects the complex connections between child-rearing techniques and the structure of any society, and underrates the extent to which society becomes, as it were, a component of personality not just in the individual’s so-called formative years, but throughout his life. The way in which society plays its part in the inner life of the individual can be seen in the following brief extract from Virginia Woolf (A Writer’s Diary, p. 324–25). ‘I’m loosely anchored. Further, the war—our waiting while the knives sharpen—has taken away the outer wall of security. No echo comes back. I have no summer drugs. … Those familiar circumlocutions—those standards—which have for so many years given back an echo and so thickened my identity are all wide and wild as the desert now.’

Social problems

If each reader of this book made a short list of the most serious contemporary social problems and then compared it with the lists of, say, half a dozen others, he would probably discover important differences in priority. Some would place delinquency, for example, above mental illness, and vice versa. He wo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• General editor's introduction
• Table of Contents
• 1 Sociology and social problems
• 2 Sociological approaches to social problems
• 3 Sociology and crime
• 4 Sociology and mental illness
• 5 The family and social problems
• 6 Summary and suggestions for further reading
• Bibliography