Debating Social Problems

Leonard A. Steverson, Jennifer E. Melvin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138309609
• eBook ISBN: 9781351388658
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

Debating Social Problems emphasizes the process of debate as a means of addressing social problems and helps students engage in active learning. The debate format covers sensitive material in a way that encourages students to talk about this material openly in class. This succinct text includes activities that promote critical thinking and includes examples from current events.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge all the people who assisted us in this endeavor, including the helpful staff at Flagler College who supported the project, especially the tolerant employees of Proctor library. We would also like to thank the students in our sociology courses, past and present, who continue to inspire and motivate our pedagogy. We especially wish to thank Meghan Durrance for assistance in the preparation of the manuscript; without her watchful eye this text would lack its cohesion and acuity. And of course, we wish to offer our heartfelt appreciation to our families for the support and comfort they provided during the preparation of the text.

CHAPTER 1
Understanding Social Problems through Debate

Key Terms

• Application of Sociological Knowledge
• Debate
• Social Problems
• Sociological Imagination
• Sociological Research
• Sociological Theory
• Sociology

The Discipline of Sociology

Suppose we are concerned about one of the myriad social problems—or some or several of them— that exist in the world today (and hopefully we are). We would first need some understanding of human activities, human interactions, and human motivation. We would need to look at the internal forces (originating in the individual), and external forces (originating in the social environment), that are the causes or contributors to the social problems under study. The discipline of sociology is primarily concerned with the latter—the external or environmental aspects of the problem—however, if we use our sociological imaginations (to be discussed soon), we also seek to understand the relationship between these two forces. Before we begin with our discussion on some of the various social problems, we need to gain a better understanding of the social science discipline known as sociology. Since many people do not take sociology in high school, many students do not really understand this field of study.

Sociology is “the scientific study of social behavior and human groups” (Schaefer 2014:2). The main concern of this discipline is with understanding social life and the complex interactions that occur between the smallest social ordering of people (called a dyad) to entire cultures. Therefore, sociology covers a wide expanse of human relationships. As a social science discipline, it has as its siblings: anthropology (the study of cultures past and present), psychology (the study of individual mental processes), political science (the study of power and governmental systems), economics (the

Sociology the scientific study of social behavior and human groups from micro to macro levels of analysis.

study of the management of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services) and even history (the study of key human events and people of the past), along with other relatives such as social work, criminal justice, and others.

Although the study of social life began long before, in the nineteenth century early social philosophers such as St. Simon, Herbert Spencer, and Auguste Comte sought to make their observations more scientific. It was Comte who gave sociology its name, a strange mix of the Latin socio (from socius or “companion”) and the Greek logos (“the study of”). These social philosophers and theorists, including Alexis de Tocqueville and Karl Marx, studied the major issues of society, primarily resulting from the problems associated with industrialization. The principal perspective taken by these thinkers involved an understanding of the cohesive elements that maintain social order on one hand, and the forces that push society to developmentally evolve on the other (Rubington and Weinburg 1989)—in other words, the great social thinkers were concerned with the issues of order versus progress.

From its beginnings in Europe, sociology has sought to explain social life, especially in times of trouble, turmoil, and of course, revolution. In America, sociology got its intellectual start in Chicago, a city that experienced an amazing population swell in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of these people were immigrants of other countries who brought with them their languages and other cultural traditions which created some major communication problems. Mixed with the advent of rapidly advancing industrialization, Chicago became a unique city which was of much concern to people whose job it is to study, understand, and act for social change where needed.

As it can easily be seen, periods of social change or unrest create conditions in which some trained analysts of society attempt to organize their observations in meaningful ways to better understand social phenomena. These people are sociologists. Wars, economic depressions, social movements involving race and gender, and a host of social changes has caused sociology to grow and change (for a discussion of the stages of changes in American sociology, see Rubington and Weinburg 1989).

In his very early text on social problems, a definition of sociology was offered by Ellwood (1935:3): “the science which deals with human association, its origin, development, forms and functions”. A more recent definition is “the scientific study of social behavior and human groups. It focuses primarily on the influence of social relationships on people’s attitudes and behavior and on how societies are established and change” (Schaefer 2014:3). This latter definition, the one preferred by the authors of this text, reflects the discipline’s wide focus: from the personal relationships of a two-person group (a dyad) to the cultural practices of whole societies. It is this variance that makes sociology both interesting and sometimes hard to grasp.

Sociologist Kai Erikson (1997) notes the difficulties in providing a definition for the discipline, a problem that others such as philosophy, history, psychology, and others do not seem to have, at least to the same degree. A reason for this, according to Erikson, is that sociologists view our own discipline not as much as a body of knowledge of social life but as a perspective of viewing social life. In other words, sociologists’ training, which has encouraged us to look critically at aspects of society, has also created a rather ambiguous way of defining our own discipline. Despite this unease, the study of sociology is fascinating and it allows us to grasp the complex world in which we live.

Sociologist Peter Berger (1963:23) declared that “the sociologist travels at home—sometimes with surprising results”, suggesting that we can learn a great deal about one’s current social surroundings by simply observing them from the perspective of a stranger, eliminating (as much as is possible) the constrictive lens that illuminate our preconceptions of the world. By looking beneath the “facades”, we can begin to better understand the inner workings of social life.

A contemporary sociologist, George Ritzer, sees his role as that of a “social geologist”, a scientist that drills beneath the surface to uncover nuggets of understanding that provide some insight into the hidden aspects of social life that are often not fully analyzed. He also notes the usefulness of approaching sociology as a “social archaeologist” that uses “historical perspectives” to better understand the field (Ritzer 1994:1–5).

Simply put then, the goal of sociology is to better understand social life with the hope that this understanding will lead to methods to improve it. Achieving this goal requires uncovering hidden aspects of society, aspects that are difficult to observe due to our own experiences and understandings of the social world. Certain tools are needed in this endeavor such as intellectual drills that dig beneath the surface, devices to see through walls, surveillance equipment, and vivid imaginations.

It was C. Wright Mills (Mills 1959) who coined the term sociological imagination to refer to a way of seeing how personal problems can be viewed from a broader social perspective. To understand the concept of marital problems, for example, one must understand how gender and economic inequality on a much broader social scale might contribute to an individual couple who are experiencing personal difficulties. According to Mills, an understanding between personal troubles (at the micro level) and social issues (at the macro level) must be attained for any real knowledge of a subject to occur.

Sociological Imagination a tool to understand society by analyzing how personal problems can be viewed from a broader social perspective.

Theory, Research, and Application the Building Blocks of Sociological Knowledge

Sociology is still concerned with all the aspects of social life that intrigued, and in many cases, confounded, the early theorists. In their attempts to understand society, the social philosophers and early social theorists developed different perspectives, or theories, in their analyses of social phenomena. The three major approaches to sociological theory that emerged were structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Sociological Theory a complex framework of ideas based on explaining social phenomena. The three major sociological theories are structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Sociological Theory

Structural Functionalism

Structural functionalism, referred to by some sociologists as simply functionalism, is founded on the observation that society is in many ways analogous to an organism or machine, which has various internal and interdependent parts that make up the whole. Another analogy is the human body; the human body is comprised of separate but mutually dependent parts, i.e., the heart, liver, lungs, and skin. Society is considered “healthy” if the parts are providing their various purposes, or “functions”. Functional parts of society that have prescribed purposes are the social institutions—the economy, the government, education, families, and religion. Some proponents of structural functionalism include August Comte, considered by many to be the “father of sociology”; Herbert Spencer, originator of the concept of survival of the fittest; Emile Durkheim, and Talcott Parsons.

An important component of structural functionalist theory was created by Robert K. Merton who distinguished between functions—those aspects of society that contribute to maintaining cohesion and order and dysfunctions—the aspects that undermine social stability. Merton noted how functions and dysfunctions have both manifest and latent properties: manifest refers to those properties of functions and dysfunctions that are easy to observe and are usually intended, and latent refers to the properties that are harder to observe and that are often unintended. Therefore, as an example, a manifest function of the internet would be the ease in getting information very rapidly while a manifest dysfunction would be incorrect or inappropriate material that could be received; a latent function of the internet would be the jobs that are created in the high-tech industry (which one day will be considered low-tech) and a latent function would be that as hardware changes, the old, outdated products will frequently end up in a landfill. Virtually all aspects of society can be viewed from this matrix and it can be a valuable tool in the development of a sociological imagination in studying social problems. This model is especially useful in our approach which uses a dialectic perspective that helps us to argue the sides of a debate; therefore, it is a key component of this text.

Conflict Theory

Conflict theory, sometimes called social conflict theory, is another sociological perspective, and is rooted in the idea that some people in society create and perpetuate a social system in which they obtain and maintain power. Society is then split into the “haves” who have the power through greater access to social, economic, and political resources, and the “have nots” who lack this access. The haves try to maintain control and advantage and the have nots seek to attain equality. Therefore, class, racial, and gender distinctions (among others), create an unequal society—a veritable ball of conflict.

Along with its offshoot critical theory, conflict theory is important in understanding social phenomena from the perspective that power struggles are inherent as different groupings of people attempt to coexist. Conflict theorists point out that inequities must be rectified to promote a just society, therefore they maintain a vigilant focus on the issue of power differentials. Conflict theorists often have an element of activism in their approach as social change toward equality is a priority in their theorizing. Conflict theorists such as Karl Marx, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, W.E.B. Du Bois, and C. Wright Mills focused on the inequalities of society and promote measures to rectify them.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism, sometimes referred to as simply interactionism and the last of the “Big Three” sociological theories, is a theoretical position that uses a micro level of analysis (as opposed to the macro level approach of the structural/functionalists and conflict theorists) to understand society. Proponents of this perspective pay close attention to how the individual person is affected by the larger social systems. For example, social class distinctions often create labels for individuals th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Index