Understanding Social Problems

Social Problems

• Perspective is key when determining social problems, as what's true for one person may not be true for another.
• C. Wright Mills differentiated between personal troubles and public issues.
• Public issues impact large numbers of people and are matters of public debate.
• Personal troubles affect individuals and their immediate surroundings.
• A social problem exists if an influential group defines a condition as threatening its values, and affects a large number of people. Dumping iron smelting waste into poor people's yards is an example.
• A condition can be remedied by collective action, illustrating a social problem.
• The sociological imagination helps understand the relationship between personal lives and surrounding social forces.
• Four main causes of social problems include:
  • Social conditions leading to the emergence of social problems.
  • Deviation from a norm.
  • Social institutions.
  • Social and cultural diversity.
  • Power

Causes, Consequences and Solutions

• Social problems are inherently social in their causes, consequences, and solutions.
• Objective and Subjective Realities:
  • Social problems have both, with objective conditions being verifiable by impartial observers.

History and Identification

• Social problems develop through distinct stages over time instead of arising fully formed immediately.
• "Problem consciousness" is needed within certain groups to identify a problem.
• Spector and Kitsuse's social problem model can be tested on an exam.
• The model includes 4 stages :
  • Transformation.
  • Legitimation.
  • Conflict.
  • Alternative Strategies

Three Levels of Study

• Social problems can be examined at three levels: meso, macro, and micro.
• Functionalism views society as interworking parts contributing to a whole.
• Conflict theory views society based on whatever society deems valuable.
• Interactionism (symbolic) views the world as created through social interactions, where norms are set.
• The functionalist perspective sees society as a system of interrelated elements contributing to the whole's operation.
• Robert K. Merton distinguished between manifest functions (planned actions), latent functions (unplanned positive results), and dysfunctions (unplanned negative results).
• Manifest functions: planned actions
• Latent function: unplanned positive results
• Latent dysfunction: unplanned negative results

Causality and Solutions

• Causality involves correlation, temporal/time sequence, and nonspuriousness.
• Reliability and Validity:
  • Reliability is consistency; validity is accuracy.
• Five solutions to social problems:
  • Prevention.
  • Intervention.
  • Social reform.
  • Reconstruction.
  • Alleviating conséquences.

Stopping Awareness

• The information deficit model assumes awareness leads to action.
• Awareness campaigns can reach the wrong audience or lead to backlash.
• Four ways to prevent backlash:
  • Target audience narrowly.
  • Create compelling messages with clear calls to action.
  • Develop a theory of change and use the right messenger.

Social Change

• Sociology points out societal problems, but lacks the action to resolve them?
• Three myths of behavior change:
  • Education will change behavior.
  • You need to change attitudes to change behavior.
  • People know what motivates their behavior.
• Effective strategies:
  • How information is presented matters, making it tangible and personalized. Personalizing information with homeowners can make a change.
  • Attitudes follow behavior; understanding values is more effective than changing attitudes.

Declaring War on Social Problems

• Attractions of declaring war: naming an enemy, rallying citizens, uniting front, mobilizing resources.
• Downsides of declaring war: complexity, defining victory, duration, breakdown of unity.

Poverty: A Nation of Contrasts

• The U.S. shows a "nation of contrasts" in wealth distribution.
• Life chances are opportunities shaped by class, status, and power, and access to resources relates to ones access to equal opportunity.
• Colonial Era: There were small communities that provided Acts of personal kindness.
• Early Industrial Era: There were Negative attitudes toward the poor alongside the scientific charity movement.

Responding to Poverty

• Twentieth Century issues included the 1929 depression identified poverty as a social issue.
• The Great Depression unemployment rate was above 20% then.
• The Roosevelt administration addressed poverty with relief, recovery, and reform.
• Emergency relief provided cash payments and work projects.
• The 1935 Social Security Act established a national social insurance program, and old age survivors.
• Kennedy and Johnson administrations initiated programs such as food stamps, Medicare, and Medicaid.
• Johnson called the "war on poverty" a top priority.

Welfare Reform

• PRWORA-reduced cash assistance recipients but also increased homelessness.
• Many believed the poor were responsible due to culture of poverty and welfare dependency.
• Long-term TANF recipients unemployment stems from low cognitive functioning, mental illness, and physical disabilities.
• Entitlement programs provide benefits to those meeting prerequisites, but some, like Medicaid and food stamps (SNAP), are means tested.

Economic Inequality

• Trends increasing include
  • Competitive individualism and rising CEO pay
  • Counterarguments cite lacking links between company performance and CEO rewards.

Taxation and Poverty Definitions

• Taxes fund government operations, employee salaries, public projects, discourage behaviors, and redistribute income.
• Top 10% earners pay higher rates but receive fewer benefits.
• Absolute poverty is the inability to pay for essentials.
• Poverty relates to resource deprivation and uneven distribution.
• The poverty gap is actual income vs. the official poverty line.
• A cultural definition of poverty refers to why people failed to achieve higher income.
• A relative definition of poverty states people are poor relative to a standard shaped by lifestyles.

Extent and Characteristics of Poverty

• Absolute poverty is a fixed economic level.
• Within the demographics of those in poverty:
  • 1 in every US citizen is living in poverty
  • 70% are white.
  • Women suffer from feminization of poverty and get paid less.

Homelessness

• Homelessness is connected to retraction of social welfare and deinstitutionalization.
• It stems from
  • wage issues.
  • lack of affordable housing.
  • job suburbanization.

Race and Ethnicity

• The U.S. is considered a nation of immigrants
• A minority group's members :
  • Share physical/cultural traits.
  • Are denied power/resources.
  • Have reduced rights, privileges, opportunities.
• Race is a group believed to share genetic traits, but is a "well-founded fiction."

The Social Construction of Identity

• Ethnic groups share a common heritage, identity, and belongingness.
• The census has evolved in categorizing race,.
• From excluding those of Chinese descent , to the the establishment that those of Syrian descent were indeed

Relations and Concepts

• Concepts of Race and Ethnicity:
  • There is now a reduced dependency on the idea the US is a black and white country
• Patterns of Majority-Minority Interaction:
  • Patterns range from inhumanity rejection (genocide, population transfer, internal colonialism) to segregation.
  • Human acceptance includes assimilation and multiculturalism.

Racism

• Racism: involves the view that certain racial groups and discriminatory practices are justified
• Prejudice: it is a rigid belief about an entire category.
• Discrimination: it is an unequal treatment of categories:
  • Explicit bias.
  • Implicit bias.
  • Interpersonal/Institutional/Internalized/Structural/Aversive/Color-Blind.
  • Tokenistic fallacy.
  • Microaggression.
  • Othering.

Sources of Discrimination

• Ethnocentrism: the tendency to view one's group/culture as superior.
• Stereotype Content Model.
• Socialization:
  • When a child learns norms relevant to the culture can be primary, or secondary when socialization happens reinforced with society
• Authoritarian nature to cause prejudice
• Scapegoating - blaming troubles on an incapable group.

Exploitation and Division

• Split labor market: When a subordinate group benefits dominant groups
• Conflict theory focuses on change from the structure rather than the minority group
• Symbolic interactionism focuses on.
  • Contact hypothesis and stereotype threat.

specialized Theories

• Spatial mismatch: Movement led to the creation of postindustrial eras.
• Affirmative Action:
  • USSC ruled on the constitutionality of affirmative action that race will result in constitutionality or. Mechanical processes will result in a contradiction.

Women in the Workplace

• Gender wage gaps vary by state.
• The Motherhood Penalty: women lose pay at the birth of their children
• Judged to be less competent and less committed than non-mothers
• “Institutionalized” Assumptions include:
  • Workaholic culture (assumption that the ideal worker has no responsibilities outside of work).
  • Family structure
• There are numerous structures in the work and family such as gender labor