SOCIAL PROBLEMS: A DOWN-TO-
EARTH APPROACH
H1: HOW SOCIOLOGISTS VIEW SOCIAL
PROBLEMS: THE ABORTION DILEMMA
The Sociological Imagination
Social imagination = looking at people’s actions and attitudes in the
context of the social forces that shape them
Must understand our historical period and the social forces that are
sweeping the time in which we live
Personal troubles = the problems we experience
o HOW connected to the broader conditions of our society
ALSO sociological perspective
Helps us to see how larger social forces influence our personal lives
Levels of social context:
- Broad includes historical events
o EX war and peace, economic booms and busts, depression,
and prosperity
- Narrow includes gender, race-ethnicity, religion, and social class
- Personal relationships with family, friends, or co-workers
Social location = where you are located in society
Physical and personal characteristics
o EX neighborhood, education, sex, race-ethnicity, age, health,
and marital status
Central to our relationships with other people
Social Location
Sociologist can use social location to predict group behavior but not
individual behavior
BECAUSE groups do follow well-traveled social avenues
What Is a Social Problem?
Social problems = aspect of society that a large number of people are
concerned about and would like changed
Socially constructed people decide if some condition of society is
or is not a social problem
Two essential components:
- Objective condition = a condition of society that can be measured or
experienced
o EX abortion: whether abortions are legal, who obtains them,
and under what circumstances
- Subjective concern = the concern that a significant number of
people have about the objective condition
, o EX abortion: concerned that women give birth to unwanted
children, or concerned that women terminate their
pregnancies
Social problems are relative
Value = belief about whether something is good or bad
BECAUSE peoples values contrast so sharply that it becomes
difficult for people to communicate with one another
EX abortion: a mother murders a baby – an individual exercising her
rights by removing a fetus
Society is filled with competing, contrasting, and conflicting groups
Whose definition of a social problem wins?
o Answer power = the ability to get your way despite
resistance
The Natural History of Social Problems: Four Stages
Four stages through which social problems evolve:
1. Pressures for Change
o Defining the problem
= a shift in outlook, a questioning of something that
people had taken for granted
OFTEN comes about when values change, making
an old, established pattern no longer look the
same
o Emergence of leaders
= leaders emerged who helped to crystallize the issues
o Initial organization
= concentrating on influential people organized
leaders in medicine, business, politics, religion,
education, and the media
2. The Official Response
o Reactions to the growing pressure
o Reprisal, condemnation, accommodation, cooptation
3. Reacting to the Official Response
o Taking sides
o Acts of approval and disapproval
o Further divisions of dissident elements
4. Alternative Strategies
o Continuing controversy
o New strategies to overcome the opposition
Campaigning, lobbying lawmakers, and publicizing their
position
The Role of Sociology in Social Problems
Sociology = the systematic and objective study of human groups
5 contributions that sociologists can make:
1. Sociologists can measure objective conditions
, o EX number of abortions in clinics and hospitals
AND how women make their decisions to have or to not
have an abortion
2. Sociologists can measure subjective concerns
o = can determine people’s attitudes and views about social
problems
o Useful in evaluating potential social policies
3. Sociologists can apply the sociological imagination
o = they can place social problems into their broad social
context
o EX abortion is related to people’s ideas about individual
freedom and privacy, sexuality and sex roles, and when life
begins
4. Sociologists can identify possible social policies
o = sociologists can suggest potential courses of action for
public and private agencies, educational programs, public
awareness campaigns, and legal changes
5. Sociologists can evaluate likely consequences of social policies
o = sociologists can estimate the social effects of a proposed
social policy
o EX abortion: they can estimate how a policy might affect the
birthrate, population growth, crime rate, and expenditures for
welfare and education
Sociology and Common Sense
Common sense = the ideas common to our society (or to some group
within our society)
NOT adequate to understand social problems
o BECAUSE some of our ideas are built on faulty assumptions
EX abortion is a last resort
EX women who don’t want to get pregnant use birth
control
EX women who have abortions did not intend to get
pregnant
H2: INTERPRETING SOCIAL PROBLEMS: AGING
Socialogical Theories and Social Problems
Theory = explains how two or more concepts (or “facts”), are related
Such as age and suicide
Gives us a framework for organizing “facts”
o Provides a way of interpreting those “facts” of social life
Three main theories that sociologists use:
o Each theory is like a spotlight shining into a dark room it
illuminates only a particular part of that room
Taken together, these theories throw more light on a
social problem dan does one by itself
FUNCTIONALIS CONFLICT SYMBOLIC
, M THEORY INTERACTIONI
SM
WHAT IS A social system Groups People’s
SOCIETY? composed of competing with patterns of
parts that work each other behavior; always
together to within the same changing
benefit the social system
whole
WHAT ARE THE Structure Competition Symbols
KEY TERMS? Function Conflict Interaction
System Special interests Communication
Equilibrium Power Meanings
Goals Exploitation Definitions
WHAT IS A The failure of The inevitable Whatever a
SOCIAL some part to outcome of group decides is
PROBLEM? fulfil its action interest groups a social problem
(dysfunctioning), competing for for that group
which interferes limited
with the smooth resources
functioning of
the system
HOW DOES Some part of the Authority and One set of
SOMETHING system fails, power are used definitions
BECOME A usually because by the power to becomes
SOCIAL of rapid social exploit weaker accepted;
PROBLEM? change groups competing views
are rejected
Functionalism and Social Problems
Functionalism (functional analysis) = functionalists compare society to a
self-adjusting machine
Each part of the machine has a function
o When a part is working properly, it fulfills that function, and
the machine hums along
When a part is working properly, it contributes to the
well-being (stability or equilibrium) of the other parts
Dysfunctions = failures of society, that don’t always work properly
o Can be minor, and soon resolved
o BUT if dysfunctions linger, they can create problems for other
parts of society
!! this is what a social problem is from the functionalist
perspective – the failure of some part of society, which
then interferes with society’s smooth functioning
EX agency’s rules can delay the benefits that people need or
prevent elderly people with medical problems from receiving health
care
The Development of Functionalism
August Comte
