Summary: Social Problems: A Down To Earth Approach | 9781292039862 | James M Henslin

Read the summary and the most important questions on Social Problems: a down to earth approach | 9781292039862 | James M. Henslin

• 1 How sociologists view social problems: the abortion dilemma

• Explain why common sense is not adequate to understandsocial problems.

  The short answer for why common sense is not adequate is that some of our ideas are built on faulty assumptions. For example, a commonsense idea is that abortion is a last resort.
  For some women, it is, of course, but this is not always the case. Soviet Russia provides a remarkable example. In the Soviet Union, abortion was a major means of birth control, and the average Russian woman used to have six abortions in her lifetime

• Describe the contributions that sociologist can make in studying social problems.

  1. Sociologists can measure objective conditions
  2. Sociologists can measure subjective concerns
  3. Sociologists can apply the sociological imagination
  4. Sociologists can identify possible social policies
  
  5. Sociologists can evaluate likely consequences of social policies

• Why can sociologists predict about groups but not individuals

  Because social location makes a difference in attitudes/behaviours but in any individual case it is impossible to know the consequences of those influences.

• What is social location

  Where you are located in society. E.g. City, sex, gender, etnicity, health, age. You are surrounded by particular ideas, beliefs and expectations

• What is sociological imagination:

  framework of thought that looks at the broad social context that shapes people's experiences.
  Looking at people's actions and attitudes in the context of the social forces that shape them.

• What is a social problem

  Objective conditions with subjective concerns

• What are the 4 stages of a social problem:

  1. The beginning: pressures for change
  defining the problem
  emergence of leaders
  initial organization
  
  2. The official response
  reactions to the growing pressure
  reprisal (retaliation), condemnation (expression of very strong disapproval), accommodation (settlement), cooptation
  
  3. Reacting to the official response
  taking sides
  acts of approval and disapproval
  further divisions of dissident (a person who disagrees with official policy) elements    
  
  4. Alternative strategies
  continuing controversy
  new strategies to overcome the opposition

• 2 Interpreting social problems: aging

  This is a preview. There are 6 more flashcards available for chapter 2
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• Identify the three major theoretical frameworks that sociologists use to interpret social problems.

  Functionalism, Symbolic interactionism, conflict theory.

• What is a theory:

  How two er more concepts (or facts) such as age/suicide, are related

• What is a manifest and latent (dys)function:

  Manifest: an action that is intended to help some part of the system. E.g. Social security is intended to help elderly.
  
  Latent: consequences that help some part of the social system but were not intended for that purpose.
  
  Latent dysfunction: the consequences of people's actions that disrupt a system's equilibrium usually are unintended. E.g. Social security administration has thousands of rules, designed to anticipate every potential situation. If the employees were to follow these instructions exactly, it would interfere with the ability to serve the elderly. (festival example, people late for work because of traffic to festival)