for most of us it's not it's not terribly difficult to come up with examples of social problems we can start with crime hunger racism sexism violence terrorism global warming and on and on the study of social problems on the surface seems pretty simple but in fact as we will see in this class it is a bit more complicated and is actually a process we can observe and analyze at first it seems like defining the problems should be so easy we could all just come up with a quick list we all know what the problems are
right so let's take hunger for example but when we really start to examine hunger as a social problem we have to start asking questions like who's hungry where are they hungry what conditions do they live in that make them hungry these are all elements that shape how we define hunger as a social problem interestingly the problem of hunger is often characterized differently in the us than in other countries in the us we often see it as an individual or personal problem rather than a social issue related to larger structural conditions or maybe let's say let's
take crime for example we often only consider one type of crime when identifying crime as a social problem street crime right but white collar crime is also a form of crime that is pervasive throughout society and in fact has much more widespread impacts because it is typically systematic and built into everyday practice policies and practices in fact aspects of white-collar crime are many times considered just the normal business practice the defining of crime as a problem or not also becomes complicated in that it serves so many functional purposes in our society in some ways our
definition of crime provides us with a sense of what is right and wrong but also uh but crime also provides jobs to those who work in criminal justice if it just went away then those jobs and industries might too creating another problem which is worse than crime or joblessness in defining problems it would be very convenient to be able to simply create a list that reflects social conditions or patterns of behavior that have negative consequences in the world this is more of an objectivist approach to social problems and is convenient because we have a definition
of what is bad and we can look for it however this approach is limited due to the fact that not all harmful conditions are always identified as social problems sexism racism and homophobia have not always been considered a social problem in the us and they are not considered problems still in many countries around the world in fact many people in the us today may not see these as problems at all but rather as natural or functional ways of life secondly people may people seem to disagree about why certain conditions are harmful while many of us
might see healthcare in the u.s as a social problem we may disagree about why healthcare is a mess in this country thus a more comparative cross-cultural and subjectivist approach allows us to examine the complexity of social problems in a more truthful manner this approach allows us to explore social problems in terms of people's subjective sense that something is or isn't a problem we will notice that people disagree about whether it is or is not a social problem and why we can notice that problems vary across time and place as well for example consider this gallup
poll data comparing americans attitudes about what they regard as serious social problems in 1935 and in 2012 some are similar but some are different but either way we can see that the attitudes about what constitutes serious problems varies across time in this country so one way of characterizing the process of defining social problems is in this graphic provided by robert heiner in an attempt to provide some type of objective criteria for a sociologist to study subjective phenomena he states a social problem is a phenomenon regarded as bad or undesirable by a significant number of people
or a number of significant people he is utilizing the social constructionist perspective to inform the subjectivist approach here because he suggests that social problem construction is a dynamic process rooted in social interactions looking at the graphic a is the grid in the background which represents the larger set of social structures that we all exist within it is essentially the social rules and relationships that we are in many ways bound to and live within b is the problem or a potential social problem interestingly b is a social phenomenon while harmful or good is not a problem
until it is defined as good or bad by c c is a person group of people or organization that is suggesting that b is a problem c is making claims about b that affect how the rest of the people in the larger social structure or a feel about it c can be a significant number of people or just a small number of significant or powerful people for us in this class we are trying to understand and study social problems we are d the sociologist that is attempting to examine this process of how b becomes defined
as a problem by others within the context of a or the larger social world or social structures i hope now that you can see that there aren't just problems but that problems are socially constructed ideas that vary across time and place and depending upon the depending upon the influence of those who are defining them and the strength of the claims they're making
