Sociology 36 hours

page 1

SOC 1020

Lecture 1
Prof. D. Fasenfest

Sociology is the systematic study of human society. When we look at society with a sociological
perspective, it means that we can see the “general in the particular” and the “strange in the
familiar”.

So, what does this mean exactly? Let’s say that I am interested in knowing what kinds of
clothing fashions are popular for 18-24-year-olds today. I could walk into any undergraduate
class and observe the ways that students dress. I could then make an educated guess that these
are the styles that are generally favored by young people. To be certain, I would also need to
see if young adults in the community dressed similarly. The class may only reflect what is worn
by college students. It stands to reason young adults would dress similarly across our culture
since they are all exposed to the same media, the same music, the same fashion magazines, etc.
We could also observe independent cultural differences across various social groups. For
example, is this an urban or rural community, a large or small city, a coastal or mountain area,
and does that matter. In the US there are very few styles that are 100% group specific.
Increasingly, we cannot even make any assumptions about gender based on how one is dressed.

Seeing the strange in the familiar requires you to step outside of your culture and look at it with a
new set of eyes. For example, think about the 4th Thursday in November (Thanksgiving). Walk
into nearly any household in the US and you will probably find a turkey on the table. There may
be other foods as well that are linked to family and/or cultural traditions, but turkey tends to be
front and center. Doesn’t it seem odd that nearly all of us sit down to practically identical meals
on that one day? And this practice is imbedded in our culture. How would you feel if you went
home on Thanksgiving and there was a pot roast or roasted lamb on the table?

Sociologists try to look at other cultures with a non-discriminatory eye. Each culture is equal,
though they may be different. Also, we try to look at our own society with a non-discriminatory
eye, recognizing what motivates and encourages our behaviors, without automatically assuming
that our ways are right, and all others are wrong.

Every human being is a social scientist. Think about the ways you navigate the world. You
collect data every day to negotiate the circumstances in which you find yourself. Social
interaction becomes a trial-and-error practice of working out situations. Unfortunately, while
this trial-and-error practice is very useful to our social survival, it is also the stuff that stereotypes
and generalizations are made of. When I ask students to describe the average alcoholic for me,
students invariably answer that they are dirty, unemployed, perhaps homeless, usually non-white,
always poor, and usually male. We tend to view alcoholics as homeless individuals, and we
typically feel the homeless are on the street because they have substance abuse issues. So, in
general, since this is the assumption we make based on the data that we’ve collected (i.e.
characters in the movie and in the media, the homeless people that we see who appear to be
either high or drunk, etc), we might draw the conclusion that alcoholics are worthless individuals
who are the living outcasts of society.

page 2

And this is where the study of sociology is useful. The individual collects data based on their
day-to-day experiences. This data is then interpreted from the perspective of that person’s values
and cultural beliefs. The sociologist however collects much more data from a wide range of
individuals, not just from personal experience. The data is then interpreted from the perspective
of a theoretical understanding of the social experience rather than the personal values and
opinions of the researcher.

When we broadly collect data on alcoholism, what we find is that most alcoholics are highly
educated, middle to upper class whites, especially males. Black females are the least likely to be
alcoholics and black males are the next lowest on the list. Data proves that our casual
assumptions about alcohol addiction are incorrect. When these statistics became well know,
alcoholism began to be classified as a disease rather than a failing of the individual. In fact, we
find through research that the poor and the working class have less money to spend on alcohol
and have more to lose in terms of employment loss if they drink to excess. Pre-dinner cocktails
are a habit of the wealthier in society, not the poor. Just think about all those soap operas that are
so popular—the rich and the beautiful always have a drink in their hand.

The sociological perspective helps us uncover the myths in informing our common sense. It asks
us to look at what we believe and question why we believe it. It challenges us to find data to
either support our beliefs or to disprove them. It also helps us to understand ourselves and others
better. It helps us to find opportunities and to avoid constraints. It helps us to actively participate
in making our society a better place for all of us to live and it helps us to not only encourage but
to thrive on diversity.

The Role of Theories in Understanding Society

Sociology, like many of the behavioral sciences, was born during the social changes wrought by
the Industrial Revolution. Imagine what it must have been like to live during this era. For the
first time, people began to take real control of the environment. The introduction of the steam
engine made geographical distances manageable. The telegraph, telephone and radio gave us
control of the airwaves and fostered communication. The ability to harness electricity gave us
control of time as we were able to extend our “daylight” through artificial means. While on the
surface, all of these changes were good, they took their toll on the social fabric.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, generations of families lived and died in the areas in which
they were born. Inheritance (even if it was only a claim on the family homestead) was typically
restricted to the oldest son and any younger brothers were expected to pursue other occupations
or means to survive. The introduction of factories however, provided new opportunities for
occupational choices and the promises of class mobility for the poor. People were drawn to
these factories for jobs. This meant leaving behind their families and their way of life.

Once in the cities, they were often met with severe poverty, unemployment, substandard and/or
inadequate housing and disease. The dramatic growth in the cities stressed the social and
physical infrastructure. Imagine, for example, if the population of Detroit more than quadrupled
over the next year with people looking for jobs. Not only would we not have the ability to

page 3

employ them, but we would also not have the ability to house them. Would the city’s sewers be
able to handle the growth in the population? Would our garbage collectors be able to keep the
litter from this population under control? And what sort of people would we encounter? [Erik
Larsen’s historical novel The Devil in the White City gives a good account of the chaos and feel
of Chicago as it grows rapidly in the new industrial era in turn of the century Chicago.]

Cities with low crime rates quickly became overcrowded. For every job, there might be 10 or
more applicants. For every apartment, there might be 5 families needing housing. The sewers
were not able to handle the waste. The city management couldn’t handle the increase in garbage
production. In the absence of hygiene and antibiotics (not to mention immunizations), disease
began to spread. There were multiple epidemics here and in Europe like Scarlett Fever,
Smallpox, Tuberculosis, Cholera, Typhoid, and Influenza, to name a few.

All these negative consequences caused society to do two things. First, there was the belief, as
we got closer to 1900, that these changes were apocalyptic. There was a growth in religion as
society attempted to manage the fear that life as we knew it was about to end. (Compare this to
our Y2K scare two decades ago…. once again, the fear is that our new technology is throwing us
into anarchy.) The second thing that happened is that philosophers began to look at society as a
growing, changing, living thing. They began to look at the consequences of these technological
changes on the social fabric. They began to develop theories to explain society.

For the purposes of this course these theories can be divided into three paradigms. The word
“paradigm” is borrowed from the biological sciences. It means “category” or “classification”.
For example, we know that an eagle, a sparrow, and a robin are all birds. Bird is the paradigm,
the category in which we classify animals is based on shared characteristics (feathers, wings,
they can fly, they lay eggs, etc). Likewise, social theories can be divided into the following
paradigms, based on their characteristics.

Structural Functionalism – This paradigm includes all theories that view society as a system of
structures or institutions, each with its own unique function. These structures work together to
promote solidarity and social growth.

Conflict Theory – these theories view society as an arena of inequality. These inequalities not
only create problems in society, but also provide the catalyst for social change.

Symbolic Interaction – these theories argue that we create society through our interactions with
other humans. Society is made up of individuals with a number of shared values and
expectations.

What follows provides a broad overview of each:

I. Structural Functionalism

While there are many theorists who provide a structural functionalist perspective on society, one
of the first was Emil Durkheim. Durkheim looked at the changes in society around the Industrial
Revolution as a series of birthing pains. He argued that this introduction of technology plus the

page 4

greater density and complexity of society had created a sense of “normlessness” or “anomie” in
society. This anomie meant that we no longer knew, as individuals within society, how to deal
with our day to day lives. Durkheim also argued that new technology created a need to develop
new norms and so there was a delay in society’s ability to stabilize. Furthermore, Durkheim
argued that the structures of society worked together to keep society stable. Social problems
occurred when old structures failed in new social realities, or when this state of anomie
prevented the structures from being able to function appropriately. After adjusting to these new
circumstances, he assumed new norms would emerge and institutions would work together to
develop and ensure stability once again.

There are common institutions in every society, though they may not appear or function in the
same manner everywhere. For example, medicine may mean hospitals and clinical intervention
to one society and traditional or herbal healing in another. However, these medical institutions
serve the same role in every community, providing for the health of the citizens. The common
institutions are Family; Religion; Education; Medicine; Government; Economy; Science;
Technology; The Media.

What we must consider is that as society changes, and as society gets more complex the
relationships and practices once considered appropriate might become a problem to some. This
will generate new rules and relationships that may or may not return society to some balance.
Consider the case of music as it represents the intersection of Technology and The Media.

Think of all the adolescents that were prosecuted for copyright violation for downloading free
music from the internet. Teens have shared music since the introduction of cassette taps with
dubbing capability. This was a normal expectation. With the spread of simple record players
and later tape decks it was each to share music with friends, though at first the quality wasn’t
good. You could sit in front of the speaker of the record player (or if you were clever figured out
how to redirect the speaker wire) and recorded your albums onto a tape recorder, or tape directly
from the radio. By the early 80s, double cassette players were introduced and became
affordable. Rather than an album, you could now purchase a cassette tape and dub it in the
second cassette deck, producing a very good copy of the music. Of course, today that quality is
even better and it’s quicker to share. It takes less than a minute to burn an entire copy of a music
CD. Finally, the Internet resulted in quick and easy access to music, and all along sharing the
music had never been a problem.

It became a problem when shareware began to show up on the Internet and people began to copy
entire CDs to these programs. Why is this a problem for some? Before the shareware, you
might burn one or two copies of your CDs for close friends. After shareware, tens of thousands
of downloads might be made of the CD that you upload to share. This creates an economic
problem for the music industry when a practice initially seen as free marketing and word of
mouth promotion of a group’s music (and thereby a boost to sales) because a large-scale by-
passing of the marketplace and the lost revenues that ensued.

Now we have this dysfunction that has created a problem, so we need the institutions of society
to band together to create and enforce a new norm of behavior. Economic institutions in the
economy initiate a complaint. The government is required to determine that copyright laws

page 5

apply and to enforce these laws. Parents are expected to enforce these values at home as well or
be held accountable if they don’t. Science and technology work together as many of these
download sites, such as Kaaza, are intentionally infected with a virus or implanted with a filter
that makes web access impossible. Technology is now being used to make copying a CD
difficult if not impossible. The media begins a campaign to inform young people that this is
illegal behavior and spells out the consequences of violating the rules. Legal sites, such as
Itunes, begin to show up to provide an affordable alternative to sharing music. You’ll notice that
not every institution is involved because they may not relate to the problem at hand. But in
theory, structures and systems have functioned to return this part of society to a semblance of
order and routine.

II. Conflict Theory

A criticism of structural functionalism is that it tends to see society as being correctly organized
and any disruption is a problem that will be addressed so to return society to this normal state.
Therefore, when a social problem occurs, it is because one of the institutions isn’t doing its job
or some change has created an anomaly. Conflict theorists, in contract, reject this out of hand,
saying that the fabric of society has intrinsic conflicts of interests by different segments of
society, and that power imbalances lead to social inequality.

Most conflict theories are based on the works of Karl Marx. Marx argued that each epoch in
social history was organized around some principle of production generating specific social and
political structures and institutions designed to reproduce and sustain that system. However,
Marx argued, each epoch had within it inherent contradictions, and as society grew more
complex and dealt with those contradictions the tension continued to build. In the end the
essential conflict would lead to a change in how society was organized.

Consider briefly feudal Europe. Marx argued that its primary organizing principles were
monopoly of power and agricultural production. As technological improvements in agriculture
led to more production those who controlled the instruments of power (local chieftains, lords,
nobility or royal families as the sphere of control get wider) appropriated as much of the
agricultural product as they could from farmers who, to varying degree, were forced to remain on
the land (serfs). This is a complex story that includes a discussion of the type of government
(monarchy) and religious institutions (Catholicism) designed to protect and reproduce the social
order and rationale for feudalism. Eventually, Marx argued, the limitations on the productive
forces and the inherent tensions within the system gave birth to a revolutionary force which
challenged the nature of production (from agriculture to manufacturing), the nature of
government (from monarchy to some form of democracy) and social institutions (for example
the Protestant Reformation in reaction to the Catholic Church). In other words, the NORMAL
functioning of one system gave rise to conditions that necessarily generates conflict, and under
the right conditions will lead to social change.

We can apply the same sort of analysis on capitalism, the system that followed, and was the
revolutionary force challenging, feudalism. To understand the fundamental lines of conflict and
crises that we can anticipate within capitalism Marx undertook a similar exploration of how the
system worked, what were the social and political institutions which supported and rationalized

page 6

that system, and whereas a consequence the tensions and conflict will emerge which will have
the potential for making a similar revolutionary change. For Marx every epoch is challenged by
a revolution—capitalism with its banner of freedom and democracy was just such a revolution (a
mild one is England, and a very bloody one in France).

To understand capitalism, we must understand how work became transformed from pre-capitalist
to capitalist society. Assume that you lived in a small agrarian village. You earn your living by
growing grain to take to the market. A cobbler earns his/her living by making shoes. How do
you manage the exchange of grain for shoes? In essence it is a marketplace like all
marketplaces. You barter…both giving a little more than you want and getting a little less that
you’d hoped. Each of you has participated in determining what the product of your labor is
worth. And most important for Marx, this was possible because each of you had control over
what you produced. Even the feudal lords who came and took some of your product did so
under their right backed by their control of force, but there was no question it was the products of
your labor.

It is different under capitalism. At first people who went to work controlled what they made and
were paid for the product of that labor, initially produced at home and later produced in the back
of the artisan’s shop—but now with the artisan’s tools and materials. Eventually the need to
exert control over the quality of work led to standardized production under the watchful eye of
the owner. This led to what many call “scientific management” of the work process (see the
work of Frederick Taylor) where the worker’s every action is measured and controlled. In this
way, workers increasingly lost control over the knowledge required to perform work and became
valued for the time spent in the shop rather than for the product they could produce.

For Marx this meant that labor time rather than labor became what the worker could sell—in
other words, labor became a commodity like all others. But unlike all others, Marx argued labor-
time was the only commodity that could generate more commodities than it took for the owner of
a company to pay the worker. In other words, in our example above you exchanged grain for
shoes as an exchange of equals based on the values of the commodities and the time that went
into producing each. Now, says Marx, unable to control the means of production (you no longer
control tools or raw materials) and forced to sell your time at work, workers’ labor power (time
at work) produces more in commodity form than they get paid in money (and the commodities
that can purchase). The difference, argues Marx, is the source of all profit in the capitalist
system.

This surplus goes into creating all the social and political institutions we have come to see as our
society—much in the same way the lavish spending of the feudal nobility and heavy taxation let
to the fine cathedrals, magnificent castles and even opulent town centers of wealthier merchant
cities. And for Marx the productive energies and potential of capitalism, and the dynamic nature
of technological change, meant that there was more and more produced exceeding the limits
imposed by the land for a social system based on agriculture.

However, instead of a society based on control over the forces of power (weapons and armies)
we now have a society based on a seemingly voluntary exchange but limited by the control and
ownership of those means of production. We now have capital (machines, raw materials, credit)

page 7

essential for production controlled by one class of people while the rest have to sell their labor
power to survive, and in that exchange capitalist benefit.

Initial lines of conflict for Marx become that of the conflict of the haves versus the have-nots and
his belief that sooner or later all members of society will either be owners or workers.
Eventually the workers will see that the system is unjust and restrictive and forge their own
revolutionary movement for change—like capitalism before it in the face of feudalism, a change
of economic relations, the nature of government, and all the other institutions of society.

More contemporary theorists argue that this framework, while useful, ignores other important
social divisions that are the cause of structural conflict in society. We are divided by race, age
and sex, to name some prominent divisions. We can add to that religion, ethnicity, and other
cleavages that create conflict and tension in any society. Unlike structural functionalists who see
society, when it is “functioning” properly, in harmony and peace, conflict theorists argue that
when there is no tension it usually means the dispossessed or subordinate groups are necessarily
suppressed and in reality, the normal state of any society is conflict—one that inevitably leads to
social upheaval and development, and hopefully positive change.

Symbolic Interaction

Both Conflict and Structural Functionalist theories are macro level theories. This means that they
look at the big picture of society, paying closer attention to how social institutions work together
and/or against one another to promote social growth and stability. On the other hand, symbolic
interaction looks at society from the micro level, focusing on the individual and the way that we
interact with one another and with social institutions. Symbolic Interaction argues that society is
essentially created and maintained through the interactions of individuals.

Two early theorists in this area were Mead and Cooley. Mead’s theory of self development
resembled Freud’s theory of personality development. While Freud identified the Id, Ego and
Superego as parts of the personality, he placed their development in very early childhood, within
the family, putting the largest responsibility of childhood development on the parents. Mead’s
theory placed personality development with the context of society, with the parents playing a
role but not the only role. Furthermore, he argued that the personality continues to develop much
later into adolescence and early adulthood.

Mead identified three parts of the personality; the Me, the I and the Other, and one social
characteristic; the Generalized Other. Imagine what happens when parents have their first baby.
At first, they may be overwhelmed with the knowledge that they are truly expected to take care
of this little human! For Mead the initial interaction is clear: baby screams, parents jump. Mead
identifies this first social interaction as the “Me”. The baby is really not aware of the parents as
individuals. It is aware that it is wet and cold, so it cries. Like magic it has a dry warm diaper.
It realizes it’s hungry. It cries. Like magic it is fed. This simple interaction is based only on the
needs of the infant without any awareness that it is 2 am and the parents are exhausted. The baby
just doesn’t care. For Mead this stage of the personality continues until the baby is a toddler.

page 8

Something interesting happens then. The baby learns to walk and begins to talk. One of its first
words is guaranteed to be “no” and the baby will use it often. Now the parents have more of a
challenge in parenting. If they don’t restrict baby’s behavior it will stick a fork in a power outlet
or run into traffic, and baby can now get its toys from the toy box. Parents can either continue to
react or they can insist that children need to have consistent boundaries on their behavior in order
to function well in society. So they begin to teach the baby to behave properly using some age
appropriate discipline to encourage certain behavior. Baby will react to this by entering the “I”
stage of development. It is now aware that not only are its parents real, but that they have power
to control behavior. Baby now does what is expected because it wants to avoid punishment.
Mead argues that this stage will last until the child is around 7 or so (each child being different).
The more consistent the discipline, the quicker the child will learn the desired behaviors.

The next stage of development is the “Other”. One day the child realizes for itself that there are
consequences of actions and realizes that his or her safety and cleanliness are important to the
parents. It now begins to behave not only to avoid punishment, but because it understands why
the rules are necessary. Now the rules are also important to the child. It can view society from
the perspective of others. This stage begins when child truly begins to understand the difference
between right and wrong.

Mead’s last stage of social development is formulation of the Generalized Other. Think about
the men and women that we see in movies and magazines. These people are supposed to be (for
the most part) models of ideal people. We try to do everything we can to emulate them. We cut
our hair the same way, wear the same types of clothing, diet to be model thin or lift weights to be
model pumped. We are striving towards (even if only in our dreams) this ideal, one that for the
vast majority of us is unattainable. Even the models have their imperfections airbrushed away!
Mead argues that this social ideal is intended to be unattainable. It keeps us constantly striving
to be better which means that society will maintain control by setting these ideal targets for
behavior.

Cooley looked at how we interact in society as well. He developed the theory of “the Looking
Glass Self”. Cooley was on faculty at U of M. and was abnormally shy. While he wrote many
books, he avoided face to face professional interactions. Even as he did this, he understood that
his shyness was a function of self-esteem. His theory argues that when we view ourselves
socially, we are not seeing ourselves as we truly are, but rather as a reflection in the reactions of
others. Society becomes the mirror in which we view ourselves. So consider if a professor
comes to class one morning and looks out at a sea of sleeping or yawning faces. That person can
assume that the class had a late night, or think the lecture is boring. If the latter, the professor
may try to spice up the class lecture a little. Or the professor may have a harder time teaching
because he or she believes that they are not good at it. Either way, the professor is going to look
for an explanation of the class’s behavior.

The healthier one’s self esteem, the more likely the individual will look to others for an
explanation of a social interaction. The less healthy, the more likely the individual will look
inward. Now of course the professor may truly be boring, but only if the professor can’t find an
explanation in the crowd for the behavior will there be some self-reflection to change my
behavior. A really good example of Cooley’s theory is the problem of anorexia. She (although

page 9

more men are becoming anorexic, this is still primarily a female illness) judges the reactions of
others incorrectly, seeing an overweight image reflected back to her even as she slowly starves.

Sociologists have been studying social problems for almost 150 years. The discipline grew out
of the social upheaval of economic change accelerated by the industrial revolution, a time when
society became increasingly urban and denser. The cities were overcrowded, and disease was
rampant as people literally starved to death on the streets. The infrastructure of the city was
unprepared for the influx of new folks, and housing was inadequate, substandard and
overcrowded. For this country the Great Immigration that started by the end of the Civil War
meant that there were also diverse cultures and languages trying to coexist. Competition for jobs
was fierce and crime rates increased dramatically as this nation was transformed from a rural to
an urban society. Today Sociologists struggle to make sense of many of these same problems:
poverty, substandard education and housing, crime, poor health and racial and ethnic
discrimination remain problems today. The study of social problems remains an important
concern and likely will for generations to come.

.

SOC 1020
Lecture Nine

Prof. D. Fasenfest

Urban Society

As we become a more urbanized society, most, though not all, of our social problems are
centered in the inner cities. There is still a high level of rural poverty in our country, but with the
decline of rural populations the highest relative concentration of poverty, crime, and all the other
problems we have been studying are now found in our growing cities. Why do you suppose that
is? Shaw and McKay argued that cities grow outward in a series of concentric circles. In the
early days of the city’s development, all commerce was centered on a few streets…usually a
Main Street and a High Street…though those names are usually replaced in larger cities with the
names of important local or national persons. Residences develop on the outskirts of these
commercial enterprises. As the Industrial Revolution developed factories began to move into
these central areas to be near their workers.

So, did a multitude of people looking for jobs. For many industries and in many growing
industrial cities one’s status was revealed by how far from the workplace you could live, how
long you could travel to work. As the cities became overcrowded, unhealthy and dangerous,
people with higher earnings or wealth moved into the outlying areas. In a city like Detroit areas
like Palmer Woods and Indian Village housed the owners and managers while Grand Boulevard
had the homes of mid-level supervisors. Eventually wealthier people moved further away (to the
Grosse Pointes and Bloomfield Hills communities) and the cascading expansion represented the
choice of wealth versus the limitations of poverty. This process continued until we have what
we have today.

All this was sustainable until cities began to face a loss of jobs. At first industry moved to the
outlying areas to take advantage of lower cost land. Ironically, even as the industrial areas in
most cities became dirty, noisy places, the cost of land and construction rose. This left decaying
structures which made those close in, working class and poor neighborhoods even darker and
more undesirable places to live. Those who could afford it moved out of the cities to growing
suburban “bedroom” communities on the outskirts of our cities. In some states urban expansion
followed this pattern—for example Western Avenue of Chicago was so named because it was
the western edge of a city that soon annexed communities further to the west as it grew. In other
states, like Michigan with strong restrictions on annexation, growth was not possible (we only
have to look at the anomaly of Highland Park and Hamtramack—independent and self-governing
cities—in the heart of Detroit to see how limiting these laws can be). In the end what we have
are inner city areas that are run down, polluted, unsafe and unhealthy. Housing in these areas is
inadequate and often substandard. Crime rates and poverty are high. The quality of life in these
areas is low. If you drive from the center of the city out, you’ll notice that the farther you get
from the center, the more money, less pollution and less crime you encounter. This is pretty
standard in most cities.

Although we have laws the require rental units to be kept at a certain standard of repair, they are
not often enforced to the letter, if at all. Rental units in poor communities often get overrun with

rodents and roaches. Plumbing may not work accurately, and furnaces may be faulty. With no
other options open to them, the tenants may just stay in these homes. There is often e a cycle in
poor urban neighborhoods…demand repairs that make the property unaffordable as landlords
raise rents to cover the cost of those repairs, or live with the problems and have shelter, even if it
is inadequate. Buying their own home isn’t likely an option, even if they could afford the
monthly payments (while most people who pay rent are in effect paying the mortgage on the
building, and in some markets a mortgage payment may be less than rent on the property),
because they do not have either the credit or the down payment for the purchase. Along with not
having the capital for the down payment, banks tend to see these groups and neighborhoods as a
poor risk investment making it hard to get approved in these areas.

Pollution plays an important role in urban decline. On one hand, older factory neighborhoods
have the long-term consequence of polluting industries (layers of soot and high levels of other
air-pollutants, excessive ground levels of heavy metals or industrial waste, ground water
contamination) that resulted when these actions were not well regulated and the impact on the
community not well known. Rents are lower to attract residents who would not live there other
than the fact that their poverty leaves them with little choice (and we have seen the health
impacts of things like high lead content paint on the walls of these older dwellings). On the
other hand, poor neighborhoods are less well equipped (in terms of political or economic clout)
to block the location of newer industries that may only pollute in “safe” ways (excessive noise of
trucking or warehousing nodes, or the foul smell of waste processing plants). These new
“residents” may add to the community’s tax base but make the surrounding residential area less
desirable and hasten the out-migration of those who can afford alternatives.

Inner cities face job loss for many reasons. As factories close and jobs get outsourced, the inner
city is often not able to make the shift to the information age jobs that are needed. This leads to
one of two general outcomes. Either a spiraling decline outlined above, or the area becomes
revitalized—often referred to as gentrified, or it falls into urban decay. Gentrification happens
when poor city areas become desirable to developers and the middle class. As this happens you
have an odd mix of successful middle-class families living side by side with impoverished
individuals. When property values continue to increase, rentals disappear as it becomes more
profitable to sell these rentals to land developers. As high tech, high skilled jobs move in, low
skill jobs disappear. The poor are displaced to new neighborhoods…typically those of the
working class that are barely hanging on…and this neighborhood falls into disrepair as the cycle
continues. The previously poor area has new economic life breathed into it. On the outside it
appears that the problems of the inner city have been taken care of. In reality, the problems have
simply shifted a few miles down the road.

Sometimes these processes take a long time. Cities like Chicago or New York experienced
cycles of change as neighborhoods housed the working poor, became derelict as jobs left the
area, and then experienced a renaissance as new economic activity attracted a different kind of
tenant. Some urban scholars point to counter-cultural activities as an indicator of future
gentrifications. Artists and musicians looking for inexpensive space because most are poor enter
a declining area. Soon small shops and coffee houses follow, and the area takes on a “hip” label
as younger people with more money come to shop and experience an “urban” culture. Housing
is run down and cheap and “yuppies” (young, urban pioneers) working in the city buy these

homes and invest great sums to renovate in order to live closer to the offices in which they work,
cutting commuting times. And before you know it, the remaining poor plus the original culture
pioneers—still poor—can no longer live in these increasingly prosperous communities.

Seen in some grand perspective we can summarize the life of our older cities (if they are viewed
as successes today) as follows: 1) industry drives growth and builds populations, 2) success
creates new peripheral communities for the more affluent, leaving poor and working class
families in the older inner city dwellings, 3) industry and commerce leave the city, along with the
more successful second generation immigrant children who now populate a growing suburban
ring (which some cities can absorb as they grow, others cannot). 4) inner cities house the poor in
cheaper, run-down space that attracts alternative uses and often act as incubators for cultural
activities, 5) third-generation children from the suburbs with professional jobs “re-colonize”
older buildings if there are inner city “clean” office jobs (technology, medicine, finance, law,
insurance, etc) and create a process of gentrification, 6) rising desire for inner city life creates
higher housing costs, drives out the poor and the city is “reborn”.

Cities like Chicago now experience rapid growth with poorer people living on the outskirts.
New York City becomes a financial center, and the poor are driven to the further reaches of the
city’s limits. Even Detroit experiences a minor resurrection in the core downtown area with its
high-priced condos and office buildings—although this is not as extensive as other cities and
large pockets of poverty remain, with most of the growth in incomes and property development
still in its suburban reaches.

But urban America is still characterized by the racial segregation that occurs. Minorities in the
US have fewer opportunities for economic success. As a result, they typically are over
represented in the populations of the poor inner city. Looking within these cities, you will find
that these groups segregate from one another as well. In Detroit, for example, you will find
neighborhoods of poor people that have ethnic identities. There are black, Latino, white, middle-
eastern and Asian neighborhoods. There are also areas with Serbian and Albanian immigrants.
Marx argued that one mechanism to keep the poor from succeeding is to pit them against each
other. The struggle for resources leads to fierce competition within the groups, so rather than
banding together in solidarity, they tend to blame other groups for their poverty.

Cities have other problems as well, that are not linked to poverty. Simmel argued that people in
cities have to learn to shut down their perceptions to avoid sensory overload. This leads to a
disconnected attitude. We saw the danger of this in the 1980s when a woman named Kitty
Genovese was stabbed to death outside of her New York apartment building. Even though she
screamed for help in a well-lit area and was heard by most of her neighbors, no one called the
police. When interviewed, they all said that they expected someone else to call and didn’t want
to get involved. This led to the development of the “bystander effect” theory, which argues that
people only help when they have no other option.

Cities are complex organizations that have particular histories driven by the activities of the area,
the geography of the region and the nature of population change. Cities that started as port cities
became nodes of immigrants and the original “melting pots” as wave after wave of immigrants
piled up and filled crowded tenements. Industries rose up to take advantage of this population

but sooner or later demands of space and cost drove industries elsewhere and these port cities
tended to become financial capitals (think of Boston, New York, San Francisco). Cities that
started as junctions in the prairie attracted new residents and new industries after the commodity
transit points became overwhelmed by its own population growth. Space permitted the
expansion of factories to its outer areas and these cities experienced cycles of expansion and
transformation (think of Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City). And finally, cities grow because of
population pressures in older cities, starting from nothing to become shiny new destinations that,
over time, experience all the problems of older cities (think of Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix,
Dallas and Santa Fe).

By 2020 it is estimated that over 85% of our population will live in cities, with over 50% of the
population either immigrants from or decedents of immigrants from places other than Europe.
The US has reinvented itself many times and will continue to do so in the future—each time
defined by the population growth through immigration and the redistribution of that population.
Much like the 1800s was characterized by a land-based westward expansion, and the 1900s by
the growing industrial expansion building our major cities, the 2000s will be a century of urban
concentration and the emergence of a new way of organizing economic activities that will have a
major impact on our urban society.

SOC 1020
Lecture Five

Prof. D. Fasenfest

Education

Education is typically the second social institution that children encounter, although for many
families the second institution might be the Church. Education is the institution that passes on
knowledge to the next generation. This knowledge includes basic skills, such as reading and
writing, and job skills. Schooling refers to formal instruction under trained specialists.

Compulsory education is something that you are all familiar with. This means that children have
to go to school. In the U.S. children are required to begin school when they are 6 years old.
Most of us believe that Kindergarten is required, but it is actually optional. Most children begin
school when they are 5 or just before 5 and attend Kindergarten. In the middle and upper
classes, children may begin pre-school as early as 3 years old.

While we take compulsory education for granted, it does not exist in every society. In fact, the
concept in the U.S. is also relatively young. In the early 1900s when child labor laws went into
effect we found ourselves faced with unsupervised children. More importantly, unsupervised
poor children. Middle and upper-class children had never been in the work force at a young age
with boys getting formal education and girls getting a finishing school (finishing their social
training so that they could marry into presentable society or vocational training, perhaps serving
as governesses to reach peoples children or as secretaries in firms). Poor children were the ones
that went to work with their moms every morning and earned a small wage by doing menial
tasks, such as picking up empty thread spools in a sewing factory.

Compulsory schooling was a way of dealing with these children. Rather than roaming the streets
getting into mischief, breaking the law, or being victimized themselves, children were instead
sent to school. The teachers had the same authority to punish as the parents. Early schooling
was a really the state taking responsibilities that had previously belonged to the parents.
However, compulsory education was essential to being competitive during the Industrial
Revolution. It provided a mechanism for training the next level of workers in society. It also
provided the opportunity to start socializing the work force. This is why schools used bells to
ring children to classes and to lunch and to end the day. This mimicked the practice of factories
ringing bells in the morning or blowing whistles to call the workers in for the day. Schools
provide socialization, cultural innovation, integration, and social placement.

A practice of early education was tracking. This practice continued in the U.S. until the early
80s. Tracking refers to separating children in classes based on their academic abilities. In theory
this should work well, allowing the smarter kids to be in class with the smarter kids and the
slower kids to be together. This should allow the teachers to keep education at a pace that the
class is comfortable with. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. When I was in 8th grade, my
school tracked. We had A thru E sections, with students being assigned to the section that
corresponded with their GPA…in theory. What really happened was that all the really smart kids

(straight A) were in the A section with all of the rich kids and all of the cheerleaders and
basketball players. The E section had the poorest kids, the boy that had a severe stutter, and the
girl who was not only poor but one of the ugliest children that I have ever seen in my life. This
was pretty typical. The tracking system was a reflection of the social class and status of the
student rather than of academic ability. A very intelligent poor child could be in the lowest class
and a very unintelligent rich child could be in the highest class. While most schools no longer
track, some still do.

Home schooling refers to the practice of children being taught at home by their parents. More
and more American children are being home schooled with excellent results. Home schooled
children in general do very well in the competitive environment of SATs and college
applications. Home schooling may be the better option for an extremely bright child, since they
are not held back and/or bored by the pace of teaching in a structured school environment. Many
parents who home school choose to do so for religious reasons, preferring to include religion in
science and history lessons. Home schooling allows them to restrict teaching on subjects like
evolution that conflict with their personal beliefs. Others home school because public education
doesn’t meet the needs of their child.

There are a few problems with public education in our society. First, the quality of education
that a child gets is dependent upon its family income. Compulsory education, funded by taxes,
was supposed to assure equal education to children. In reality, poor children get a poor quality
education. They learn from books that are outdated, don’t have access to the same cultural
experiences and don’t have access to new technology. A poor school is far less likely to have a
computer lab. A very wealthy school is likely to provide a lap top to each of its students.
Middle class and wealthy schools are also likely to practice grade inflation. This means that the
number of students receiving As is much higher since teachers are reluctant to give lower grades.
In part this is due to the parents, who have lots of social clout in the community, are likely to be
angry if junior gets less than an A.

These disparities in the quality of education make it harder for poor children to be competitive
for college admissions and scholarships. As a result, very few poor children are able to go on to
college. Approximately 50% of working class children go to college, but the drop out rate is a
much higher than that of the middle class. Approximately 80% of middle and upper class
children go on to college. This leads to the poor class being less competitive in getting the jobs
that would provide the opportunity to get out of the poverty class.

Another problem with the education system is that classrooms are overcrowded. This leads to a
lot of time being spent on discipline and less on learning. In fact, some argue that school as it is
designed brings kids together in an environment that allows them to learn more deviant acts.
Has the notion of public education outlived its usefulness? Also, what alternative would work
better? OR should we just fix the system that we have?

We noticed in the last lecture that in this increasingly knowledge-based economy education
becomes the key to successful employment and a good income…though there is no guarantee
you will get a good job, you can more or less count on not finding one if you don’t have a higher
education. We have to really wonder what sort of society we are going to have as we read that

more and more poor people are dropping out, that young people of color do not finish school,
and the implications of their being relegated to the lowest economic rungs in society. Too much
evidence points to more than just not wanting to finish school—but rather that schooling in
America still caters to privilege, and that the rich and poor keep reproducing themselves as a
result.

My final note is about the quality of education, and the fact that while everyone argues that
education is the key to the future, Michigan and many other states keep under funding education
at each level, and for most states teachers are not well paid. How can we, as a society, expect to
attract the best and brightest to teach our children (other than those whose children go to elite
schools or live in high income communities) if there are few incentives to become a teacher?

1

SOC 1020
Lecture Four

Prof. D. Fasenfest

Gender is often used interchangeably with sex; however, sex is biological, and gender is both
social and variable. Gender refers to the set of social expectations of behaviors associated with
one’s biological state though it is not specific to that sex. Increasingly we even have begun to
question the binary framing of people’s existence, questioning whether the male/female binary is
valid. People can see themselves as gender fluid, pangender, transgender, androgenous, agender,
queer, gay, transqueer and so on. Increasingly folks represent themselves by the pronouns they
wish to be associated when referred to by others. Gender, then, is much more complicated than
simple sex assignment—though we see that this has created significant political and social
issues…and “gendered” framing of social roles and expectations still dominate.

Clearly a woman gives birth—that is biological—but there is nothing innate about her role as
primary care giver through most of a child’s life—that is gender role. Gender stratification
occurs when females have different social outcomes than males. Historically, women lived in
the private sphere of society, confined to the home and the social network of women. Men lived
in the public sphere, out in the business world earning a living. In fact, this gender dynamic was
not a problem until the industrial revolution. In the late 1800s a house could not function if one
member didn’t stay home, regardless of whether you lived in a rural area and farmed or if you
lived in a city and earned a living from business.

Early social roles were determined by sex-based functions. Women stayed home since babies
depended on breast milk to survive. There wasn’t a local market to purchase formula. Cow’s
milk was a poor substitute that could kill a child before Pasteurization. You also couldn’t by
bread and butter at the local corner store. The woman’s day was filled with preparing food,
making clothing, overseeing the children’s safety and education, and keeping the home livable.
The man’s day was filled with working outside the home. The division of labor was based in part
on early biological necessity. Women, however, were viewed as property, “sold” to a man who
received a dowry (and in many customs men paid a “bride price” to her father for his “loss”) and
the view persisted as she became part of the man’s family (in many states into the early part of
the last century a women could not own property and any inheritance she might receive was put
under the control of the husband).

With the industrial revolution came modern conveniences that shifted a woman’s work but it was
still devalued. Instead of needing hours to beat rugs clean, a vacuum cleaner did it in minutes.
Clothes were no longer washed by hand in hot water but were churned clean in a washing
machine. Food preservatives made it possible to buy sliced bread and canned vegetables in a
matter of moments when it had been an all day or longer job. Culture did not change quickly
though, and women remained confined to the private sphere.

Sexism was prevalent then and remains prevalent today. Sexism refers to the discrimination by
one sex over the other. Today, women have gained ground in every occupation. In medicine for
example, about 50% of medical students are female. In the 70s a woman who wanted a career in

2

medicine was most likely maneuvered into nursing. Yet, women still make less in every
profession. Male waiters earn more than females. Male secretaries earn more than females.
Male teachers earn more than females.

There are a variety of reasons for this that contribute to and exacerbate underlying sexism;
gender roles for example are expected behaviors. For example, males are expected to be
aggressive and assertive and get rewarded for this behavior. This means that not only is a man
likely to ask for a higher salary or raise, he is more likely to get it. Females are expected to be
passive and compliant. When they are not, they are sanctioned. So an assertive female is likely to
get labeled a “bitch” and to be socially punished for her aggressiveness. Females are also
supposed to be nurturing and emotional and men are supposed to be stoic and unemotional.

What happens when someone steps outside their gender role and is androgynous (acting neither
male nor female) or takes on the alternate gender role? We often question their sexuality,
especially if the male takes on a traditionally the female role. Or we assume they are somehow
deviant or raise questions about their sexual preferences. Most men will admit that they expect
to be the primary breadwinner. A woman earning more than her spouse is considered status
inconsistent. What do we think of the man who stays home and cares for the children while the
wife works? Even if the wife agrees, it is likely that her family will think it odd or inappropriate.
Tim Allen joked that women have all the choices in life. Get married, work full time. Get
married, work part time. Get married, don’t work. Stay single, work full time. While men have
two choices; work or go to jail. There is some truth to his joke. Men are expected to work and
to excel professionally. Women have the “option” of working or not working…and this refers to
socially acceptable choices and not to financial realities. This also perpetuates the notion that the
work women do in the home, essentially unpaid work, does not really count. Sociologists often
refer to the dual burden women bear: work full time and then come home to all her domestic
duties like cooking and cleaning.

Women are less likely to be hired and more likely to be paid less than an equally qualified male.
Some explain these disparities based on a woman’s biology, not that we fail as a society to
provide the necessary support for child care so that women can keep their jobs (only in recent
years have laws protected a woman’s right to return to work if she gives birth, and indeed makes
it illegal for women to be fired for becoming pregnant). Women have children, so they take time
out of the labor force. While this may be true for many, studies that have compared and
controlled for time on the job and the length of the workweek still showed that women made less
money. Another reason used to justify lower pay for women is that she was earning “mad
money”, in other words, her salary was extra, and she wasn’t actually supporting a family. Many
countries still follow a “family wage” strategy of paying men enough to support a family while
assuming women will stay home.

Intersection theory argues negative social outcomes are a combination of sex, race and social
class, with the poor minority female having the lowest social outcomes. In part this theory grew
from the works of belle hooks who argued that feminism in the U.S. had failed poor and non-
white women. Women in the middle and upper classes gained opportunity and privilege during
the 60s but life for the working poor and non-white female had not changed. Sadly, the
opportunities and privileges of mid- and upper-class women are tied to the status of their

3

husband’s class position…a fact many women discover quickly if they are left by a spouse after
many years of maintaining a home and now they are forced to seek employment and sustain
themselves financially. Recently divorced women are at high risk of falling into poverty. Yet
ironically and perhaps not surprisingly, women who are financially independent are more likely
to leave a bad or abusive relationship since they are not economically vulnerable and dependent
on a man’s earnings.

Once women entered the work force the extent of sexual harassment in the workplace was more
noticeable. This is the unwanted and derogatory attention an individual receives due to their sex.
The kind of demands made on female workers in the early days of the industrial revolution was
used as an argument why they should stay home under the “protection” of their husbands—not
as the basis for calling to an end of these sorts of practices. And of course, poor and immigrant
women were more vulnerable because not working was not an option if they hoped to survive. It
usually refers to the demand for sexual favors for job security of promotion but can also refer to
the creation of a hostile work environment. For example, a female worker in an all male office
would have grounds for a sexual harassment complaint if calendars of naked women were
displayed in the office, or if sexual jokes in the work place offended the women and no effort
was made to curtail these actions.

Employment poses two problems in regard to gender. The first is that women are generally paid
less in every occupation. The second is that women often encounter a glass ceiling. The glass
ceiling is a metaphor for the fact that women are allowed to rise only so far on the corporate
ladder. Then they encounter a glass ceiling, something that blocks their progress, but through
which they can see the top where their male colleagues continue to climb. Women are less likely
to become CEOs of businesses. They also are more likely to be criticized for being in over their
heads if they have a problem, in comparison to men who will have their problems objectively
discussed separate from their sex. In other words, if a female CEO fails at her job, it becomes a
question of whether any woman would be fit for the job. When a man fails at the CEO job, it
becomes a question of only his qualifications and not those of all men.

Feminism is the theoretical framework that grew out of the equal rights movement. Feminism
refers to the argument that humans should have equal opportunity and receive equal pay for
equal work. Most, though not all of us, believe this to be true. There are a variety of feminist
approaches to understanding society. Liberal feminists want to have true equality in society,
where all people are equal, regardless of sex. They want to reform society without recreating
society. Fix the problem. Make sure that our laws provide equal opportunity for everyone.

Socialist feminists argue that patriarchy is embedded in the fabric of a capitalistic society. As
long as private property is owned, women will be relegated to the house and to childcare. In a
socialist community, private property would be disallowed, and households would be communal.
Childcare and housework would be a shared responsibility and no longer assigned by sex.
Socialist feminists favor a class revolt to overthrow capitalism and re-establish the country as a
socialist society.

Finally, radical feminists argue that gender discrimination is built into patriarchy through
biological differences between the sexes. Meaning, as long as women get pregnant in the

4

traditional way they will be bound to the home and childrearing and not be equal. In order to
have gender equality, these feminists argue that we must become divorced from the notion of
childbearing the way it is now and of heterosexuality as the norm of relationships. Technology
could allow children to be born outside the womb. This may sound like science fiction, but in
vitro fertilization was science fiction in 1970. Children could be raised in a communal setting,
not within the nuclear family, as is the case now—there is nothing about a women’s sex that
requires her to be the “mother”. Finally, laws could be changed to give children more rights and
responsibilities, which would make them less dependent on the parents and especially the
mother. In other words, we must re-conceptualize the roles and responsibilities of both men and
women within both the family and the society at large if we hope to put an end to gender
discrimination today.

Sexuality

Biological sex guides much of our social experience. While sex and gender are often used
interchangeably sex refers to the biological characteristic of being either male or female. Every
child is born with Primary sexual characteristics. These are the genitalia that are present at birth
that identify us as either male or female. Secondary sexual characteristics are those
characteristics that develop with puberty such as breasts and menstruation for females, body hair
for both sexes, and a deepening of the voice for males. A very small percentage of humans are
born Intersexual. These are individuals who have both male and female characteristics of birth.

While much of our gender characteristics are socialized, some are biologically driven and
intersexuals give us the opportunity to understand the biological links between sex and gender.
In earlier generations, before we fully understood DNA typing and before we had reliable
technology, when a child was born intersexual one of two things happened. If it were equally
easy to assign a sex to the child, parents were given the choice of whether to have a boy or girl.
The unnecessary genitalia were then surgically removed. This of course created problems for the
child who was genetically male and assigned the female sex, or vice versa. Imagine a boy child
being castrated and raised as female. As he aged, he would develop a deep voice and facial hair.
He would not menstruate or grow breasts. The same confusion would be true of a female
mistakenly classified as a male. These children, as adults, were faced with depression, social
stigma and loneliness, never being fully comfortable in the body that they were medically
assigned. This is far less likely to happen these days. An intersexual infant today would be
genetically tested to determine biological sex before surgery. Intersexuals were formerly called
Hermaphrodites, named for the god Hermaphrodites who was both male and female.

Transsexuals and Transgenders are different. A transsexual is a person who undergoes sex
reassignment surgery. These are individuals who believe that emotionally and mentally they are
living in a body that is not the sex that they were meant to be. So they undergo a sex change
operation to fix the biological error of their birth. Transgenders are males who live life as
females or females who live life as males. Transgenders do not undergo a sex change operation.
Transvestites are different from both. A transvestite is someone who gains pleasure from wearing
clothes that are appropriate for the opposite sex. Transvestitism is a fetish while transexuality
and transgendered behavior is a life choice.

5

Sexual orientation refers to sexual attraction. Heterosexuality is the attraction to only the
opposite sex. Homosexuality is the attraction to only the same sex. Bisexuality is the attraction
to both sexes and Asexuality is no sexual attraction to either sex. The Sapir-Whorf thesis argues
that we create our understanding of society through language. Given this, why do we now say
sexual orientation rather than sexual preference? Sexual preference implies a choice in who we
are sexually attracted to while orientation implies biological pre-determination in who we are
sexually attracted to.

Homophobia refers to the fear of homosexuality. Individuals that are homophobic are believed
to have a deep fear that they themselves are homosexual. This fear causes them to vehemently
denounce homosexuality as a sexual orientation and leads to discrimination against homosexuals.
A homophobic male could not befriend a homosexual male for fear that he might be viewed as
homosexual himself. The same would be true of a homophobic female in interactions with a
lesbian female.

Socially, we spend a lot of our energy attempting to control sexual behaviors. One of the most
interesting mechanisms of social control has been the use of a double standard for males and
females. Males are socially rewarded for their sexual prowess, expected to have many sexual
partners before and if they settle down in a monogamous relationship. Females on the other
hand are rewarded for remaining chaste until marriage. If we meet a 25-year-old male virgin,
our first thought is to wonder if the man is gay, and if not gay, what is wrong with him. Men are
not expected to be able to control sexual impulses. If we discover that a 25-year-old woman has
had an inordinate number of sexual partners, we label her with derogatory names that are
intended to denote that she is less desirable as a future partner and mother.

This double standard relaxed a little in the 1960s. While we might believe that this was due to
women pushing for equal rights, and in part it was, the real reason for the change in acceptable
behavior was the introduction of the birth control pill. Prior to the pill, birth control methods
were unreliable and/or depended on the willingness of the male partner to purchase and use
them. If a woman got pregnant, she was usually dependent upon the male; there were few
options for unmarried mothers in earlier society. With unequal access to education and
employment, a single mother was doomed to poverty if the father refused to marry her. Few
men were willing to take on the responsibility of rearing the offspring of a pre-marital affair.
Girls might be sent away, and the baby put up for adoption, but they would always be
stigmatized for their immoral behavior. After the pill was developed, for the first-time women
had control of their own reproductive lives. Now, they could protect themselves from pregnancy
without relying on a man’s willingness to wear a condom. Also, the pill was an extremely
reliable method of birth control, with less than 1% of users facing an unwanted pregnancy.
Women were able to relax their control and engage in premarital sex at this point without fear of
ruining their future. It took a while for culture to catch up with this technology and the double
standard continues. The degree of a woman’s control over her body remains a highly
controversial topic.

The sexual freedom of the 60s continued into the 80s, until the AIDS epidemic began. Once it
became public knowledge that the disease could be passed through sexual activity (later through

6

needle use and blood transfusion as well), our sexual activity began to change as we undertake
less promiscuous behaviors. People in general are once again being more careful about their
choices of sexual partners. The AIDS epidemic also led to an increase in homophobia in our
society and to increased discrimination against gays in society. As a result, the gay community
became more organized as a political group willing to fight for its rights. This was due in large
part to anger at the Federal Government for ignoring the AIDS epidemic and refusing to dedicate
adequate resources to research. Prominent religious leaders supported this decision not to
support research, calling AIDS a judgment from God for immoral behavior. AIDS research
didn’t become fully funded until after straight non-drug users became infected from the tainted
blood supply. Queer theory, a conflict theory, argued that not only was society sexist, it was
heterosexist or biased in the favor of straight people and especially straight males. The failure to
fund a health crisis that hit the gay community especially hard was proof of the discrimination
against gays in our society. We need not only focus on diseases like AIDS; medical practice is
slow in understanding women’s health as well…for example only recently do doctors consider
that women present heart attacks differently then men and have started treating women
differently. Earlier research on this and other problems tend to be directed by our understanding
of how men function and then assume women will function the same way.

While the gay community has made strides in being recognized as a valid part of society, there
are still inequalities in society based on sexual orientation. One aspect is the inability for gay
partners to have the same legal protections as straight partners. If a gay couple has been together
for 25 years and one needs to have medical treatment, the other can be, and often is, denied
access to medical information. While theoretically this would also be true of a straight couple, if
a man needs medical treatment and his female partner of 25 years introduces herself as his wife,
she is not asked to produce a marriage license to prove this bond and she has access to the
information. Also, gays are not allowed to extend their medical benefits to their partners. While
many universities made same sex benefits available, after recent decisions to prohibit gay
marriage, these institutions are finding their ability to continue to do so hampered.

Another consequence of the AIDS epidemic is a desire to place more social control over the
sexual behaviors of teens. Public schools could teach sex education, including safe sex. They
were also able to distribute condoms or to have condom machines in the bathrooms. Now, any
public school that teaches anything, but abstinence is not eligible for federal funding. So
somehow, not teaching kids how to protect themselves from disease and unwanted pregnancy is
supposed to keep them safe. It may well be that it is a parent’s responsibility to teach this
information along with family values about sexuality. The reality is that many parents and teens
are not comfortable dealing with this discussion and therefore only deal with it when facing the
consequences. The foolishness of this focus on abstinence can be seen by looking at the
experience of a HS in Texas: it has the highest rate of teen pledge signing, and yet also has one
of the highest rates of teen pregnancy!

Abortion is a major debate in society. Abortion refers to the voluntary termination of a
pregnancy. It has divided society and is one topic that most of us have very strong opinions on.
Prior to Roe vs Wade, abortion was illegal in the U.S. Women have always managed to have
abortions. There are herbs for example that will induce an abortion, meaning they bring about
premature labor and cause the body to expel the pregnancy. Women died of illegal abortions

7

because they were performed with non-sterile instruments (broken glass, knitting needles, wire
hangers) in non-sterile environments. Without the benefit of adequate medical care, women died
of infections or of punctured internal organs. Abortion is criticized as a means of birth control
when adequate means to prevent pregnancy are available. Some believe that life begins at
conception and that abortion is murder. Others believe that a fetus is not a baby until it can
survive outside the womb if early labor begins. Still others believe that a fetus is not a baby until
it reaches gestational maturity and is delivered normally. The abortion debate divides us and has
led to violence. Some religious groups support the killing of doctors who perform abortions,
comparing abortion to genocide. Some argue that access to abortion is racially biased with
minority women not having access and forced to carry unwanted pregnancies, meaning that
minority families will remain in poverty with too many children to support. Others argue that
abortion is genocide with an attempt to abort minority children to control the non-white
population. It is likely that the abortion debate will continue to be socially controversial as we
all have strong and opposing viewpoints on the subject.

There are other aspects of sexuality that have a social implication. Pornography for example is
the media that promotes sexuality and sex acts. It is often derogatory to women and portrays
them in humiliating situations. Prostitution is the trading of sex for money. With the exception
of child pornography, which is generally viewed as despicable and is always illegal with tough
jail sentences, pornography is legal and left to one’s own discernment about its use. Most
pornography targets men and is viewed as either a harmless activity or a violation of trust a
relationship, dependent upon the personal views of the men and women involved. There is an
expectation that young males will view pornography as a right of passage. The jury is still out
on whether or not viewing pornography increases the number of rapes in our society or if it
causes males to devalue females.

Prostitution is said, along with the clergy, to be one of the oldest professions and it inspires much
debate. Most prostitutes, or sex workers, are female. Sex work is a relatively new term that has
grown from a feminist debate on prostitution. This argument is that prostitution is an occupation
that is chosen by women. Feminists who favor this argument say that women in prostitution
should not be viewed as victims, but as adults that have made a conscious career choice. Others
argue that women in prostitution are victimized, forced to turn over their earnings to a man who
forces them to sell sex.

The debate is driven by the fact that there are two levels of prostitution. Street workers are
typically poor women who may have no other options open to them. Many of these women are
pushed out of their homes when they are still children, running away to escape abuse, or thrown
out by parents that are unable or unwilling to deal with an adolescent. They may be lured into or
forced into prostitution to survive. Also, these women are more likely to have drug abuse issues.
It is not known if these women turn to drugs to deal with their occupation, or if they go into
prostitution to support their drug habits. The second type of sex worker is the call girl, typically
high paid. She has likely decided to pursue this occupation and may have a typical lifestyle that
is separate from her occupation, such as the ring of suburban housewives arrested in New Jersey.

Structural functionalists argue that prostitution exists and is allowed to exist because it fills a
need in society. It provides a sexual outlet for men who are not able to meet their needs in a

8

socially acceptable way. Very ugly men or men who have no social skills may have trouble
finding a willing sex partner that they don’t have to pay. Providing a sexual outlet through
prostitution may protect women from unwanted sexual advances and rape.

What, then, is at issue with sex and gender? Why do we, as a society, spend so much time and
energy over how one identifies as a human being, why do many of us try to “legislate” behavior
whether it is to pass laws declaring you must function based on your biological sex at birth (what
reproductive organs did you have)? Why is so much attention paid on who controls your body—
for example this recent return to changes in the law over abortion? And why is the focus usually
on a woman’s body? After all, as one activist pointed out a man who has sex with 100 women
can propagate 100 babies, a woman having sex with 100 men can only have one birth. If the
concern is over the lives of the fetus shouldn’t there be as much concern and control over the
behavior and responsibility of men?

Clearly, these questions are not easy, and the rationales for one’s positions are not always
consistent. For example, many argue that “my body my choice” explains why they should be
allowed to not be inoculated against serious diseases (made more visible during the COVID
epidemic but this has always been around for other diseases). Yet people don’t believe this holds
true if a woman wishes to have an abortion for any number of reasons. Some argue for the
sanctity of life yet press for death penalties. There are concerns for the life of the fetus as a
living being, but then don’t show the same concerns for infants when they oppose childcare and
maternal health programs. If we ban abortions, why don’t we also pass stricter laws requiring
the biological “father” to carry the economic and social burden of caring for that child? The list
is long, the answers not simple. People’s views are often driven by religious or political ideas
and as a society we struggle with how to manage serious differences.

Lecture Notes, SOC 1020
Lecture Eleven

Prof. D. Fasenfest

Economy and Politics

We live in a capitalistic economy that is founded on the notion of free enterprise. For the most
part, despite its problems, our economy succeeds. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, however. In
spite of our great wealth as a nation we have a significant portion of our society living in relative
poverty (almost 20%, and more if we use a standard of comfort and security rather than simply
measuring those who are unable to provide for their most basic needs), and a core of our society
lives in what we call persistent poverty. Clearly the system is not perfect. As a result, we do
attempt to put some controls on capitalism. We can see how the system leads at times to excesses
and why government involvement is deemed necessary. In the early days of the industrial era in
this country (and others—we are focusing on the US) we have a few families, like the
Rockefellers, who controlled markets. Using unscrupulous business practices as well as their
ability to manipulate supply and demand, they were able to put any competitors out of business.

Rockefeller was especial adept at these tactics, though by no means the only one. One example
is the way he used the railroad to build a financial empire. At first, he controlled some rail lines
and started charging less for freight than it cost him to ship the items, but in doing so he slowly
drove his competitors under and then offered fire sale prices to buy up their assets. This
continued until he controlled a lion’s share of the track and rolling stock, and then he was free to
charge what he wanted with no fear of competition. He needed government support to prevent
competitors from getting land right-of-way to lay new tracks and in short order this monopoly
allowed him to control other things (remember, in those days there were no trucks or highways,
there was no air freight, and for a growing country rail shipping was the only way to transport
everything to and from markets). His subsequent control over the rail lines meant he could
control the cost of shipping oil, and in this way, he gained a big advantage over other oil
producers, soon becoming the largest and richest oil company of his day—Standard Oil, the
foundation of many of today’s oil giants. We have since passed laws that make it illegal to have
a monopoly on any market today.

We also have laws that make price fixing illegal. A few years ago, the formula companies in the
US were found guilty of price fixing. Basically, the major companies had agreed to charge the
same price for their infant formula. With no true competition in the market, they were free to
charge whatever they wanted and soon the costs for baby formula became exorbitant.
Unfortunately, families who would most benefit from the economic boost of not buying formula,
may have the least ability to breast feed an infant, as this requires either the mom to stay home,
or to be provided with a private area at work to express milk several times a day. Formula
companies were fined and ordered to pay customers in the class action suit $1500 per child who
had been formula age during the price fixing. But is this applied selectively? To find any
competitive pricing in gasoline, you have to cross state lines. Michigan on average is 30 cents
more per gallon than Ohio. But gas in Detroit more or less costs the same as gas in Flint
regardless of which company’s gas station we visit. Do we really have a competitive market in
gas pricing? Or is it legally sanctioned price fixing?

Interlocking directorates refers to the fact that a very small group of people serves as directors of
a large number of corporations. This means that the same folks in the U.S are making all
marketing decisions. This doesn’t mean that every company that practices price fixing. The
Walmart phenomenon is much more common in our society. When a Walmart opens in a small
rural area, the local business can’t compete and so they close their doors. However, Kmart and
Target, to name but two of the large department stores, can compete and do. So while the little
business suffers due to “big box” stores like Walmart, the general population gets better deals
and more competition in pricing. However, one way these kinds of stores can keep prices down
is to keep wages low and not provide benefits. Soon people pointed out the Walmart employees
could not even shop at Walmart. We can get a good idea of the problems faced by low wage
workers in big box stores in Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed

One important aspect of our economy is its link to the political system. Our politicians run their
campaigns on donations. The backbone of these donations comes from special interest groups
and political action groups who can bundle large dollar amounts. These groups are designed to
represent and support politicians who represent the goals of their group. This has led to unfair
advantages to some political candidates as money flowed into campaign accounts from wealthy
contributors. Campaign reform tried to put a check on the influence of such groups as it limits
the amount of a single donation to $2,000. There were also limits placed on how much a
political action group could give and much one individual could donate. This was done to see
that politicians would vote their conscience on issues, rather than being bought and paid for by
the wealthy or by very strong special interest groups.

We divide our political landscape into conservatives and liberals. Conservatives tend to be
viewed as folks who are very personally conservative, believing in family values etc. However,
they are technically those individuals who believe in a conservative interpretation of the
Constitution. They believe that the political and economic systems work as they should.
Liberals believe in a liberal interpretation of the Constitution and argue for providing more social
benefits to the population, such as a national health care plan. Another term being bandied about
is Centrists…these are folks who fall into the middle of the spectrum for the most part, though
they may lean more in one direction than the other. I took an online test that my sister sent
me…she believes that I am a bleeding-heart liberal…and it indicated that I am a Libertine. A
Libertine believes in a government that provides the basic needs for its citizens…health care,
education, etc…. but also believes in a lot of personal freedom for the citizenry. Many recent
candidates have been called Centrists…i.e., liberal Republicans or conservative Democrats.

We are now faced with some real hard economic choices in the political arena. Anyone
watching political news has heard about the problems of providing health insurance to everyone
so that the most common problems do not become catastrophic problems. The most obvious in
the current political environment is how we make economic choices when balancing political
decisions. How do we compare one set of political goals against another set of economic
realities? Without taking a specific position, the American Friend’s Service (commonly known
as Quakers) make a case against war, any war, on the grounds that it costs a lot more than the
sacrifices of men and women carrying out government policy. We don’t need to debate the
merits of going to war, but we should always consider what economists call the opportunity costs

of spending money in different ways…this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnq6cD5jk1Q is
their contribution to the calculus we are making whether or not we know it. Any society is
making implicit choices as it spends its resources. If all of us, through our elected officials,
knowingly say—yes, that is what we want to do, then so be it. But we must also ask who was
confronted with the social and economic alternatives when assessing the decision to go to war?
During the Second World War a national dialogue determined that the objectives were so
important everyone agreed to sacrifice—though it was shown that many profited from the war
effort (and a large part of those people were punished with fines and/or imprisonment). Do we
always have national discussions or debates about how to spend our collective wealth?

Today we face similar challenges and choices. This country has spent untold billions of dollars
in military aid to Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion. No one thinks coming to their aid is
a problem. But what is a problem is that on one hand we have no question we can spend those
dollars for military aid and at the same time we do not have the money for childcare programs,
early education, housing needs and other serious social problems. Part of the reason is that
somehow people in the government have decided this military spending is not part of our
“budgeting” process while social services must be “paid for” somehow by either increasing taxes
or shifting funds from other programs. Whether we like it or now, we are making choices or
rather choices are made for us.

Clearly in an environment of choice we often must decide on one program versus another. We
have seen the consequence of the health care problems in this country and that is another set of
choices. What we must keep in mind is that all political choices have economic consequences,
and all economic actions have political ramifications as well as political origins. We must be
educated so that we can make good political choices—and then we can agree to live with the
consequences of our choices. However, as this chapter shows, the connection between the
economy and politics is a tricky one and even the highest minded can make mistakes that have
deep consequences for us all.

We are now embroiled in a discussion about costs of government, revenues, and resources. The
question raised is should we reduce the deficit, and how to do it? What programs need to be cut,
but at the same time who should carry the burden? What is the responsibility of any government
to its citizens and who/how id a fair share determined? Do we want to live in a society where a
company like Exxon/Mobile can have billions in profits and not owe or pay any taxes? What
does it say about our society when the top 74 earners (yes, that is seventy-four individuals who
declare an earned income to the Social Security Administration) have a combined income equal
to the bottom 19 million earners in this country?

Lecture 3

SOC 1020
Lecture Three

Prof. D. Fasenfest

Race and Ethnicity are often used interchangeably, though they refer to different things.
Race is a biological classification. Humans are divided into three categories, Mongoloid,
Negroid and Caucasoid. Mongoloids are identified as having reddish or yellowish complexions,
dark, straight course hair and no eyelid fold, and a broad flat nasal bridge (descendents of the
Asian territories). Negroids are identified as having dark complexions, curly dark course hair
and a broad flat nasal bridge (descendents of the African territories). Caucasians are identified as
having lighter, thinner hair, lighter skin and a high nasal bridge (descendents of Europe).

Much social significance is attached to this biological distinction, but the significance is not
warranted. In fact, the evolution of the races was driven by the climate where the race evolved.
If you lived in a cold climate, like northern Europe, you needed to develop light skin and thinner
hair to absorb the warmth of the sun. The high nasal bridge allowed air to be warmed before it
hit the sinus cavity…think of it as a built-in protection from brain freezes. Compare the coloring
on Scandinavians (blonde hair, very fair skin) to Greeks (Dark hair, olive complexion). Both
groups are Caucasian by biological classification, but their coloring is different due to the
climate where they evolved. The farther south we move, the darker the complexions become out
of necessity. The bridge of the nose gets broader because the air is warmer. The hair gets
courser, and the skin gets darker to provide protection from the sun. If we look at Australia, we
see the native Australians (the group that evolved there) have dark skin. The fair Australians
(Russell Crow, Nicole Kidman) are of British descent.

These are the only biological differences that exist between the races. Recent genetic research
has revealed how basically identical all humans really are! No race is biologically superior or
inferior to another. We are identical under the skin. We have the same organs, the same
circulatory system, and the same intellectual and emotional capabilities. Society has used these
outward biological differences as a means of discriminating against groups if diverse groups
have intermingled. W.E.B. DuBois, an early black sociologist, was the first to identify the social
construction of race, and he was correct. He argued that it was social discrimination that made
the social outcomes for blacks in America so devastating.

Ethnicity refers to our cultural affiliation and nationality refers to the country where we are a
citizen. Prejudice refers to the belief that one group is superior to another. Racism refers to the
intolerance towards a socially defined race that is not your own. We can take as an example of
social construction a comment made by the then President for Life “Papa Doc” Duvalier of Haiti.
When, in the 1960s, he was asked what percent of Haitians are white he replied 95%. The
interviewer was concerned that he had not spoken French properly and repeated the questions, to
which the Dictator repeated the same answer. Asked how this was possible since any casual
look at Haiti’s population reveals its roots as the first successful nation created by a slave revolt
the Dictator explained. How do you determine race in the US, he asked…one is Black if there is
some small percentage of Black ancestry back a few generations? Well, in Haiti you are white if
you have any white ancestry and only about 5% of Haitians come directly from Africa—so, the
rest are all “white”! Discrimination refers to the unequal treatment of one group by another.

Lecture 3

There are four categories that each of us can fall into around prejudice and discrimination.

Level of Discrimination

Degree of
Prejudice

prejudiced
non-discriminator

prejudiced
discriminator

non-prejudiced
non-discriminator

non-prejudiced
discriminator

The prejudiced discriminator is someone who not only believes that another group is inferior, but
also treats that group unjustly. For example, prior to the late 60s in the south, it was socially
common for white business owners to refuse service to non-whites. It was also a prevalent belief
that non-whites were inferior to whites. So, the shop owner who believed in white superiority
and who discriminated against non-whites would fall into this category. Early Spanish
conquerors of the Central Americas believed that the indigenous population had no souls and
were therefore not human. This belief allowed them to treat those people as badly as they treated
livestock and beasts of burden, with the blessings of the Church present on these explorations. It
was not “inhuman” behavior if you classify them as non-human. A similar approach justified the
treatment of Jews, Gypsies and other “undesirables” including mass extermination during the
German Nazi era in the middle of the last century. Both take discrimination to the extreme.

The prejudiced non-discriminator is an individual who believes that another group is inferior but
does not discriminate against that group. Today it is illegal to refuse service to anyone based on
their race. That does mean though that the store owner who refused service in the 60s is no
longer prejudiced. It just means that this store owner now waits on everyone to avoid
prosecution, but still believes that the other group is inferior. However, there still may be
differences in the kind of service you provide. Non-whites may not be excluded from the store
but may be more likely to have to wait a long time for help or are kept under surveillance
because of their skin color (we will return to this in a moment).

The non-prejudiced discriminator is someone who does not believe that the other group is
inferior but discriminates anyway. Imagine that you are a white shop keeper in the 60s south.
You don’t believe that whites are superior to non-whites. However, if you serve non-whites in
your shop, whites won’t shop there. So, you discriminate against non-whites for economic
reasons, even though you are not prejudiced. A less obvious form of this is a belief by
shopkeepers that being non-white they have less money to spend so non-whites get ignored as a
potential customer—in this case the skin color is a signal about economic status.

The non-prejudiced non-discriminator is the last category. This is the person who believes that
all people are equal and treats everyone equally.

Lecture 3

Now that we have anti-discrimination laws, racism and discrimination have become more covert.
As I mentioned above shop employees sometimes follow non-white customers and monitor them
for potential shoplifting. While it is illegal, there are subtle employment differences. For
example, in many restaurants the wait staff that deal with customers are white and the kitchen
staff likely to be hidden are non-white. Recently there is much made of racial profiling that is
manifest through the high likelihood of black commuters being pulled over in white
neighborhoods even though they have not broken a traffic law—other than the crime of “driving
while black”. These examples are well documented, and in the case of the DWB phenomenon,
are under investigation by the federal government. A recent study of traffic stops on 8-Mile here
in Detroit found that non-whites driving east (and therefore technically within the City of
Detroit) were stopped much less often than those driving west (and therefore technically in
Eastpointe). The NAACP sued the City of Carmel, Indiana for discriminatory ticketing of non-
whites—and what won the suit for them was evidence that non-white workers, on their way to a
call center (a low-wage employer hiring poor non-whites from Indianapolis) had a tag on their
license plates signifying they worked in Carmel, we hardly ever stopped by the police. These are
all examples Institutional racism, where discrimination gets woven into the fabric of our social
institutions making inequality the norm for society.

Scapegoat theory argues that when things are not going well in your life, you look for someone
else to blame. If you are poor and struggling to get and hold a job, you are likely to blame
another group for your failures. The example of Vincent Chen applies here. The Detroit
autoworkers were looking for a scapegoat to blame for the failing auto industry. Rather than
blaming the quality of their product (Japanese cars were better built) or the government for not
controlling imports, they blamed the Vietnamese man that they believed to be Japanese. It is
easier to blame a scapegoat who outwardly looks different or acts different than you. In his case
he paid for it with his life. Another form of this can be seen in studies of union versus non-union
counties in the coal mining regions of West Virginia. When there was no union, white workers
saw the problem as one of cheap Black workers looking to “steal” jobs—but the outcome was
that even though whites earned much more than Blacks, overall wages were low. In strong union
counties, workers all understood that the problem was with the mine owner so overall wages
were higher, even though because of discrimination Black workers still earned less money
(though closer to parity).

Minority groups are often the target for discrimination. A minority group is not necessarily the
group with the smallest numbers. It is always the group with the least social power. Minority
group status changes over time as well. For example, during the Great Immigration the newest
immigrant group was the targeted minority, and each group took its turn. The Irish, the
Germans, the Polish, the Italians, the Puerto Ricans all took their turn as the minority group of
the day until they assimilated. Assimilation is easier if you are distinguished by language and
culture only, and not also by race.

Today, no northern European group is classified as a minority. And yet, like most social
problems we revisit the same issues repeatedly. Pat Buchannan, a presidential candidate for the
Republican Party in the 90s, argued that it was time to close our borders…a sentiment that is felt
by many since the World Trade Center bombings and has become a focus in the current political

Lecture 3

climate among many. In an ironic twist of fate racial profiling now refers to type-casting Arabs
(ironically Arabs are classified as white in the US Census) and there has been less attention to
traditional DWB type of racial profiling. Buchanan argued that immigrants were taking jobs,
overtaxing our resources and could be a danger to our communities. Lou Dobb even accused
illegal immigrants of bringing disease into the country even though there is no evidence of this,
and the claim was refuted by the Center for Disease Control. This is the same argument that the
nativists used during the Great Immigration. We have a movement to deport all illegal
immigrants from Mexico as well, using the identical arguments. For the past year or two thee is
renewed focus on the experiences of African-Americans (George Floyd and the Black Lives
Matter movement) and less concern over Muslims and people from the Middle East. Most
recently, there is an increase of attacks on Asian-Americans (since COVID and our
disagreements with China) and a reminder of the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit (see
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/us/vincent-chin-death-40-anniversary-cec/index.html).

We should remember that “racial” categories are social categories, invented by society to
“explain” or “label” one group as being substantively different than the rest of society.
Sometimes the consequences are more or less benign, sometimes that can cost people their lives,
but never is it justified by “science” and is always artificially motivated—and hence clearly a
social problem.

1

SOC 2020
Lecture Ten

Prof. D. Fasenfest

Global Inequality

My father was born in 1913 and died in 2006. In the course of his lifetime, it took him
half a day to travel by wagon from his village in Poland to the nearest big city. By the time he
passed away he could go literally halfway around the world in the same time. A letter took
months to travel from Paris to New York around the 1800s, but with the invention first of the
telegraph and then telephone the potential for information transmission across great distances in
a matter of minutes depended only on the investment of capital to lay the cable necessary to
carry those signals. Indeed, while you could call Los Angeles from New York with little
difficulty in 1950, there were still areas in the most rural and poorest parts of this country that
did not have more than one phone in some central location like a church or community store.
Trying to call someone in Asia or Africa was a challenge in the best of times.

Today we experience almost instantaneous communication using the Internet, wireless
telephones and other forms of satellite-based transmission of information. From a time when
everyone thought the world was flat, through a period when we did not have a clear
understanding of our world to the present where almost everyone has seen a photo of the earth
from some space capsule orbiting our planet, the planet has gotten smaller. At the same time the
population of the world has grown by leaps and bounds, and the ability of people to travel great
distances means that we are much more likely to encounter people from other countries than our
great grandparents ever imagined (in their day meeting people from another part of their own
country was a great curiosity).

We have spent most of the semester exploring the nature and extent of a variety of social
problems in this country. Now we must consider that the same problems—to greater and lesser
extent—exist everywhere in the world and to some degree the more serious the problems abroad
the more likely it is that they will impact on our lives here. Take, for example, population
growth globally. At first thought we can ask…so what? Why does poverty in Russia or hunger
in Africa or child labor in Asia affect us here in our country? The answer is complex, and yet
easy to understand at the same time. Poverty in Russia means that people who contract diseases
that are more or less contained in our country cannot deal with them properly. Typically once
the symptoms disappear the expensive drugs are no longer taken. In some cases (and for an
increasing number of diseases) the rapid reproduction of virus and bacteria cells results in the
survival and then domination of drug resistant strains. Infections may take days or even longer
to turn into fully developed symptoms, and in that time given the increased global mobility the
drug resistant strains can make their way to our country and at best result in much higher public
health costs, at worst create serious health problems in this country.

Similarly, hunger in Africa creates social and political unrest, first in local areas, then in
regions, and in some cases, it turns into major civil and military conflict that threatens regional
and even global security. This process takes time to develop, but by the time it is a serious

2

problem the solution is expensive, and as we have seen for the past 50 years can lead to costly
and significant involvements by our country’s military—draining our own resources. Child
labor in Asia has been blamed for creating—along with intense poverty and population growth—
an environment of low cost labor. This has been true for a long time, but only in the past 30-50
years have transportation advances meant that large amount of material can be transmitted long
distances at a low cost. In addition, our economy has experienced significant changes in the way
we work and the skills needed. The consequence, generally labeled as globalization, has been a
significant change in where work is performed and has arguably resulted in large numbers of
unemployed in this country and other advanced industrial nations. Jobs in the US have gone to
China and India most recently, but in some industries, they have gone to the Philippines, Mexico,
Malaysia and other low cost regions of the world (we should be mindful that this is little more
than the extension of the pattern of jobs leaving the old industrial regions of the Northeast for the
low cost areas of the South and later the Southwest of this country).

The incredible and rapid global transformation has been driven by both the population
changes and technological advances described in the text. To get a feel for the way technology
impacts upon our daily life and how society is organized consider the telephone. At first a
revolutionary apparatus that allowed instant communication, as noted above it was a capital-
intensive enterprise requiring massive wiring of regions, cities, streets and even houses (I bet you
all still live in homes with phone wires along side the electric and more recently cable wires
coming into the building). The penetration of telephones into a society—that is, the number or
share of households with phone service—was a mark of industrial development and the general
wealth of a society. Whole regions of the world outside of North America and Europe were
without reliable phone service—certainly outside major or capital cities—because there was not
enough of a market to warrant the investment (keep in mind that most countries got phone
service through national monopolies…so the point was not whether lines could be laid, but
whether the customer base could afford the service, and therefore would provide enough revenue
to justify the expense).

The invention and subsequent reduction of production costs of wireless phone service
meant that whole regions of the world required only a series of transmission towers or access to
satellite signals in order to connect isolated communities by phone. In some parts of the world
there are no phone lines, just wireless service—and even if it is not reliable it provides a link to
the global economy. Even in the US people are opting out of a land line to cut out one of their
monthly bills. Something that was a luxury even 10 years ago is now a necessity and hardly a
teenage in this country is without a cell phone. In some markets—Norway the best example—
people can do almost anything with one’s phone, up to and including paying for a soft drink at a
vending machine. Banks now advertise checking your balances via text messaging, and phones
serve as calendars, music players, cameras and video recorders, and access to the Internet.

Without question this technological change has brought about many positive changes in
our lives. But it is also behind the ability to control production around the world from one
central office—and the factory of old, with management in one building beside the factory next
store has resulted in the global factory of today. This new technology has brought us to the
world, and the world to us. When there is anything of interest happening, we see images of it
almost immediately as people capture the drunken fall of a celebrity or the mass demonstrations

3

in Tibet with the same camera phone technology, whose image is immediately broadcast via
YouTube to a world hungry for information. Take any teenager from a relatively well-off
country and that person can be in a mall almost anywhere in the world and find more or less the
same stores (and laid out in more or less the same way). Fashion, culture, art and everything else
that constitutes “culture” is now global.

And so are the desires and expectations of more and more of the world as they become
acutely aware of all that they do not have, all that they are denied because of their poverty and
the squalor of their existence. For some the lure is from the country to the city (and even when
the lure is not there, changes in the country drive many people off the land—much as early
technology converted agriculture in Europe and North American and drove workers to the cities)
in search of a better life and greater economic opportunities. For others the lure attracts Pilipino
workers to jobs in Dubai, North Africans to France and Italy, Latin Americans to the US—by
whatever means possible. All are in search of a better life. But for some the response is outrage,
whether it is at the culturally bankrupt societies of the west from the vantage of religious
fundamentalism (of all types of religions) or at the unjust political processes at home and abroad
that seem to keep populations poor and deny people simple things like clean water, simple
medical treatment, adequate housing and schooling, safe communities to live and reasonable jobs
to provide for one’s children.

Last week we discussed urban issues, and it bears looking at the urban structure of the
developing world to understand the nature and depth of the challenge facing the world (and by
extension our society). In 1950 just under 2 billion people world-wide lived in a rural
environment, about 0.75 billion people lived in urban settings in the industrialized (more
developed) world, and just over 100 million people in the developing world lived in what was
classified as urban areas. Projections are that by 2030 the rural population will have grown to
just over 3 billion people—with environmental damage as they move into forest lands, clearing
the trees to create cultivatable plots—the developed urban population will grow to about 1.2
billion people (a 50% increase for both), but the urban less-developed population will balloon to
over 4 billion people, over a 5-fold increase in a relatively short period of time (at most about 3
generations).

The economic and social (not to mention political) consequences of this growth in
countries without the social and economic infrastructure to support it will mean widespread
poverty and political tension. Mike Davis, in his book Planet of Slums (2006, Verso), outlines
the range of issues and concerns—from housing and sanitation to the supply of water, to the
economic drain on struggling economies—this growth has and will continue to have on much of
the world. Even in our country today the issue of sufficient drinking water pits the demand of
farmers for irrigation water against the demand of cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Las
Vegas (rising out of the dessert). Here in Michigan, there is concern that the economics of
bottled water has a negative impact on the State’s water table and may harm the Great Lakes.
And so it goes—one can only imagine the issues that rise up in countries that can’t afford to deal
with the problem.

What, then, are the prospects for change, and why should we be concerned about what
happens outside of the US? First, you can get a sense of the kinds of difference in living

4

standards by looking at the weekly food consumption of families in a variety of countries (see
the file GLOBAL COMPARISONS OF FOOD BUDGETS in your Course Material directory).
By comparing visually and economically the range and cost of a week’s worth of food laid out in
front of a typical family we can begin to get a sense of the differences across countries as well as
an idea of what is happening in the very poorest of nations. Sadly, in many countries without
enough food for their own populations agricultural production is reserved for export crops
because a) there is not a good market for local production (people don’t have money to buy the
food), and b) even with the costs of transportation cash export crops provide the landowners with
more income. Industrial crops like cotton and flaxseed and specialty consumer crops like
macadamia nuts and cashews are exported to the developed world, and agricultural production
does little to improve the food supply in those exporting countries.

Technology only goes so far in helping, and often makes the situation worse. Improved
farming techniques from chemical fertilizers to increase yield to better machines for planting and
harvesting require capital and end up being used for export crops. To get to the size of farm big
enough to warrant these new technologies small family farmers are driven off the land and into
the cities where they can no longer eek out even a subsistence income. We now face new
concerns about our water supply as traditional water filtering systems cannot clean out many of
the new boutique drugs that enter our ecology further threatening the availability of water
necessary for almost all human activity. Communication technologies improve the flow of
information, only to create a better understanding among the worlds poor exactly what is
happening to them and how bad their lives are in comparison.

SOC 1020
Lecture Seven

Prof. D. Fasenfest

HEALTH

Health refers to the general mental, physical and emotional well-being of the population. Our
understanding of health is culturally informed. What is healthy to us may be unhealthy to another
culture. For example, there is a small tribe in Africa of which 99% of the members have a skin
disorder called “Pinto”, named after the bean, that it resembles. An uncooked pinto bean has
stripes and spots of brown mixed with white. The members of this tribe have hyper pigmented
skin so that they resemble the markings on the bean. In this culture, if you are part of the 1%
that doesn’t have this disorder (which is hereditary and recessive) you are considered less
healthy, less attractive and less desirable as a marriage partner. If we picked that entire tribe up
today and relocated them to Detroit, the 1% without the skin affliction would be considered
healthier and more attractive.

Medical sociologists are extremely important in our understanding of health. Social
epidemiology is the practice of tracking the origin of disease. One of the most well-known and
important examples of epidemiology in recent years is the discovery of how AIDS was being
spread. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tracks any unusual outbreak of disease. With
the AIDS epidemic, the alert came from an individual who was tracking the dispersal of
antibiotics. She noticed that there were more treatments being prescribed in New York and Los
Angeles for a rare form of pneumonia and alerted the proper individuals. At the same time, the
tumor registry (a database for tracking cancers) showed an increase in Kaposi’s sarcoma, a rare
form of skin cancer that was likely to be seen in older Mediterranean males. Another odd thing
about the outbreak was that it was showing up in young men of all ethnic backgrounds, also in
New York and L.A. This triggered a study by the CDC’s team of epidemiologists. An
epidemiological team includes medical doctors, sociologists, psychologists, biologists, infectious
disease experts and other disciplines as needed for the problem at hand. This team began to talk
to individuals that were affected by these outbreaks. Over time they were able to trace this new
infection back to a single individual, an airline steward. They were also able to determine that
the disease was sexually transmitted and appeared to be limited to the homosexual population.
Eventually, when it spread to others, the team was able to identify that it was carried in the blood
and through breast milk, putting anyone who had received a transfusion at risk and showing that
our blood supply was tainted. After a time, it also began to show up in the intravenous drug
using population, as they shared needles and passed infected blood to one another.

More recent examples of epidemiological cases are the recent SARS epidemic and the recent E
Coli outbreak linked to tainted spinach. The sociologist on this team would be responsible for
examining the behaviors of the infected parties and finding where their paths had crossed. For
example, the SARs victims had either attended a recent religious convention in China or had
close contact with someone who had. All of the victims of the E Coli outbreak had eaten raw
spinach is some form in the preceding days.

Health, and health access is a function of income. Think about the things that we are advised to
do to stay healthy. Watch our intake of calories and fat. Exercise daily. Lower our stress. Get
regular physicals. Make healthy food choices. Obesity is currently an epidemic in our country
and the poorer you are; the more likely you are to be obese. Often physicians argue that they
don’t understand why we are having such a problem since healthy guidelines are well publicized.
Those that are not obese are likely to blame the individual for their obesity.

If you’ve gone grocery shopping lately, you should have noticed that chicken, the healthiest
meat, is also the most expensive. Hamburger and organ meats (like liver) are the unhealthiest and
the cheapest cuts available. Fresh fruits and vegetables are the most expensive and canned are
the least expensive. Canned varieties also have the fewest nutrients. Eating healthy is the most
expensive way to eat. What about exercising? Fitness magazines are always touting that
everyone can walk and/or run so there is no excuse for not exercising. All you need is a good
pair of shoes. That good pair of shoes is expensive close to $130. How does the individual in a
poor neighborhood get out and walk or run? They likely work long hours and would have to go
outside with inappropriate shoes in an unsafe neighborhood after dark. Researchers of childhood
obesity urge parents to get their kids out on bicycles and ride bike trails…but those at highest
risk—inner city and rural poor—cannot afford bikes or live near safe bike paths. Also, it is not
only the poor in our society that are obese. The middle classes are also likely to be overweight.
Long work hours mean that many of us don’t cook at home most nights. We stop for pizza or
fast food on the way home and settle exhausted in front of our T.V. sets when we get home.
Ever wonder why the commercials on evening television focus on beer and snack food—either
store bought, or for home delivery or a quick trip through the drive through window.

Along with the poor, elderly are more likely to be unhealthy. Partly this is because our bodies
run down as we age. Our eyesight diminishes, our hearts tire out and our bones become more
brittle. Since women live longer than men, females are more likely to have several health
conditions as they age. Men on the other hand are more likely to have one health issue that kills
them, like a heart attack or stroke. As mentioned above, as medicine improves our chances of
living longer, we also need to expect a higher reliance on the medical profession to keep us
going…and that requires a growing pharmaceutical industry, medical technology, hospitals as
businesses, para-medical and medical technicians, in addition to more doctors and nurses. It is
little wonder that health care costs are skyrocketing, insurance is a major concern, and industrial
representatives and lobbyists press to keep us from doing anything that controls costs (for
example, many of you may know people who buy drugs in Canada, where prices and profits are
controlled—something that we cannot or will not do in this country as industry groups fight any
legislation that would permit such across the board cost savings).

We also have culturally induced behaviors that hurt our health. Smoking is one with Americans
continuing to smoke regardless of the health and economic consequences of the behavior. One
reason that people smoke is to self-medicate stress. Another is peer pressure, with teenager girls
currently the group most at risk to smoke (and develop smoking related illnesses). Another is
problem that is culturally driven is anorexia. The intense cultural pressure on females to be thin
and physically perfect has created a near epidemic of eating disorders. Females as young as 9
and 10 reports that they want to lose weight or are on a diet. While the reality us that many of

our children are overweight, diets can get out of control for the adolescent. Also, for the first
time, we are seeing an increase in the number of males diagnosed with anorexia.

For the most part, we practice western medicine in the U.S., relying on intervention from a
trained physician. This may mean that we take drugs or have surgery. Either way, we go to the
doctor when we are ill, and the hospital when we are very ill. Holistic medicine is also gaining
popularity as an alternative for some and an addition to the health care needs of others. Holistic
medicine focuses on prevention as well as treatment and takes into account the complete physical
and social environment of the patient. So a patient being seen by a traditional physician for stress
might be prescribed an anti-anxiety medication for the stress and another medication for high
blood pressure. A holistic provider would try to identify the triggers for the stress in the person’s
life and make recommendations on ways to reduce stress. They might teach the patient to
meditate or recommend exercise. Drugs might also be prescribed, but they would more likely be
the last choice of care than the first.

The difference between “western” and holistic or culturally normed medical practices can be
seen by the following parable: A village living close to a cliff has its members falling over and
breaking bones or experiencing serious harm, and soon the local hospital is over crowded.
Western medical practice is to advocate an expensive expansion in the hospital, building room
for more beds and hiring more doctors and nurses to deal with the problem. Sustainable,
culturally sensitive proposals call for building a fence at the top of the cliff. Now, this is
somewhat simplistic, but the point is that once we come to rely on technology and “special”
knowledge we forget that sometimes simpler and more effective solutions are possible.

Despite the fact that we are one of the wealthiest countries in the world, our citizens have
inadequate access to health care and we spend more money out of pocket than any other country
of our economic status. What do you suppose it is like for the working poor to access health
care? We tend to view the poor in society as lazy, but, they typically work longer hours and
more than one job for lower wages than those in the middle class. If someone works two jobs,
for example McDonald’s and Taco Bell, for the minimum wage they may be putting in more
than 40 hours a week, but both jobs are part time and will have no health benefits. If they get
sick, they will lose wages from work for the day. There little incentive to call in sick if it costs
you in your current paycheck and may also result mean fewer hours scheduled later if you are
seen as unreliable. People knowingly would not want someone with the flu preparing food and
likely passing the bug along. In reality that is exactly what happens. The sick individual
continues to work until the infection forces them to seek medical care, infecting others in the
process. When they seek medical care, they not only lose the day’s wages, but also get an
expensive bill they likely cannot afford to pay. They eventually return to work, deeper in debt,
struggling harder to make ends meet with the missing wages. One remedy to this would be a
non-punitive and comprehensive medicine system that provides preventive care as well as
dealing with sick people (many insurers only pay for a remedy, not more than one general
physical a year)..

National health care or socialized medicine treats health care as a right of citizens rather than a
privilege. In Canada for example, every citizen gets a medical card. It entitles them to treatment
without fee for most of what ails them. This results in a healthier country with less out of pocket

expenses. The criticism of this type of program centers on the concern that our taxes will
increase to cover the added costs. This is true; however, many of us already pay huge
contributions to our health care, easily $400+ a month or more deducted from our pay for family
coverage if we have some. This doesn’t include the costs of co-pays and drugs. When compared
to all the costs of medical care now we would likely pay less or usually no more than we already
pay if health care was nationalized. Several studies have compared the benefits Europeans get
for their higher taxes against the taxes and further out-of-pocket expenses Americans pay for all
sorts of social services and it turns out Americans pay more for fewer services. Another
criticism is that we will not be able to select our own doctors, or we will be wait listed for
essential treatment. In reality, this is already true. Since the introduction of HMOs (Health
Maintenance Organizations) and PPOs (preferred provider organizations) true choice in
physician has been eliminated. Both of these insurance programs require you to see physicians
who have agreed to a structured fee plan. In exchange for charging less for a procedure, the
insurance company sends all of its patients to the doctor. Doctor salary increases accrue due to
higher volume of patients offsetting the lower cost of procedures per patient. This also translates
into less time for care as overbooked medical staff offer less personalized care. Just think about
the time you wait in the outer office, and then in examining room, only to see you doctor for just
a few minutes (often later than the appointment) as the doctor is in a hurry to get through the
patient load for the day. Another problem with these plans is that pre-approval is required for
procedures or there are strict rules on how and when to make a referral to a specialist. This
means that your doctor examines you and decides what needs to be done. S/he then asks the
insurance company for permission to do the procedure. The insurance company then decides if
the treatment is warranted, even though they have not seen you and the decision maker may not
even be a physician.

Another reality of health care is that you are indeed put on a waiting list for treatment. Most of
you have likely been to an ER and undergone the triage process. This means that the severity of
your symptoms is ranked, and you are seen in order of severity, not arrival. If you need an organ
transplant, you are also ranked by your need, and may be ranked by your age and lifestyle as
well. If we have two equally needy patients, one a 17-year-old with their entire life ahead of
them and one a 70-year-old, who will get the new heart? Does the new liver go to the hepatitis
victim who was not responsible for their infection or the alcoholic who destroyed their liver?
Celebrity status may bump you up the list. Mickey Mantle (a famous baseball player from the
50s and 60s), David Crosby (a member of an 80s group Crosby, Stills and Nash) and Larry
Hagman (JR on Dallas, Major Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie) all needed liver transplants due to
alcohol and substance use. Each was able to get a nearly immediate transplant due to celebrity
and money.

We cannot look at health without looking at the part we play as the patient. Talcott Parsons
developed the theory of the Sick role. He argued that when we become a patient, we must first
accept the fact that we are sick. This means that we change our behaviors to that of a sick
person. We take time off from our regular activities, work, school, play. We seek medical
treatment, and we actively work to get better. The temporary cessation of activities is an allowed
deviance from our normal productivity that is socially acceptable. We are however given a time
limit. If you continue to use this excuse to skip class or miss work, you will be labeled a

malingerer…someone who is lazy and avoiding work. The sick role has the expectation that you
will get better—and works for just so long.

I will end with a discussion of the COVID pandemic which has occupied so much of our world
for the past two years. First, one can get a sense of the impact globally by looking at current data
(regularly updated): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries Of course, data are
only as good as those reporting accurately and completely. A comment by a recent President in
the US suggested if we just stop testing we won’t have the virus—not a good solution, but it does
speak to the viability of data reporting. A worker in Florida was fired for making public the
incidence of COVID in that state kept by its Department of Health. Again, who benefits if we
don’t have the information.

The COVID pandemic pointed to the problems in the US health care system. First, a country
comparison is worth exploring (see https://www.finder.com/healthcare-costs-by-country). The
US generally has the most expensive per person cost of healthcare with one of the lowest
qualities of health-related outcomes. Partly that is due to how our system functions. Of the 35 or
so most industrial high-income countries only the US does not have a national healthcare system
of one sort or another. Rather, we rely on private insurance schemes (for most people with
insurance that means what is provided—if anything—by their employer), and for the very poor
or elderly there are government programs but with various limitations and private costs. What
COVID revealed was that when millions lost their jobs due to the shutdown during the height of
the pandemic, suddenly a large segment of our society lost access to healthcare at the very
moment when it was most needed. That helps explain why almost 90 million people contracted
COVID in this country, more than double the next country in absolute terms (India). Fully 1 out
of every 6 people who died from COVID lived in the US, perhaps the world’s richest country.

Some countries tried to fully contain the disease through high levels of testing and isolation
(China comes to mind as one of the more draconian efforts, but countries like Australia used
similar strategies), which worked well at first, but once the virus entered those countries the
spread was rapid and healthcare facilities were stressed. Others used high rates of vaccination
plus testing and tracking (letting people know whether they came into contact with a COVID-
infected person) which enabled those countries to manage both the spread of COVID and the
impact on their healthcare system. The response in the US was idiosyncratic with lots of
resistance to various recommendations like mask wearing, social distancing and limits to public
gathering. As a result, the US had one of the highest rates of “super spreader events” where this
highly infectious virus infected many people.

We now have an uncomfortable relationship to COVID. With higher rates of vaccination even
as people get infected the symptoms seem to be milder, almost flu-like. This has resulted in a
more casual approach to prevention. What remains to be seen is what doctors are now calling
“long COVID” or a pattern of lingering effects even as the immediate infection does not
hospitalize as many people. The jury is out because there has not been a long time to study this
effect—but reports are that impaired brain functions, long-term lung damage and other maladies
can be traced to lingering impact of having had COVID.

SOC 1020
Lecture Eight

Prof. D. Fasenfest

Work and the Workplace

You can’t examine the economy without also examining the workplace. The workplace in the
US is in a state of flux, which some view as problematic and others view as progress. As we
move into the information age, more and more jobs are high skilled. We are becoming
deindustrialized. In my father’s generation, and only slightly less so in mine, you could drop out
of school and get a job that paid a living wage. A high level of education was not required to
work on the assembly line in one of the big three. With the recession of the late 70s, early 80s, a
lot of these jobs disappeared, and it became harder to get a blue collar job that paid a living
wage. The high school diploma had been the key to entry level white collar or pink-collar jobs.
Your generation will have a harder time finding employment without a higher education. The
BA is increasingly the requirement for entry level work.

Take a secretarial job as an example. In the 1970s the skills most sought after in a secretary were
fast and accurate typing, a good speaking voice, shorthand knowledge and good organizational
skills. Today, along with being a good typist, the secretary must be knowledgeable with a variety
of computer software packages and may be required to speak more languages than English. S/he
may be responsible for managing others in the office as well. These increased responsibilities
have led to a redefining of the occupation, with most secretaries now called administrative
assistants, or in some cases, personal assistant. This new term better describes the variety of
administrative tasks that are required for this job. Also, this job is often viewed as an entry level
opening into a field. So a person graduating with a BA in business or a social science may work
as an administrative assistant in an advertising agency as they work their way up the ladder to
manage accounts.

Notice we speak about “she” when we think about a secretary—we discussed the gendering of
jobs and the allocation of women to particular types of work. But consider the secretary and the
operator of a console that controls production machines. Most likely that person is a man. Each
has to work with a keyboard inputting information, each has to be able to manage simple
machines—a computer of one kind or another. And each need about the same level of skill.
Yet secretaries tend to make less, and their job ladder is more or than not limited to one day
becoming an executive secretary. The machine operator is paid more and through the workplace
can keep getting higher and higher paid work—though likely that person in today’s world will
not become a manager. Those people are hired right out of higher education programs like an
MBA (and often relying on the operator or secretary to get them going at work!).

The US has dual labor market. The primary labor market provides jobs that have a living wage
and good benefits. The secondary labor market provides jobs that have low wages and few, if
any, benefits. Those in the secondary labor market often work more than one job to make ends
meet, have no job security and are economically insecure. In other words, the primary labor
market has what used to be good blue-collar jobs and more recently the kind of information
processing work like stockbrokers, insurance agents, and other “mental” jobs with upward

mobility. The secondary labor market worker remains in the low end of the service sector—at the
bottom are what we call hamburger flippers, but it also includes retail clerks, low-end sales
workers, janitorial and maid services, and most temporary workers to name a few. These jobs are
filled by people who are easily replaced, offer little if any benefits, and do not provide a job or
career ladder for future advance and salary gains.

Is it problematic that the high wage/low skill jobs are leaving the U.S.? One problem with the
outsourcing of our jobs is that they are leaving at a time that we still have an untrained labor
force. Individuals displaced by factories closing are often not trained to take on a non-
manufacturing job. Therefore, they end up either unemployed or underemployed. However, in
order to be competitive in the next market, we have to make the shift to non-manufacturing jobs
as the bulk of our production. Therefore, this shift will allow us to remain competitive. As
Durkheim and later Ogden argued, it takes a while for a change to filter through the social
structures. So, it will take a while for education and training to catch up with the technological
changes that are currently affecting our economy.

Another problem with the workplace is the McDonaldilization of Society. This theory suggests
that jobs are created for efficiency, predictability, uniformity and automation. These
characteristics limit the creativity of humans that are involved in the job, further alienating that
human being by Marxian standards. Also, more and more agencies use temporary workers.
These workers may be high skilled or low skilled and can go into any work setting. Temps may
work fulltime for a temp agency, or they may work part time for an agency or independently.
Either way the temp may have fewer chances for stability and promotion than a typical worker.
Females are far more likely to be employed as temps.

In fact, females are far more likely to be paid less in any occupation than men, except for one.
Sex work is the only occupation where women are paid more. Male waiters make more. Male
nurses make more. Male teachers make more. Men make more than women even when taking on
jobs that are gendered towards females, such as nursing. Along with making less, women are
more likely to hit the “glass ceiling”; the barrier that keeps women from progressing to the
highest levels of responsibility in their occupation. In the US, white males still predominate in all
the highest paying and highest prestige jobs with women and non-whites predominating in the
lower paid, lower prestige jobs.

There are two other major issues with the workplace. One is danger to the workers. Along with
workplace violence, which is often highly publicized even while it is rare, there are dangers that
are innate to the job that we often take for granted. Construction for example can be very
dangerous. You likely all remember the equipment failure that took the lives of three workers on
the I-280 overpass in Toledo a few years ago. Recently, nine firemen lost their lives fighting a
warehouse fire. A female professor working with Mercury a few years ago accidentally poisoned
herself. Deaths in mining are frequent…in fact mining may be the most dangerous job in the

U.S. While we have many laws that have been designed to keep these dangers to a minimum, but
the nature of many of these occupations means that danger is inherent and will never be fully
eliminated. In 2005, 2.2 million workers were disabled in work related accidents and 6000 lost
their lives.

Another major issue with the workplace is the growing isolation of the worker. Think about this
class. I sit here at my home computer, no company but my dog, writing these notes. You will
read them under similar conditions and submit your work. We have no interpersonal interaction.
More and more jobs require us to be plugged into a computer screen for 8 or more hours a day.
When we do our job through telecommuting, we don’t even have someone in the office next
door to drop in on to add a social element to our day. And we love jobs that allow us the freedom
of telecommuting. I can guarantee you, on any given day, walk into your local Panera bread and
count the number of folks sitting alone, working on a laptop or talking on a cell phone. Panera is
a good example due to the free wireless access it provides. Another downside is that we are
never away from work as our laptops, cell phones and wireless internet allow us to take the
office with us virtually everywhere we go.

In the US, the growth in compensation is lagging far behind that of the productivity of the
American employee. Between 1948-1979, the growth in productivity vs wages were relatively
similar, with an increase of 108% and 93%, respectively. But between 1979-2019, whilst net
productivity has continued to increase by an expected 70%, hourly compensation in the country
is less than a fifth of that at just 12%. That is, the growth in productivity has more than doubled
that of hourly compensation for U.S. workers since 1948. With net productivity in the country
growing by roughly 253 percent in the last seven decades, hourly compensation has increased by
just 116 percent. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a surge in economic inequality in the
U.S., as millions of workers remain permanently unemployed from the job they had before the
virus reached the country. However, COVID-19 and subsequent economic hardships are only
exacerbating an already serious decline in worker prosperity, and data shows how worker
productivity has increased at a much faster rate than hourly compensation over the last decades.

Let’s consider the minimum wage versus what most economists consider to be a “living wage”
that allows a family of four to have a reasonable existence (housing, food, clothing, etc.). In the
US, living wage statistics show that the 2019 living wage was $16.54 per hour or $68,808 per
year before taxes for a family of four. That is just about what the highest minimum wage is in

the US, at about $15/hr…though it is only a minimum for Federal workers. States get to set their
own minimum wages. So, only NYC and Washington DC have a minimum that high. By
contrast, Georgia and Wyoming have state minimum wages of only $5.15 per hour. Clearly,
how one can live depends on the local economy, and in some states with low costs low wages are
less of a problem. Nevertheless, there is not enough variation in things like food, energy and
clothing costs to make that much of a difference—the main variant in family budgets is the cost
of housing, and even that is rising faster than wages. In the end, about 44% of all jobs in the US
are categorized as receiving low or minimum wages; that translates to about 55 million
Americans. At that level, families are “one paycheck” away from homelessness, hunger and the
breakup of families.

Some facts:

• In 2020, 8% of all hourly-paid workers earning wages at or below the federal minimum
were in the leisure and hospitality industry.

• Females represented 37.9% of all part-time hourly-paid workers with wages at or below
the federal minimum in 2020.

• In 2020, about 50,000 African Americans were federal minimum wage workers.
• 247,000 workers earned the actual federal minimum wage in 2020.
• The percent of the workers in the US earning minimum wage or less declined from 1.9%

in 2019 to 1.5% in 2020.
• Raising the federal minimum wage could cut 1.4 million jobs in the US by 2025.
• 1% of the hourly-paid workers had a bachelor’s degree and higher.

A look at other industrial countries is instructive:

• While minimum wages increased substantially between 1 January 2021 and 1 January
2022 in nominal terms, the real-life impact does not signify a boost to living standards
when rising inflation is taken into account. During the same period, minimum wage
workers in 15 out of the 21 Member States with a statutory minimum wage saw a decline
in their wages in real terms.

• If present inflation trends continue, minimum wages will barely grow in real terms in any
country in 2022, and significant losses in the purchasing capacity of minimum wage
earners will become a dominant theme unless the issue is addressed by additional uprates
or other support measures for low-paid employees during the year. Countries with
automatic indexation mechanisms, such as Belgium, France and Luxembourg, were
quicker in uprating wages in line with inflation; but additional increases can be also
introduced ad hoc, as in Greece.

• The proposed EU directive on adequate minimum wages is already prompting a few
Member States to refocus debates on the topic and prepare for change in areas such as
setting the criteria for wage setting or raising wages in line with the ‘international
reference values’ mentioned in the proposal. Germany, for example, has decided to
uprate its minimum wage to €12 per hour, or about 60% of median wages, in October
2022.

• New findings indicate that substantial debates among national actors on how to promote
collective bargaining and increase bargaining coverage are taking place in only Denmark,

Latvia and Norway. Establishing action plans to promote collective bargaining is an
important element of the new EU directive on adequate minimum wages and will be a
key requirement for Member States.

• Minimum wages can play a critical role in reducing wage inequality. For example,
findings relating to Spain demonstrate that the impact of the 22% increase in the
minimum wage in 2019 led to the greatest reduction in wage inequality in the EU27
Member States in the same year. This is likely to have been a result of the minimum
wage increase, which counteracted the high level of wage inequality in Spain, a gap that
had grown in the year before the hike.Share

SOC 1020
Lecture Six

Prof. D. Fasenfest

AGING

Perhaps one of the most profound changes in the last 100 years is the role that the aged play in
our society. Two things happened following the industrial revolution. The first is that life
expectancy increased dramatically. Prior to the mid-1800s, the chance of seeing your fifth
birthday was 10%. Antibiotics and childhood immunizations did not exist. Not only was
surviving childhood a gamble, but adults also fought to survive in these times. A cut that we
would have stitched up and lathered in Neosporin, healing within a few days, could likely and
often did turn into a serious fatal blood infection. The flu killed people by the thousands. In
1918 a flu epidemic that began in Kansas swept the world and at the end 100 million people were
dead. In 1952 nearly 60,000 Americans had polio, 21,000 were paralyzed and 3,000 died.
Needless to say, when these diseases are around people die at a younger age. When they are
controlled, people live longer. Infants born in 1850 had a life expectancy of between 38 and 42
years. Children born in 2007 can expect to live well into their 70s. So now we have a society
that not only has more old people, but they are living to much older ages than in previous
generations. (See http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html )

Complicating this change in general demographics is the Baby Boom generation. This is the
generation born between roughly 1943 and 1964 (there is some debate on when the baby boom
ended, some marking it as early as 1960). The Baby Boom was a time after WWII when more
babies were born than we should have expected. Since the youngest of the baby boomers just
applied for Social Security, we will have more people in or approaching old age than any other
earlier generation. The predictions for 2020 are that we will have 2 people on social security of
every person in the labor market. This is often referred to as the “graying of America”.

Another thing that has happened to the aged in society is that they are no longer revered for their
wisdom and skills. When a culture is dependent upon an oral history older individual are
important. They are the only link to the past and hold an honored position. Also, they are able to
assist with childcare and light manual tasks in the home and so they remain productive. In these
societies there may actually be a gerontocracy, where the elders have the wealth, prestige and
power in society. In our society, we no longer refer to the aged as elders…we refer to them as
elderly. The status of age is no longer an honored title, but rather an adjective that implies frailty
and dependence. Because people live to older ages, health issues make the old in our society
dependent. By age 85, 50% of individuals have Alzheimer’s. Diabetes, heart disease, high blood
pressure, and stroke are just a few other things that plague the very old in our society. This
means that families will be faced with choices: put the senior in a nursing facility though that
may be expensive, or care for them at home though that may be too stressful. We have a society
with a sandwich generation, adults caring for young dependent children at the same time they are
caring for old dependent parents.

The age of the population has grown to the point that we now break our older generations into
three categories. The young old are those individuals between 65 and 74. These people typically

enjoy good health, many may still be in the labor force, and they live independently. The older
old are those between 75 and 84. These people may still remain healthy and independent but are
less likely to be working and more likely to require some support services. Finally, the oldest
old, those over 84, are likely to be in declining health and require many support services.

Aging is more problematic for women than for men. Women tend to live longer than men. As
men age, they are likely to have an acute illness, like a heart attack, from which they do not
survive. Women typically have chronic illnesses, like glaucoma and diabetes, things that reduce
the quality of life and increase dependency but that are not fatal. So not only do women live
longer, but their health problems in old age are likely to be greater. Women are also likely to
live in poverty as they age. Many women in earlier generations did not work full time and so
they receive spousal benefits from Social Security. When their spouse dies, they get a pay cut.
Unfortunately, poverty for the elderly in our society is so bad that the nation was scandalized in
the early 90s when reports found that this group had been forced to add dog and cat food to their
diet in order to stretch their food budgets.

Non-whites have a lower life expectancy in general than do whites. Non-white females live
longer than non-white males. The health outcomes are lower for non-whites for a variety of
reasons. This group tends to be impoverished more than their white counterparts. The history of
poverty likely means that health care and prevention throughout the life span has been
inadequate and so there is a higher rate of chronic illnesses in the non-white population (diabetes,
high blood pressure, etc).

Along with the reduced prestige associated with the elderly in society, we actually are
encountering the phenomenon of ageism. Ageism refers to the discrimination against individuals
due to their age. We see this in several ways. First, it is extremely hard for a 50-year-old to get
a first job (or even a new job if unemployed) if they are on the job market, unless they are
applying for a job where age is associated with tenure and experience. An entry or mid-level job
is likely to go to a younger applicant (if nothing else they can be hired at a lower wage because
younger applicants tend to have less work experience). Recently widowed or divorced women
entering the labor force for the first time find it very hard to get work, and when they do it is at a
level well below the lifestyle they had experienced when they had a working husband.

Ageism also reaches into the community. Prior to Reagan’s first term in office, we had
mandatory retirement. At 65, you left your job, even if you were still able to work and wanted to
be productive. Reagan was older when elected than the mandatory retirement age, and so he
pushed Congress to pass a bill to eliminate mandatory retirement. You can work as long as you
want as long as you are able to do your job. On the surface, this seems like a very good thing,
given that life expectancy was increasing. However, one thing that retirement did was to get one
generation to leave the labor force thereby creating job vacancies for the next generation to fill.
When people stopped retiring, jobs got harder to find for younger workers (consider that the
average age of auto workers in Michigan is very close to retirement age since few new workers
have been hired for a long time). This created tension and anger for younger workers with fewer
openings in the market as they finished school. Ageism works both ways. The older generation
is society is typically frightened or threatened by the younger generation. There is always the
perception that the younger generation is out of control and destroying the culture.

Finally, the growing tensions between the generations have led to elder abuse. There are many
theories about the causes of elder abuse. Is the stress on the sandwich generation so great that
rage is driving abuse in previously non-abusive families? Elder abuse is hard to detect for a
variety of reasons. As we age, our skin gets thinner which makes us prone to injury. A fall that
would have bruised in younger years now may break an arm. A bump that would have gone
unnoticed may now leave a nasty bruise or torn skin. The elderly are often clumsy due to poor
eyesight or reduced strength and lose their footing so falls are frequent and damaging. Also,
elders are less likely to tell anyone that they are being abused due to shame or guilt. They may
feel responsible for creating a stressful situation.

Can adult children be held responsible for their parent? Yes, they can. Is this legal? Hard to
say. A few years ago, a man with Alzheimer’s was found in an airport. He was dressed in all
new clothes and had no identification. He didn’t remember his name. An investigation revealed
that he had been living with his daughter who had tried unsuccessfully to get her sibling to help
out with his care. She had finally gotten to her breaking point, dressed her father in new clothes
and dropped him off the airport, telling him that his son would meet him there. She believed that
he would be discovered quickly and without identification would be placed in a state assisted
nursing home. Problem solved. She was prosecuted for abandonment and neglect. Why she
was prosecuted? Certainly, what she did was unethical to be sure. However, the law holds that
we are legally responsible for our children until they reach 18years of age. There is no
corresponding law that makes us responsible for our parents as they age. If this is the case,
shouldn’t the brother who didn’t help also be held accountable?

One of the things scientists are starting to consider is the fact that human development has been
gradual, and in the “modern” era it has taken millennia for humans to extend their life-spans.
200 years ago a long life was into a person’s 40s, and 100 years ago most people thought living
to 50 was a good thing. Retirement set at 65 was cynical because by the beginning of the 20th
Century people lived into their late 60s and employers (the system was created in Prussia) were
confident most people would not have many years with a pension. Today we live well into our
790s and 80s and one of the major worries of financial advisors is that people may well outlive
their pensions and savings plans.

But another, more ominous fact looms for us. The human brain evolved gradually as our body
clock developed, as we lived longer. But the sudden increase in life expectancy—made possible
by better diets and medical care—may put stress on our most important organ. We can get hip
replacements, heart and vital organ transplants and surgically reroute our blood vessels in our
extremities as the circumstance requires, but we can’t replace or repair our brain. Some
speculate the rapid increase in deteriorating brain function associated with dementia,
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and a raft of other ailments may simply be the product of
having outlived the functional life of our brain organ!

As we approach a wave of Baby Boomers retiring analysts speculate that we will see a major
change in social policy and societal views—much like the changes that were wrought first as
these people were young adults and were part of the Student Movement for change, then as
young people supporting the Women’s and Civil Rights Movements that changed the laws of the

land, and later as the spearhead of the Sexual Revolution we had so much fun discussing the last
lecture! By the 1980s and 1990s this generation fueled the great Consumer Society as we
experienced rising income and expectations, spending madly on homes, cars and luxury goods.
Today, as this generation can look over the fence at their imminent retirement we are embroiled
in a discussion about heath care, medical insurance, and the desire for our later years to continue
to provide for the quality of our day to day existence. Long gone are the days of looking forward
to a gold watch and a rocker on the front porch!

Lecture Two, page 1

SOC 1020
Lecture Two

Prof. D. Fasenfest

When we look at how money is distributed, we need to look at both Income and Wealth.
Income refers to money earned in wages or salary from employment. Wealth refers to the value
that you have stored as assets and savings. To arrive at a measure of your economic situation,
you would need to look at your total income, add your savings and assets (value of home, value
of car, jewelry, etc.), and then you subtract the total money that you owe.

Assume a person has the following income, assets, and debt.

Income, assets Debt
Salary $50,000. Mortgage $100,000.
Car $15,000. Visa $500.
Home $150,000. Student loan $10,000.
Savings $3,000. Car loan $10,000
Checking $1,000.
Retirement $50,000.

Total $269,000. Total $125,000.

This person’s economic situation is $144,000. But we must remember that income is a “flow”
and assets minus debts are a “stock” in this narrative. Flows can go up or down, so some years
we make more (lots of overtime, for example), and some years we make less (a temporary lay-
off or out of work looking for a new job). Stocks tend not to change much, and unlike flows
change in large jumps. That is why we sometimes call people “house poor” because they have a
house worth a lot if sold but have no or little income. You can’t “eat” using the value of your
house and at the same time selling your house (or car) is not an option.

In the U.S., 80% of all wealth is controlled by 20% of the population. By contrast, 50% of all
income is earned by 20% of the population. The lowest 20% in society measured by income
owns less than 1% of the wealth. After many years of getting closer, the gap between the
wealthy and the poor now gets larger every day. The budget exercise shows how much one
depends on income and not assets to live comfortably (or at all).

We tried to even out the disparity in wealth and income by using progressive taxation. This
means that the higher your income is, the larger percentage will be taken as taxes, with the
richest paying approximately 30% in federal taxes and the poorest paying about 3%. State and
local taxes are not progressive. If you live in the city of Detroit, you pay 3% of your income in
city taxes. So if you make $100,000 you pay $3,000 and if you make $10,000 you pay $300.
Also, taxes on purchases are not progressive. Everyone in Michigan pays a 6% sales tax. We all
pay the state rate on gasoline, telephone services, cigarettes (if you smoke) etc. This means that
a larger percentage of total income is required by the poor to survive. Think of gas prices over

Lecture Two, page 2

the past year. If you make $2000 a week and you pay $50 a week for gasoline you may not like
it, but it doesn’t make you struggle. If you make $250 a week, you spend the same $50 for gas,
but it makes it hard to pay for the rest of your necessities.

We can stratify our society using an income-based classification scheme. In this country there
are the poor-poor, poor, working class, middle class, upper class or upper-upper class of society.
The poor-poor are those who do not earn enough to maintain even the most basic quality life in
our society. The homeless would be included in this classification. The poor are those families
whose incomes fall at or slightly below the poverty line. The poverty line is a fluctuating number
that refers to the smallest amount of money needed to support a family scaled by family size. In
2007, this was set at $20,650 for a family of four. Ironically, working full time at minimum
wage would still put a family in the ranks of the poor…what many refer to as being among the
working poor. Approximately 13% of American families live in poverty.

There is the belief in our society that the poor are lazy or somehow responsible for their poverty.
(See: http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_1_sndgs01.html ) The reality is that the poor work
more hours than the wealthy, they earn less for those jobs and have fewer benefits, such as
vacation, sick time and health insurance. The article above holds single mothers accountable for
their poverty, passing a judgment on these women as if they are immoral and ignorant. Included
in the ranks of single mothers are not only poor women who have given birth without benefit of
marriage, but also wealthy women who have done the same. Divorced women fall into these
ranks (many non-custodial parents, men and women alike, do not pay child support and many
States do not enforce the court order for support—though that is changing). Widowed women
fall into these ranks as well. We can see the difficulty of surviving at the bottom, rather than
assuming people are lazy or prefer not to work, looking at Barbara Ehrenreich’s recent book
Nickeled and Dimed. Next are the working class, many who might fall in the middle class by
income standards ($40,000 – $79,999) but they typically have blue collar occupations, or manual
labor occupations with low prestige. Middle and Upper-middle class workers (earning between
$80,000 and $170,000) typically have white collar occupations, or jobs with higher levels of
social prestige. The Upper class and the Upper Upper class are those individuals who are very
wealthy.

There are several theories that are used to explain poverty. Some argue there is a Culture of
Poverty theory whereby the poor do not internalize the same values of hard work and success
that the non-poor internalize and so poverty becomes a way of life. This theory is criticized for
the fact that it “blames the victim”, holding the poor responsible for poverty rather than focusing
on any structural system of inequality. Another theory to explain poverty is social
disorganization, arguing that poor communities suffer from a breakdown in social order that is
caused by rapid change. This is a structural functionalist theory stating that a rapid change in the
institutions of society, like the industrial revolution, will create a ripple effect of social problems
in the other areas of social life. Conflict theorists are more likely to argue that poverty is the
outcome of social struggles in which some groups—whether because of limited access to
education, whether because of their gender or skin color, whether because of the very way a
capitalist system operates…and perhaps a combination of more than one factor—are unable to
do more that scrape together a meager income.

Lecture Two, page 3

Some argue that inequality may be useful to society. Consider the person who collects trash in
your neighborhood. Most of you are getting a college education to keep from needing to do a
job like this. In reality, this individual who is likely employed by a city or state government is
paid an reasonable wage and has very good benefits—though not always, and often not without
some sort of organization like a union to promote and ensure decent wages. For some menial
positions pay rates are better than say teacher salaries. Why is this so? According to the Davis
Moore thesis, jobs that are important to society must carry sufficient reward to ensure that these
jobs are undertaken. In fact, social stratification is important to society in order to properly
function. If everyone went to medical school and no one collected garbage, all of the extra
doctors could help cure us of the diseases that result from living in pestilence. M.D.s and Ph.D.s
on the other hand get higher incomes and more social prestige because health and higher
education are important for a society to grow. However, the educational commitment postpones
beginning one’s career for several years past that of their peers who don’t pursue the higher
education, requiring sacrifice and postponed gratification. Therefore, the reward at the end of
the degree has to be sufficient to attract individuals who have many options open to them. Yet, if
everyone was wealthy, who would work in the service industry? Who would pick produce or
bag groceries? Davis and Moore argued that inequality is necessary to get people to do the jobs
that others don’t want to do. Conflict theorists would suggest that this is why there may be
thriving illegal immigration, to fill positions that are menial and do not pay well enough to
induce someone to take that job. It is not only illegal immigration…the State of New York has
long had a policy of allowing in effect “guest workers” who come for set periods of time to help
with agricultural harvesting—usually in apply orchards—at wages that are low by our standards
but good for the Caribbean migrants. In this way corporate farms can take advantage of both
race and citizenship status to avoid paying more for these jobs.

We might argue that we live in a class-based, racist, and patriarchal society. This means that
wealthy white males are in the main recipients of good jobs and high pay (a friend pointed out
that this continues to be true—otherwise we would not need laws making blatant preference for
white males illegal). It is therefore a combination of race, class and sex that determines how
well we will do in society. Non-whites fair worse than whites. Females fair worse than males.
Black females may have the worst outcomes. When we discuss health, mortality rates and life
expectancy we will see how this hierarchy imposes itself.

Today we have many of the same problems that we faced in the early days of the industrial
revolution. We have homelessness issues, which we’ll discuss more later in the semester. We
have substandard housing and education. We have drug resistant strains of diseases like
tuberculosis that have not been a problem for decades. Although we are one of the wealthiest
countries in the world, we have some of the worst health outcomes when compared to our peers.

The problem before us as a society is what to do about poverty and its consequences. Clearly the
solutions proposed will be in large part a function of why you believe people live in poverty.
Let’s reflect for a moment on the welfare system over the past several decades. Popular
literature depicted life at the end of the 19th century. Think of all those Dickens novels with poor
houses, orphanages, and living in squalor on the streets of the major cities of England. Or recall
the stories of the depression in this country, like John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Social
reformers like Jane Adams depicted the worst aspects of urban slums and novelists like Upton

Lecture Two, page 4

Sinclair chronicled the dangers and realities of the worst jobs at the lowest wages. I could go on,
but the point was that eventually to address many of these problems a system emerged in the
period between 1930 and 1950 designed to provide a basic safety net for people. Programs like
social security tried to ensure that no one went without if possible.

By the 1960s, with the publication of Michael Harrington’s Other America the full scope of the
poverty the still existed in the country that was considered the wealthiest country ever, not just
among the slums of the urban (and usually non-white) poor but also in the fields and backwoods
of rural America, generated a political will to pass even more legislation to help the poor.
Without listing them all, programs providing nutritional assistance to poor women who were
pregnant, programs designed to help young children get a head start in school (education was
viewed from a very early moment in our history a way to end poverty), provided housing
subsidies to help people find reasonable homes or induce investors to build affordable housing,
and assured some minimal health care for all were generally understood to Welfare. It was
driven by a sense of social responsibility, and in large measure was seen as helping people who
through no fault of their own did not have the means to help themselves.

Its history is a complex one, but over time some in society saw this as a basic right of the poor,
and others came to see it as a reason the poor remained poor. With the growth in the ranks of the
poor, especially in the fast-growing urban centers of this country, the cost of social welfare grew
very large. Some of these programs—like Social Security and Medicare—remain today and we
constantly discuss whether as a society we can afford to continue them, and whether we can
afford not to. In the 1990s, however, many people came to view Welfare in all its forms a
detriment to solving poverty and the reason taxes were so high. From a social ethos in the 1950s
of how we can afford not to help the poor we became a society by the 1990s that wondered how
we could afford to continue to help the poor who won’t help themselves.

Welfare reform and its aftermath was based on the notion that the poor lacked the motivation to
work because of the social largess of government programs. Many talked about “welfare
mothers” as women who knew they would get support for their children regardless as if that was
an “occupational choice” for poor women. Others countered that the programs were structured
so that a poor woman with a child received benefits only if she had no husband but did not
consider whether or not the husband was able to find work. In short, many people in society
began to assume welfare was a program of cheaters who chose marginal poverty (with the
occasional story of the “welfare Cadillac”) over honest work. Welfare Reform was passed
limiting how long one can continue to get benefits and requiring many on welfare to find a job.

But let’s consider the premises. Many assistance programs have eligibility requirements that are
tied to multiples of the poverty line—for example does your family earn less than 150% of the
poverty level for a family your size. In our example above, a family of four making less than
$30,975 a year might be eligible for certain programs. Other programs had a 125% of poverty
threshold, and so forth. But consider this family of four at 150% of poverty—their after tax
income (yes, everyone pays taxes—at minimum there are Medicare and Social Security taxes—
that will take about 25% of your take home, sometimes less when you figure on the tax refunds)
is only about $22,230 a year, or less than $2000 per month to pay for rent, clothing, utilities,
food, medicine, and on and on. Let’s also consider what someone can earn. If you get paid

Lecture Two, page 5

$7.50 per hour (until recently more than the minimum wage) your annual income is only $15,000
per year. For a family of four both adults would have to work full-time at $7.50 per hour and
they would still qualify for most welfare programs if the threshold was $30,975 for the year!

Now, if we pass a law, as we did, requiring you to work full time and limits your eligibility for
welfare what is this family to do? Furthermore, in many well publicized examples families who
received the full array of social support under welfare—including Medicaid and Food Stamps—
found that once they found jobs the loss of benefits required that they do without things like
health care because their jobs—while paying more than welfare—did not provide benefits of any
kind. Ironically, the plight of these households worsened even as they “pulled” themselves out
of the welfare status.

But all this is based on the assumption that people who are poor have done this to themselves, or
on a softer version that the programs designed to help poor people have made it impossible for
them to help themselves. The solution proposed is to argue we can no longer afford to pay for
these programs, or we can no longer keep people dependent on public support and we must
provide “incentives” for them to find jobs and support themselves.

But if we consider that people prefer to be self-sufficient if only the jobs paid a living wage (that
is, above poverty by more than a fraction), that the support levels of welfare are not sufficient to
allow most families to live above the poorest conditions, and that welfare is a very socially
stigmatizing system then we would propose programs that do not punish the poor for being poor.
Rather, we would look to ways that build workforce experience, provide human dignity and
ensure that the jobs pay a living wage.

I will end this with two examples of social actions and programs that illustrate what a different
orientation to poverty might look like. The first is a situation in Germany, when a major
employer of a central industry of that city was going to close and lay off thousands of workers.
In this country they would have become unemployed and eventually become a cost to the social
and political structure of society. The solution in Germany was for the local government to keep
the operation functioning at a subsidy per worker (under municipal ownership). When I asked
the Lord Mayor (that is what they are called) why his response was pure logic and yet reflected
the different ethos of our societies. In short, he said, the social cost of various welfare
programs—for retraining the worker, providing food and other forms of financial support, of the
consequence of increase delinquency of children—was more than the per worker subsidy. The
added benefit is that the worker and his/her family retain self-respect, and once the industry
rebounds or some other industry can take its place the city can recoup its investment in its
citizens.

The second example is a model of welfare support once more common in Sweden. When you
lost your job and could not find another—that is when you became eligible for social welfare—
the government would place you in a job that reflected your skills, most likely asking you to go
to a community or employer that needed your skills but could not afford to hire you, and paid
some or all of your salary. The result was that you continued to work, no one knew you were on
welfare so there was no social stigma, as soon as you could you found a job more to your liking,

Lecture Two, page 6

and all the while the government continued to collect back in the form of tax revenues this
worker paid a portion of the cost of this form of welfare.

In the two examples above, the assumption is that the worker or citizen is now poor for reasons
usually not under the control of the individual, and the solution is some program designed not to
be punitive but to provide social security. Consider what happens here if a plant closes and
people lose their jobs—in a shrinking economy that person eventually runs out of meager
benefits and loses self-respect as they are forced into a demeaning system. Eventually they are
treated as if their poverty is one of personal failing—the reasons for their poverty long forgotten.
And as many have noted (an older study worth visiting still today is Eliot Lebow’s Street Corner
Society) once the chance of finding work diminish, and the chance for the next generation is even
worse, by the third generation work no longer is seen as a life course option and a whole spate of
social problems emerge as a result.

There is an old saying that Money is the Root of All Evil. We might consider an alternative:
Poverty is the Basis of All Ills!

YOUR EXERCISE

ITEM Proposed Budget

Rent
Phone
Other Utilities
INS-Car
INS-Home
INS-Medical
Food
Car Financing
Car Maintenance
Car operating costs
Entertainment
Cable TV
Clothes
Dependent Care
Personal Needs–Misc
Vices (cigarettes, alchohol)
Medical expenses
Retirement
Vacation
Education
Debt payment (loans other than car)

TOTAL MONTHLY NET

Lecture Two, page 7

I want you all to consider what you think a family of four needs to allocate each month on these
items—I leave some lines blank in case I missed something you want to add—and add it up. In
your first response this week tell me what you think an average family of four needs for an
annual household income by 1) adding this list, 2) dividing by 0.70 to get an monthly gross
income before taxes to generate this disposable income, and 3) multiply the number in 2 by 12.
For example, if I get a $5,000 per month net expenditures, that means I have to earn $7,143 per
month before taxes or $85,716 a year in income.

This calculation becomes the basis of your extra credit (optional) exercise.

Social Problems

Most of the readers of this book are among the world’s privileged people—those who have
enough to eat, a comfortable place to sleep, and who have the special opportunity to study the
human condition. I offer this book in the hope that it will stimulate thinking about those who
are in need, the state of our planet, and spark action toward making our world a better place.

S
C

H
R

O
E

D
E

R
A

la
in

/H
em

is
/A

la
m

y
S

to
ck

P
ho

to

Social Problems

EIGHTH EDITION

John J. Macionis
Kenyon College

Copyright © 2020, 2018, 2015 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United
States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission should be obtained from the
publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise. For information regarding
permissions, request forms and the appropriate contacts within the Pearson Education Global Rights &
Permissions Department, please visit www.pearsoned.com/permissions/.

Executive Portfolio Manager: Jeff Marshall
Content Producer: Mary Donovan
Content Developer: Hope Madden
Portfolio Manager Assistant: Heather Torres
Product Marketing Manager: Candice Madden
Sr. Field Marketing Manager: Kelly Ross
Content Producer Manager: Amber Mackey
Content Development Manager: Brooke Wilson
Art/Designer: Integra Software Services, Pvt Ltd.

Digital Studio Course Producer:
Elissa Senra-Sargent

Full-Service Project Manager: Integra
Software Services, Pvt Ltd.

Compositor: Integra Software Services, Pvt Ltd.
Printer/Binder: LSC Communications, Inc.
Cover Printer: Phoenix Color/Hagerstown
Cover Design: Jennifer Hart Design
Cover Credit: Juanmonino/Getty Images

Access Code Card:
ISBN-10: 0-13-522793-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-522793-0

Revel Combo Card:
ISBN-10: 0-13-556058-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-556058-7

Rental Edition:
ISBN-10: 0-13-524704-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-524704-4

Loose-Leaf Edition:
ISBN-10: 0-13-522924-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-522924-8

Instructor’s Review Copy:
ISBN-10: 0-13-524714-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-524714-3

Acknowledgments of third-party content appear on the page, which constitute an extension of this
copyright page.

PEARSON, ALWAYS LEARNING, and Revel are exclusive trademarks in the United States and/or other
countries owned by Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates.

Unless otherwise indicated herein, any third-party trademarks that may appear in this work are the property
of their respective owners and any references to third-party trademarks, logos, or other trade dress are for
demonstrative or descriptive purposes only. Such references are not intended to imply any sponsorship,
endorsement, authorization, or promotion of Pearson’s products by the owners of such marks, or any
relationship between the owner and Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates, authors, licensees, or distributors.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Macionis, John J., author.
Title: Social problems / John J. Macionis.
Description: 8 Edition. | New York, NY : Pearson, [2019] | Revised edition of

the author’s Social problems, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references
and indexes.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018042984| ISBN 9780135247143 | ISBN 0135247144
Subjects: LCSH: Social problems.
Classification: LCC HN16 .M24 2019 | DDC 361.1–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042984

Brief Contents
PART I Sociology’s Basic Approach

1 Sociology: Studying Social
Problems 2

PART II Problems of Social Inequality

2 Economic Inequality 32

3 Racial and Ethnic Inequality 68

4 Gender Inequality 102

5 Sexuality and Inequality 136

6 Aging and Inequality 170

PART III Problems of Deviance,
Conformity, and Well-Being

7 Crime, Violence, and
Criminal Justice 198

8 Alcohol and Other Drugs 238

9 Physical and Mental Health 272

PART IV Problems of Social Institutions

10 Social Media 302

11 Economy and Politics 332

12 Work and the Workplace 360

13 Family Life 390

14 Education 416

15 Urban Life 444

PART V Global Problems

16 Population and Global Inequality 470

17 Technology and the Environment 498

18 War and Terrorism 522

v

Preface xix
About the Author xxv

PART I Sociology’s Basic Approach

1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 2

Constructing the Problem 2

Seeing Patterns: The Sociological Imagination 4

Social Problems: The Basics 5
Social Problems over Time 6
The Social-Constructionist Approach 6
Claims Making 8
Problems and Social Movements 10
Social Problems: Eight Assertions 11
Social Problems: A Global Perspective 13

Analyzing Social Problems: Sociological Theory 13
The Structural-Functional Approach 13
The Social-Conflict Approach 15
The Feminist Approach 16
The Symbolic-Interaction Approach 17

Finding the Facts: Sociological Research 18
Research Methods 18
Truth, Science, and Politics 20
Truth and Statistics 20

Responding to Social Problems: Social Policy 21
Policy Evaluation 21
Policy and Culture 22
Policy and Politics 22

Politics: Constructing Problems and Defining
Solutions 23

The Political Spectrum 23
Conservatives, Liberals, and Radicals 23
Social Issues 24
Economic Issues 24
Who Thinks What? 25

Going On from Here 26

A Defining Moment: A Call to Action:
The Message of Martin Luther King Jr. 27

Defining Solutions 28
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 29

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 30

PART II Problems of Social Inequality

2 Economic Inequality 32

Constructing the Problem 32

Economic Inequality in the United States 35
Inequality of Income and Wealth 35

The Trend toward Increasing Economic Inequality 38
Taxation 39

The Rich and the Poor: A Social Profile 40
The Rich 40
The Poor 41
Who Are the Poor? A Closer Look 43
Working Families: Working Harder 44
The Working Poor 45
The Nonworking Poor 46
The Underclass 46

Problems Linked to Poverty 46
Poor Health 47
Substandard Housing 47
Homelessness 47
Limited Schooling 48
Crime and Punishment 48
Political Alienation 49

Responding to Poverty: The Welfare System 49
A Brief History of Welfare 49

A Defining Moment: U.S. Society Discovers Poverty 52

The 1996 Welfare Reform 53

Theories of Poverty 53
Structural-Functional Analysis: Some
Poverty Is Inevitable 53
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: Defining the Problem 55
Social-Conflict Analysis: Poverty Can Be Eliminated 56
Feminist Analysis: Poverty and Patriarchy 57

Politics and Economic Inequality: Constructing
Problems and Defining Solutions 59

Conservatives: Personal Responsibility 59
Liberals: Societal Responsibility 60
The Radical Left: Change the System 61

Going On from Here 62
Defining Solutions 64

Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 65
Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 66

3 Racial and Ethnic Inequality 68
Constructing the Problem 68

Race and Ethnicity 71
Race 71
Ethnicity 72
Minorities 73
White Privilege 73
Immigration 74

Patterns of Majority–Minority Interaction 75
Genocide 75
Segregation 77

Contents

vi

Contents vii

A Defining Moment: Saying No to Segregation 77

Assimilation 78
Pluralism 79

The Social Standing of U.S. Minorities 79
Native Americans 79
African Americans 80
Asian Americans 82
Hispanic Americans/Latinos 83
Arab Americans 85

Prejudice 86
Stereotypes 86
Racism 86
Measuring Prejudice: The Social Distance Scale 87
Institutional Racism: The Case of Racial Profiling 87
Causes of Prejudice 88
Multiculturalism 89

Discrimination 89
Institutional Discrimination 89
Prejudice and Discrimination: A Vicious Circle 90
Microaggression 90
Affirmative Action: Reverse Discrimination or
Cure for Prejudice? 90

Theories of Racial and Ethnic Inequality 92
Structural-Functional Analysis: The Importance
of Culture 92
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: The Personal
Meaning of Race 93
Social-Conflict Analysis: The Structure
of Inequality 93

Politics, Race, and Ethnicity: Constructing
Problems and Defining Solutions 94

The Far Right and Conservatives: Culture and
Effort Matter 94
Liberals: Society and Government Matter 95
The Radical Left: Fundamental Changes
Are Needed 96
Going On from Here 96

Defining Solutions 98
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 99

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 100

4 Gender Inequality 102

Constructing the Problem 102

What Is Gender? 104
Patriarchy 104
The Problem of Sexism 106

Gender and Social Institutions 106
Gender and the Family 107
Gender and Education 107
Gender and the Mass Media 108
Gender and Politics 109
Gender and Religion 109
Gender and the Military 110
Gender and Work 112

Gender Stratification 114
Income 114
Housework 116
Violence against Women 117
Sexual Harassment 118
Sexuality, Beauty, and Reproduction 119
Women: A Majority Minority? 120

Theories of Gender Inequality 120
Structural-Functional Analysis: Gender
and Complementarity 120
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: Gender in
Everyday Life 121
Social-Conflict Analysis: Gender and Inequality 122
Intersection Theory: The Case of
Minority Women 123

Feminism 123
Feminist Foundations 124
Types of Feminism 124

A Defining Moment: Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
Claiming Women’s Right to Equality 125

Politics and Gender: Constructing Problems
and Defining Solutions 128

Conservatives: The Value of Families 128
Liberals: The Pursuit of Equality 128
The Radical Left: Change the System 129
Going On from Here 130

Defining Solutions 132
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 133

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 134

5 Sexuality and Inequality 136

Constructing the Problem 136

What Is Sex? 139
Sex: A Biological Issue 139
Sex: A Cultural Issue 139

Sexual Attitudes in the United States 140

A Defining Moment: Alfred Kinsey:
Talking Openly About Sex 140

The Sexual Revolution 141
The Sexual Counterrevolution 141
The Continuing Sexual Revolution: Older People 142

Sexual Orientation 142
Homosexuality 142
What Determines Sexual Orientation? 143
Homosexuality, Inequality, and Public Policy 145
Same-Sex Marriage 146
The Gay Rights Movement 146
The Transgender Movement 146

Sexuality, Inequality, and Controversy 147
Pornography 147
Sexual Harassment 149
Prostitution 151
Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood 153

viii Contents

Abortion 154
Sexually Transmitted Infections 156

Theories of Sexuality 159
Structural-Functional Analysis: Controlling
Sexuality 160
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: Defining
Sexuality 160
Social-Conflict Analysis: Feminist Theory
and Queer Theory 161

Politics and Gender: Constructing Problems
and Defining Solutions 163

Conservatives and the Far Right: The Value of
Traditional Morality 163
Liberals: Sex and Individual Choice 163
The Radical Left: Go to the Root of the Problem 164
Going On from Here 164

Defining Solutions 166
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 167

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 168

6 Aging and Inequality 170

Constructing the Problem 170

Growing Old 172
Industrialization and Aging 173
Life Expectancy 174

The Graying of the United States 174
Elders: A Diverse Population 175

Problems of Aging 177
Social Isolation 177
Retirement 177
Ageism 178
Victimization of the Elderly 180
The Growing Need for Caregiving 181
Poverty 182
Age Stratification 182
Housing 182
Medical Care 184
Death and Dying 184

A Defining Moment: A Good Death:
Cicely Saunders and the Birth of Hospice 187

Theories of Aging and Inequality 187
Structural-Functional Theory: The Need
to Disengage 187
Symbolic-Interaction Theory: Staying Active 188
Social-Conflict Theory: Age and Economic
Inequality 189
Feminist Theory: Aging and Gender 189
Intersection Theory: Multiple Disadvantages 190

Politics and Aging: Constructing Problems
and Defining Solutions 191

Conservatives: More Family Responsibility 191
Liberals: More Government Assistance 191
The Radical Left: Capitalism and the Elderly 192
Going On from Here 192

Defining Solutions 194
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 195

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 196

PART III Problems of Deviance,
Conformity, and Well-Being

7 Crime, Violence, and
Criminal Justice 198

Constructing the Problem 198

Understanding Crime 200
Norms, Law, and Crime 201
Crime Statistics 201
Violent Crime: Patterns and Trends 202
Property Crime: Patterns and Trends 203
“Street Crime”: Who Are the Criminals? 205

Other Dimensions of the Crime Problem 207
Juvenile Delinquency 207
Hate Crimes 207
White-Collar Crime 208
Corporate Crime 208
Organized Crime 209
Victimless Crime 209

Violence 210
Is Violence a Social Problem? 210
Serious Violence: Mass Murder and Serial Killings 211

A Defining Moment: U.S. Society Discovers
Child Abuse 212

The Mass Media and Violence 213
Poverty and Violence 214
Youth Gangs and Violence 214
Drugs and Violence 215
Guns and Violence 215

The Criminal Justice System 218
Due Process 218
Police 218
Courts 219
Punishment 219
Community-Based Corrections 222

Explaining Crime: Biological and
Psychological Theories 223

Biological Causes 223
Psychological Causes 225

Explaining Crime: Sociological Theories 226
Structural-Functional Analysis: Why Society
Creates Crime 226
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: Socially
Constructing Reality 228
Social-Conflict Analysis: Crime and Inequality 229
Feminist Analysis: Crime and Gender 230

Politics and Crime: Constructing Problems and
Defining Solutions 231

The Far Right: Crime and National Decline 231

Contents ix

Conservatives: Crime, Violence, and Morality 231
Liberals: Crime, Violence, and Jobs 231
The Radical Left: Crime and Inequality 232
Going On from Here 233

Defining Solutions 234
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 235

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 236

8 Alcohol and Other Drugs 238

Constructing the Problem 238

What Is a Drug? 240
Drugs and Culture 241
Drugs, Race, and Ethnicity 241
Changing Views of Alcohol 242

The Extent of Drug Use 242
Why Do People Use Drugs? 243
Use and Abuse 244
Addiction and Dependency 244

Types of Drugs 244
Stimulants 244
Depressants 247
Hallucinogens 249
Cannabis 250
Steroids 250
Prescription Drugs 251

Drugs and Other Social Problems 251
Problems of Family Life 251
Homelessness 252
Health Problems 252
Crime 253
Global Poverty 253
Terrorism 254

Social Policy: Responding to the Drug Problem 254
Strategies to Control Drugs 254

A Defining Moment: Bill Wilson:
Alcoholics Can Learn to Be Sober 256

The War on Drugs 256
A New Initiative: Decriminalization 258

Theories of Drug-Related Social Problems 262
Structural-Functional Analysis: Regulating
Drug Use 262
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: The Meaning
of Drug Use 263
Social-Conflict Analysis: Power and Drug Use 263

Politics and Gender: Constructing Problems
and Defining Solutions 264

Conservatives: Just Say No 265
Liberals: Reform Society 265
Radicals: Understanding Drugs from the
Margins of Society 265
Going On from Here 266

Defining Solutions 268
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 269

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 270

9 Physical and Mental Health 272

Constructing the Problem 272

Health and Illness: A Global Perspective 274
High-Income Nations 275
Low-Income Nations 275
Rich and Poor Compared: The AIDS Epidemic 275

Health Policy: Paying for Care 277
Socialist Systems 277
Capitalist Systems 278

Health Care in the United States: A System in Crisis? 280
The Cost Problem 281
Who Pays? 282
The Coverage Problem 283
The 2010 Health Care Law 283
Health: Class, Ethnicity, and Race 284
Health: Rural and Urban Places 285
Health: The Importance of Gender 285
People with Disabilities 286
The Nursing Shortage 287

Mental Health and Illness 288
Types of Mental Disorders 289
Mental Illness: A Myth? 289
Mental Illness: Class, Race, and Gender 289
Treatment Strategies 290

A Defining Moment: Dorothea Dix:
Mentally Ill People Deserve Our Help 291

Mental Illness on Campus 292

Theories of Health and Illness 293
Structural-Functional Analysis: Health and
Social Roles 293
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: The Meaning
of Health 293
Social-Conflict Analysis: Health and Inequality 294
Feminist Analysis: Health and Gender 294

Politics and Health: Constructing Problems
and Defining Solutions 295

Conservatives and the Far Right: Free Markets
Provide the Best Care 295
Liberals: Government Must Ensure
Universal Care 296
The Radical Left: Capitalism Is Unhealthy 297
Going On from Here 297

Defining Solutions 298
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 299

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 300

PART IV Problems of Social Institutions

10 Social Media 302

Constructing the Problem 302

What Is the Media? 304
Mass Media 304
Social Media 305

x Contents

Apps 306

A Defining Moment: The Birth of the Internet 307

Issues and Controversies Involving Media 307
Media and the Message 308
Media Shaping Reality 309
Media Bias 309
Media Literacy 310
The Digital Divide 310

Social Media: Problems for Individuals 312
Social Media and the Presentation of Self 312
Social Media and Empathy 313
Social Media and Conformity 314
Social Media, Multitasking, and Attention Span 314
CyberBullying 314
Social Media and Depression 314
Social Media and Addiction 315

Social Media: Problems for Relationships 316
Social Media and the Changing Importance
of Physical Location 316
Social Media and Parenting 317
Social Media and Predators 317
Social Media and Dating 317

Social Media: Problems for Society 318
Social Media and Culture 319
Social Media and Work 320
Social Media and Politics 320
Social Media and Problems Involving Information 321

Theories of Social Media 322
Structural-Functional Theory: The Functions
of Social Media 322
Symbolic-Interaction Theory: Social Media
and Reality Construction 323
Social-Conflict Theory: Social Media and
Inequality 323
Feminist Theory: Social Media and Gender 324

Politics and the Media: Constructing
Problems and Defining Solutions 325

Conservatives: Honoring Tradition 325
Liberals: Supporting a Progressive Agenda 326
The Radical Left: Media as Big Business 326
Going On from Here 326

Defining Solutions 328
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 329

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 330

11 Economy and Politics 332

Constructing the Problem 332

Economic Systems: Defining Justice, Defining Problems 335
The Capitalist Model 335
The Socialist Model 335
Mixed Systems 336

The Economy and Politics 338
Democracy 338

A Defining Moment: Store Wars:
Is Walmart the Problem or the Solution? 339

Authoritarianism and Monarchy 340

Problems of the U.S. Political Economy 340
The Power of Corporations 340
Monopoly and Oligopoly 341
Conglomerates and Other Linkages 342
The Power of Money 343
Campaign Financing 343
Voter Apathy 344
Who Votes? Class, Age, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 346
The Gender Gap: Seeing Problems Differently 347
Voting Laws for Persons Convicted of Serious Crimes 347
Social Movements: How Much Change? 348

Theories of Economic and Political Problems 348
Structural-Functional Analysis: Rule by the Many 348
Social-Conflict Analysis: Rule by the Few 349

Politics and the Economy: Constructing Problems and
Defining Solutions 351

The Far Right: Make America Great Again 351
Conservatives: The System Is Working 351
Liberals: The Need for Reform 352
The Radical Left: Call for Basic Change 352
Going On from Here 353

Defining Solutions 356
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 357

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 358

12 Work and the Workplace 360

Constructing the Problem 360

Structural Changes in the U.S. Economy 362
The Industrial Revolution 363
The Information Revolution 364
Deindustrialization 364
Globalization 365

Other Problems of the U.S. Workplace 365
The Dual Labor Market 365
Danger to Workers 366
Workplace Alienation 368
McDonaldization and “McJobs” 369
The Temping of the Workplace 369
The Gig Economy 370
Unemployment 370
The Problem of “Missing Workers” 371
The “Low-Wage Recovery” 372
Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 372
Workplace Segregation 373
Labor Unions 373

A Defining Moment: Eugene Debs: Standing
Up for the Union 376

New Information Technology:
The Brave New Workplace 377

The Home as Workplace 378

Contents xi

Workplace Isolation 378
Workplace Supervision 378
The “Deskilling” of Workers 378

Theories of Work and Work-Related Problems 379
Structural-Functional Analysis: Finding
a New Equilibrium 379
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: The Meaning
of Work 380
Social-Conflict Analysis: Work and Inequality 381
Feminist Analysis: Work and Gender 381

Politics and the Workplace: Constructing
Problems and Defining Solutions 382

Conservatives: Look to the Market 382
Liberals: Look to Government 383
The Radical Left: Basic Change is Needed 384
Going On from Here 384

Defining Solutions 386
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 387

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 388

13 Family Life 390

Constructing the Problem 390

What Is a Family? 392
Debate over Definitions 393
A Sociological Approach to Family Problems 393

Family Life: Changes and Controversies 393
Living Together: Do We Need to Marry? 394
Postponing Marriage 394
Parenting: Is One Parent Enough? 395
Families, Race, and Poverty 395
Conflict between Work and Family Life 397
Child Care 397
Divorce 398
Child Support 401
Remarriage: Problems of Blended Families 401
Gay and Lesbian Families 402

A Defining Moment: Same-Sex Marriage:
The Massachusetts Decision 402

Brave New Families: High-Tech Reproduction 404

Theories of Families and Family Problems 405
Structural-Functional Analysis: Family
as Foundation 405
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: Family and Learning 406
Social-Conflict Analysis: Family and Social Class 406
Feminist Analysis: Family and Gender 407

Politics and Family Life: Constructing
Problems and Defining Solutions 408

Conservatives: Traditional “Family Values” 408
Liberals: Many Types of Families 409
The Radical Left: Replace the Family 409
Going On from Here 410

Defining Solutions 412
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 413

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 414

14 Education 416

Constructing the Problem 416

Problems of Education: A Global Perspective 418
Low-Income Countries: Too Little Schooling 419
High-Income Countries: Unequal Schooling 420
Education in U.S. History 421

Problems with U.S. Education 422
The Academic Performance of U.S. Schools 422
Academic Performance: Race, Class, and Gender 422
The Effects of Home and School 422
Dropping Out 423
Functional Illiteracy 424
School Segregation and Busing 424

A Defining Moment: Linda Brown:
Fighting to Desegregate the Schools 425

School Funding 426
Tracking 427
Gender Inequality 428
Immigration: Increasing Diversity 429
Schooling People with Disabilities 429
Finding Enough Teachers 430
School Violence 431

Theories of Education and Education-Related Problems 432
Structural-Functional Analysis: The Functions
of Schooling 432
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: Labels in the Schools 433
Social-Conflict Analysis: Schooling and Inequality 433
Feminist Analysis: Schooling and Gender 434

Politics and Education: Constructing Problems and
Defining Solutions 435

Conservatives: Increase Competition 435
Liberals: Increase the Investment 436
The Radical Left: Attack Structural Inequality 438
Going On from Here 438

Defining Solutions 440
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 441

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 442

15 Urban Life 444
Constructing the Problem 444

Cities: Then and Now 447
Colonial Villages: 1565–1800 447
Westward Expansion: 1800–1860 447
The Industrial Metropolis: 1860–1950 448
Postindustrial Cities and Suburbs: 1950–Present 448

Problems of Today’s Cities 449
Fiscal Problems of the 1970s 449
The Postindustrial Revival 449
The Recent Recession and New Fiscal Problems 450
Urban Sprawl 450
Edge Cities 451
Poverty 451
Housing Problems 453

xii Contents

A Defining Moment: Jacob Riis: Revealing
the Misery of the Tenements 454

Racial Segregation 455
Homelessness 455
Snowbelt and Sunbelt Cities 457
Cities in Poor Countries 458

Theories of Urbanization and Urban Problems 458
Structural-Functional Analysis: A Theory
of Urbanism 458
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: Experiencing
the City 460
Social-Conflict Analysis: Cities and Inequality 461

Politics and Urban Life: Constructing
Problems and Defining Solutions 462

Conservatives: The Market and Morality 462
Liberals: Government Reform 464
The Radical Left: The Need for Basic Change 464
Going On from Here 465

Defining Solutions 466
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 467

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 468

PART V Global Problems

16 Population and Global Inequality 470

Constructing the Problem 470

Global Population Increase 472
Population by the Numbers 473
Causes of Population Increase 473
Measuring Population Increase 475
The Low-Growth North 476
The High-Growth South 477
The Social Standing of Women 477
Explaining the Population Problem:
Malthusian Theory 477

A Defining Moment: Thomas Robert Malthus:
Claiming Population Is a Problem 478

A More Recent Approach: Demographic
Transition Theory 479

Global Inequality 479
High-Income Nations 480
Middle-Income Nations 481
Low-Income Nations 481
The World’s Poverty Problem 481
Poverty and Children 483
Poverty and Women 483
Slavery 483

Theories of Global Inequality 484
Structural-Functional Analysis: The Process
of Modernization 484
Social-Conflict Analysis: The Global Economic System 486

Politics and Global Inequality: Constructing
Problems and Defining Solutions 489

Conservatives: The Power of the Market 489

Liberals: Governments Must Act 490
The Radical Left: End Global Capitalism 491
Going On from Here 491

Defining Solutions 494
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 495

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 496

17 Technology and the Environment 498

Constructing the Problem 498

Ecology: Studying the Natural Environment 500
The Role of Sociology 501
The Global Dimension 501
Population Increase 501
Poverty and Affluence 502
Technology 502
Cultural Patterns: Growth and Limits 503

Environmental Problems 505

A Defining Moment: Rachel Carson:
Sounding an Environmental Wake-Up Call 505

Solid Waste: The Disposable Society 506
Preserving Clean Water 507
Air Pollution 508
Acid Rain 509
The Disappearing Rain Forests 510
Climate Change 510
Declining Biodiversity 511

Theories of the Environment and
Environmental Problems 512

Structural-Functional Analysis: Highlighting
Connections 512
Social-Conflict Analysis: Highlighting Inequality 512

Politics and the Environment: Constructing
Problems and Defining Solutions 514

Conservatives: Grounds for Optimism 514
Liberals: Grounds for Concern 515
The Radical Left: Grounds for Fundamental Change 515
Going On from Here 516

Defining Solutions 518
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 519

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 520

18 War and Terrorism 522

Constructing the Problem 522

War and Peace: Basic Definitions 524
The Increasing Destruction of War 525
The Causes of War 525
The Economic Costs of Militarism 527
The Economic Costs of War 527
The Human Costs of War 527
Social Class and the Military 529
Mass Media and War 530
War in the Nuclear Age 531
Strategies for Peace 532

Contents xiii

Terrorism 533

A Defining Moment: Mohandas Gandhi:
Sending a Message of Peace 534

The Extent of Terrorism 535
The Costs of Terrorism 536
Terrorism as a Type of War 536
Strategies for Dealing with Terrorism 536

Theories of War and Terrorism 538
Biological Theories of Conflict 538
Structural-Functional Analysis: The Functions
of Conflict 538
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: The Meanings
of Conflict 539
Social-Conflict Analysis: Inequality
and Conflict 540

Politics and War: Constructing Problems
and Defining Solutions 540

The Far Right and Conservatives: Peace
through Strength 541
Liberals: The Dangers of Militarism 542
The Radical Left: Peace through Equality 542
Going On from Here 542

Defining Solutions 544
Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises 545

Making the Grade: Chapter Summary 546

Glossary 548

References 553

Name Index 586

Subject Index 588

Revel™
This title is available as part of the Revel program. Revel is
the new and powerful digital learning experience.

Compared to a bound book, Revel offers a number of clear
advantages.

Interactivity. Bound books encourage passive reading.
Revel transforms graphs and maps into interactive learn-
ing exercises that spark curiosity and encourage active en-
gagement.

Accessibility. Bound books come in a single format. Revel
allows readers to adjust font size according to their own
preferences, alternative text for images and screen reader
compatibility are available for students with visual impair-
ments, and full audio presentation is available to those who
prefer sound to visual access.

Available on all devices. Revel is available on your desktop
or laptop and can be used on your tablet or smartphone—
both iOS and Android devices—through the free Revel app.
The Revel app also allows for offline access so you can read
even if you don’t always have a data connection.

Integration. Pearson provides Blackboard Learn™,
Canvas™, Brightspace by D2L, and Moodle integration,
giving institutions, instructors, and students easy access
to Revel. Our Revel integration delivers streamlined access
to everything your students need for the course in these
learning management system (LMS) environments.

Single Sign-on. With single sign-on, students are ready on
their first day. From your LMS course, students have easy
access to an interactive blend of author’s narrative, media,
and assessment.

Grade Sync. Flexible, on-demand grade synchroniza-
tion capabilities allow you to control exactly which Revel
grades should be transferred to the LMS gradebook.

Greater currency. Because electronic delivery allows in-
stant updating, the content of Revel is not static but will be
updated by the author over the course of an edition.

New chapter on social media. The new edition contains
the first social media chapter to be found in a social prob-
lems title.

Total updating of all data and research. There are more
than one thousand statistics in Social Problems. In the Eighth
Edition, each one is new and represents the latest available
data. More than five hundred new research citations sup-
port descriptions and analysis in this revision.

Major revision to the chapter on sexuality. The Seventh
Edition’s “Sexuality” chapter is now a new chapter called
“Sexuality and Inequality,” which has been moved to Part
II and deals with social inequality. The chapter now has a
focus not only on the diversity of sexual identity in our so-
ciety but also how sexuality is linked to social stratification.

New topics plus the latest examples and illustrations. The
new edition provides students with the latest on sexual ha-
rassment, including the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements;
the extent of gun violence, including school shootings; the
rise and significance of the alt-right in U.S. politics; the con-
tinuing trend toward greater economic inequality; the in-
creasing number of women in political office; recent changes
to laws and public attitudes about marijuana use; the ex-
panding opioid crisis; the expansion of the gig economy; the
state of same-sex marriage around the world; how the Trump
administration has reacted to global warming; and the latest
trends in global conflict, including war and terrorism. This
revision includes discussion of the 2016 presidential election
and its consequences, including immigration policy, the 2017
changes to the tax law, and the 2018 midterm elections.

New “Understanding the Other” interactive learning
exercises. These five interactive exercises, written by John
Macionis, are unique to this social problems title. The five
exercises, based on recent research, present real-life, ev-
eryday situations in which race, class, gender, and sexual
identity have profound—and often unrecognized—effects
on social outcomes. As students see the world through the
eyes of others, they come to understand the power of soci-
ety to confer disadvantage as well as privilege on catego-
ries of people.

What’s New in Social Problems,
Eighth Edition

xiv

What’s New in Social Problems, Eighth Edition xv

Additional content. Revel provides content not available
in a bound book, including special graphics, primary read-
ings, engaging videos, thought-provoking journaling exer-
cises, engaging surveys, and interactive assessment with
results reported directly to faculty.

Lower cost. Revel is available to students at less than half
the cost of a new bound book. Learn more about Revel at
http://www.pearsonhigher-education/com/revel/.

Boxes

SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN FOCUS
Increasing Economic Inequality:
When Does It Become a Problem? 37

Let Them Stay or Make Them Go?
The Debate over Unauthorized Immigrants 76

Sex Discrimination in the Workplace: The Hooters
Controversy 113

Gather Around the Radio: How Roosevelt’s
Fireside Chats Saved the Nation 321

Corporate Welfare: Government Handouts
for Big Business 341

Should You Prepare a Premarital Agreement? 400

Increasing Population: A Success Story or the
Greatest Crisis? 492

Getting Right with the Environment: How about You? 517

Has Our All-Volunteer Army Turned into a
Warrior Caste? 530

SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
The Global Village: Problems around the World 13

Sweden Tries to Take Gender Out of the Classroom 107

Female Genital Mutilation: Using Violence to
Control Women 119

Prostitutes and Johns in Sweden: Who Is Breaking
the Law? 151

Children and Sex Tourism 152

Will the Golden Years Lose Their Glow?
Growing Old in Japan 174

Organized Crime: All over the World 210

The Social Roots of AIDS: Poverty, Culture, and Gender 279

Sweatshop Safety: How Much Is a Life Worth? 488

Turning the Tide: Reclaiming Solid Waste in Egypt 507

DIVERSITY: RACE, CLASS, & GENDER
The United States: A Land of Poor Children 44

Beauty: What’s It Really About? 120

Female, Male, or Something Else? The Muxes of Mexico 144

Reality Check: Five False Stereotypes about
African American Families 396

The “Savage Inequalities” of Schooling in the
United States 427

Women, Power, and Contraception: The Key to
Controlling Population 475

Women in the Military: An Equal Right to Kill? 539

SOCIAL POLICY
C. Wright Mills: Turning Personal Troubles
into Social Issues 5

An Undeserved Handout? The Truth about “Welfare” 50

Nursing Home Abuse: What Should Be Done? 181

The Death Penalty: Problem or Solution? 224

The Drug Wars: Safer Streets or Police State? 258

Who Favors “Big Government”? Almost Everybody! 353

Low-Wage Jobs: On (Not) Getting By in America 366

More Than Just Talk: The Politics of Bilingual Education 430

When Work Disappears: Can We Rescue the Inner City? 452

PERSONAL STORIES
The Reality of Poverty: Living on the Edge 42

After the Children: Getting Back in the Game 116

Is Aging a Disease? 179

Stalking: The Construction of a Problem 204

Dying for Attention: One Student’s Story 246

Deinstitutionalization: When Good Intentions
Have Bad Results 292
School Choice: One Family’s View 437

xvi

Maps

ANTARCTICA

30° 30°

30°

0°30° 30°60°90°

120°150°

60° 90° 120° 150°

30°

0° 0°

EUROPE

20°20° 40°

60°

40°

0°

Women’s Social Standing

High

Above average

Average

Below average

Low

No data

Saeeda Jan, age 20, lives in Afghanistan,
a low-income nation that limits the rights
and opportunities of women.

Area of inset

West Bank

Puerto Rico (U.S.)

French Guiana
(Fr.)

ICELAND

SPAIN

NORWAY

IRELAND

UNITED
KINGDOM

DENMARK

POLANDGERMANY
NETH.

BEL.

LUX.
AUS.

CZECH
REP.

PORTUGAL

SWITZ.

ITALY

FRANCE SLO.
CROATIA

BOS. & HERZ.

FINLANDSWEDEN

ROMANIA
HUNG.

SERBIA

SLVK.

ESTONIA

LATVIA
LITHUANIA

UKRAINE

MOLDOVA

BELARUS

ALB.

BULGARIA
MAC.

GREECE

MONT.
KOS.

RUSSIA

TURKEY

MALTA CYPRUS

MONGOLIA

CUBA

DOM. REP.

GUATEMALA
EL SALVADOR

BELIZE

HONDURAS

COSTA RICA
PANAMA

COLOMBIA

BOLIVIA

VENEZUELA
NICARAGUA

HAITIJAMAICA

ECUADOR

PARAGUAY

ARGENTINA
URUGUAY

PERU

GUYANA

CHILE

BAHAMAS

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO

ANTIGUA & BARBUDA
DOMINICA
ST. LUCIA
BARBADOSGRENADA

U.S.

U.S.

ST. VINCENT & THE GRENADINES

ST. KITTS & NEVIS

KAZAKHSTAN

BRAZIL

New
Caledonia

(Fr.)

UNITED
STATES

CANADA

Hong
Kong

Macao
Taiwan

TUVALU

SAMOA

FIJI

TONGA

NEW
ZEALAND

AUSTRALIA

SOLOMON
ISLANDS

PAPUA
NEW GUINEA

TIMOR-LESTE

VANUATU

PALAU

KIRIBATI

MARSHALL
ISLANDS

FEDERATED STATES
OF MICRONESIA

NAURU

KYRGYZSTAN

CHINA

BHUTAN

TAJIKISTAN

I N D O N E S I A

SRI
LANKA

PHILIPPINES

MAURITIUS

LESOTHO
SWAZILAND

MOZAMBIQUE

MALDIVES

SEYCHELLES

COMOROS

SAO TOME & PRINCIPE

REP. OF THE CONGO

EQ. GUINEACÔTE D’IVOIRE
TOGO

GAMBIA
GUINEA-BISSAU

GUINEA
SIERRA LEONE

LIBERIA

CAPE
VERDE

LIBYAALGERIA

SYRIA

DEM. REP.
OF THE
CONGO

UZBEKISTAN

TURKMENISTAN

AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

MYANMAR
(BURMA)

Singapore

OMAN

NEPAL

IRAN

MALAYSIA
BRUNEI

CAMBODIA

VIETNAM

INDIA

BANGLADESH
LAOS

THAILAND

MADAGASCAR

SOUTH
AFRICA

NAMIBIA
BOTSWANA

ZIMBABWE

ZAMBIA
MALAWI

TANZANIA
BURUNDI

KENYA

ANGOLA

GABON

UGANDA
CAM.

CENT.
AFR. REP. ETHIOPIA

DJIBOUTI
SUDANCHAD

KUWAIT

NIGER

BENIN

MALI
SENEGAL

BURKINA
FASO

NIGERIA
GHANA

SAUDI
ARABIA

EGYPT
U.A.E.

JORDAN

IRAQ

BAHRAIN
QATAR

ISRAEL
LEBANON

AZERBAIJAN
ARMENIA

TUNISIA

RWANDA

ERITREA
YEMEN

S.
SUDAN

SURINAME

AUSTRALIA

I N D O N E S I A

SOMALIA

MEXICO

MOROCCO

MAURITANIA

Western Sahara
(Mor.)

JAPAN
SOUTH
KOREA

NORTH
KOREA

Greenland
(Den.)

RUSSIA

GEORGIA

Astrid Brügger, age 19, lives in Norway; like
most girls growing up in high-income
nations, she enjoys most of the rights and
opportunities available to men.

SOURCE: Data from United Nations Development Programme (2015).

GLOBAL MAPS: Window on the World
1–1 Women’s Childbearing in Global Perspective 14

4–1 Women’s Power in Global Perspective 105

4–2 Female Genital Mutilation in Global Perspective 118

5–1 HIV Infections in Global Perspective 158

7–1 Capital Punishment in Global Perspective 222

9–1 Infant Mortality in Global Perspective 276

10–1 Internet Use in Global Perspective 311

11–1 Economic Freedom in Global Perspective 337

12–1 Service-Sector Employment in Global
Perspective 364

13–1 Legal Same-Sex Marriage and Registered
Partnerships in Global Perspective 403

14–1 Illiteracy in Global Perspective 420

15–1 Urbanization in Global Perspective 459

16–1 Population Growth in Global Perspective 476

16–2 Economic Development in Global Perspective 482

17–1 Energy Consumption in Global Perspective 503

18–1 Peace in Global Perspective, 2017 526

18–2 Nuclear Weapons in Global Perspective 532

xvii

xviii Maps

Percentage of
Population below the
Poverty Level, 2014

32.6 and over

24.7% to 32.5%

19.6% to 24.6%

14.7% to 19.5%

11.1% to 14.6%

11.0% and under

U.S. average: 15.9%

Anna Mae Peters lives in Nitta Yuma, Mississippi. Almost
everyone she knows lives below the government’s poverty line.

Julie Garland lives in Greenwich, Connecticut,
where people have very high income and there
is little evidence of poverty.

ARIZONA

NEVADA

CALIFORNIA

OREGON

WASHINGTON

IDAHO

MONTANA

NORTH
DAKOTA

MINNESOTA

SOUTH
DAKOTA

NEBRASKA

WYOMING

COLORADO

NEW
MEXICO

TEXAS

LOUISIANA

ARKANSASOKLAHOMA

KANSAS
MISSOURI

IOWA

WISCONSIN

MICHIGAN

ILLINOIS
INDIANA

OHIO

KENTUCKY

TENNESSEE

MISSISSIPPI

ALABAMA
GEORGIA

SOUTH
CAROLINA

NORTH
CAROLINA

VIRGINIA

WEST
VIRGINIA

DELAWARE

NEW JERSEY

MARYLAND

PENNSYLVANIA

NEW
YORK

CONNECTICUT
RHODE ISLAND

MAINEVERMONT

NEW HAMPSHIRE
MASSACHUSETTS

FLORIDA

UTAH

HAWAII

D.C.

ALASKA

NATIONAL MAPS: Seeing Ourselves
2–1 Poverty across the United States 45

3–1 Language Diversity across the United States 78

3–2 The Concentration of Hispanics/Latinos,
African Americans, Asian Americans,
and Arab Americans, by County 84

4–1 Women’s Political Power across
the United States 110

4–2 The Earnings Gender Gap across the
United States 115

5–1 Teenage Pregnancy Rates across the
United States 155

6–1 The Elderly Population across the
United States 176

7–1 Who’s Packin’? Concealed Weapon Laws
across the United States 217

7–2 Inmates on Death Row across the United States 225

8–1 Marijuana Laws across the United States 259

9–1 Life Expectancy across the United States 284

10–1 Internet Access across the United States 312

11–1 Voter Turnout across the United States 345

12–1 “Right to Work” Laws across the United States 377

13–1 Divorce across the United States, 2016 399

14–1 Public School Teachers’ Pay across the
United States 431

15–1 Foreclosures across the United States, 2008 447

15–2 Population Change across the
United States, 2000–2010 457

17–1 Risk of Cancer from Air Pollution across
the United States 509

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) Program 2017.

Our nation’s Pledge of Allegiance ends with the
words “… with liberty and justice for all.” This
statement may reflect our collective hope, but

does it describe our reality? Certainly, some categories of
the population (the rich, men, white people, heterosex-
ual people) have greater freedom than others (the poor;
women; people of color; homosexual, bisexual, and trans-
gender people). Then, too, a large share of this country’s
population has serious questions about the extent of so-
cial justice, especially in the Trump era. We are living in
a time of political division and widespread frustration:
Two-thirds of all U.S. adults say that the country is “on
the wrong track.” Globally, armed conflict and terrorism
threaten the planet’s peace, and there is increasing concern
about the state of the natural environment and the future
consequences of global warming. Clearly, this is a time
when we need to understand more about social problems.

Facts, Theory, and Politics
Sociology offers a path to understanding the problems
that we face in today’s world. Sociology is also a path to
change. Our discipline extends an invitation to action—to
become involved in the political debates and movements
that are reshaping society. As the leading title for this
course, Social Problems, Eighth Edition, offers a broad inves-
tigation of social problems, both domestic and global. This
title provides all the facts, highlighting historical trends
and explaining today’s social controversies. We build this
understanding using sociological theory, which ties facts to-
gether to create meaning and deepen insight.

Just as important, this title stands alone by providing
readers with political analysis. As a source of understanding
and a call to action, politics matters. Where a person or a society
stands on the political spectrum shapes what issues are de-
fined as social problems. Just as important, political position
also shapes what policies are defined as solutions. Becoming
a good citizen depends on learning about various issues and
also gaining fluency in politics so that one can decide which
positions are worth supporting and which are worth resisting.

Social Problems, Eighth Edition, not only urges people
to become involved, but it also explains what politics is all
about. From the first chapter to the last, this title explains
the attitudes and values that define various positions on
the political spectrum. Social Problems applies these polit-
ical points of view to dozens of issues—from increasing
economic inequality to terrorism—so that students under-
stand today’s debates and are able to develop and defend
political positions for themselves.

A guiding principle of this text is that politics involves
competing points of view. Social Problems presents diverse
political viewpoints for four reasons. First, all points of
view are part of the political debate that goes on across the
United States. Second, no one can hold personal political
beliefs with any conviction without understanding the ar-
guments of those who disagree. In other words, to be, say,
a good liberal, one needs to understand not just progres-
sive politics but conservative, far-right, and radical-left
positions as well. Third, while anyone is likely to favor
one political position over others, most of us can find, in all
the political positions, at least some element of truth. In the
political arena, as in the classroom, reasonable people can
and do disagree. Understanding all positions is a major
step toward reducing our nation’s angry political divide
and, in its place, promoting civil and respectful discourse.
Fourth, and finally, by being inclusive, Social Problems in-
vites all students to share their ideas, which encourages
more lively class discussion.

The Social-Constructionist
Approach
The most important reason to put the politics in when
teaching a social problems course is to understand how
politics guides the process of defining and responding to
social problems. This title differs from all others in that it
does not adopt one (implicit or explicit) political point of
view by presenting a series of “problems” and identifying
a sequence of “solutions” as if everyone agreed about what
these are. Rather, all chapters highlight the importance of
political attitudes in the selection of some issues and not
others as problems, as well as in the favoring of certain
polices as solutions. With this fact in mind, we can under-
stand why people disagree about what the problems and
their solutions are. Indeed, one person’s problem may well
be another’s solution. From this insight, true conversation
can begin.

Another benefit of using a social-constructionist ap-
proach is recognizing how and why our society came to
recognize a problem at a certain point in our history, often
as a result of claims made by social movements. For exam-
ple, the behaviors we now call child abuse, environmental
racism, and sexual harassment may always have been with
us, but our society did not always define these as prob-
lems. On the contrary, problems came into being only after
courageous individuals sparked successful social move-
ments that brought about change both in our hearts and,
more importantly, in our laws.

Preface

xix

xx Preface

2016 presidential election. New data provide the latest on
the social standing of various racial and ethnic categories
of the U.S. population. A new Understanding the Other in-
teractive exercise, “Traffic Stops by Police: The Difference
Race Makes,” provides a data-driven analysis of racial bias
on the streets. Twenty-one new research citations inform
the revised chapter.

Chapter 4: Gender Inequality New data track the in-
creasing number of women in Congress between 1918 and
2018. Updates include analysis of women’s roles in recent
films, contrast the power of women in relation to men in
nations around the world, report the share of women in
the U.S. labor force, indicate the share of degrees earned by
U.S. women, identify the most sex-segregated occupations,
track the pay gap between women and men, and indicate
the share of women in the U.S. military. There is expanded
discussion of gender, housework, and child rearing. The
coverage of sexual harassment has been updated and ex-
panded to include the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.
New discussion traces the rising power of feminism in
the United States since the 2016 presidential election. The
revised chapter is informed by thirty-two new research
citations.

Chapter 5: Sexuality and Inequality This chapter has
been moved to a new position and recast to focus on how
sexuality is linked to social stratification. The chapter-
opening story highlights the national attention now
directed at sexual harassment. Coverage of the transgen-
der movement has been greatly expanded. The discussion
of teenage pregnancy has been updated and expanded to
include teenage parenthood. Attention is given to Trump
administration efforts to limit access to abortion. Updates
include the latest on violence directed against LGBTQ
people, the extent of homosexual and bisexual identity,
the extent of same-sex marriage worldwide, the extent of
pornography use in the United States, patterns of arrest
and the extent of public support for prostitution, the rate
of births to teenage women in nations around the world,
the extent of abortion in the United States, public attitudes
about abortion under various circumstances, the extent of
sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and new national
and global data on HIV and AIDS. There is a new Under-
standing the Other interactive exercise called “Jobs and
Income: The Hidden Injuries of Transgender Workers.”
There are thirty-four new research citations in this revised
chapter.

Chapter 6: Aging and Inequality There is updated dis-
cussion of euthanasia laws across the United States and in
other nations. Attention is given to the effects of Trump
administration policies on older people. Find the latest
statistical data on the number of seniors in the United
States, the increasing average age of retirement, the extent

Your Fully Involved Author
John Macionis is personally involved in every element of
Social Problems. In addition to keeping the manuscript up
to date with the latest research, data, and relevant exam-
ples and illustrations, he selects all the photos and other
images, writes all the captions, develops all the testing ma-
terial, prepares the instructor’s manual, and creates all the
interactive content in the Revel electronic version. John
corresponds regularly with colleagues and students, which
makes Social Problems an always-evolving project. For
the latest in the Macionis texts, visit his personal website:
www.TheSociologyPage.com or www.macionis.com.
Among other things, you will find there a series of new Pow-
erPoint presentations, based on current research and free for
downloading. A full suite of instructor resources is available
from Pearson at www.pearsonhighereducation.com.

What’s New in the Eighth Edition
The new edition of Social Problems is different and
improved in the following ways:

Chapter 1: Studying Social Problems Find the latest
data on the share of the public claiming that this country
is on the wrong track. There is new and expanded anal-
ysis of the state of U.S. politics in the wake of the 2016
presidential election and the 2018 midterms. Included are
the latest survey data identifying what the public thinks
are the most serious social problems and the distribution
of U.S. adults on the political spectrum. Discussion is
supported by inclusion of recent social movements, in-
cluding #MeToo and #TimesUp. A new Understanding
the Other interactive exercise, “First Day of College: The
Invisible Baggage of Class,” explores how social class
shapes the experience of being on campus. This revised
chapter is supported by twenty-two new research cita-
tions.

Chapter 2: Economic Inequality The revised chapter has
the latest on the distribution of both income and wealth.
New data provide a profile of people in the richest 1 per-
cent. Economic data by class, race, and ethnicity have
all been updated. The most recent statistics document
increasing economic inequality between 1980 and 2016.
The discussion of poverty in the United States provides
updated analysis by age, race, ethnicity, gender, and re-
gion. The changes in the 2017 tax law are discussed. This
revised chapter is supported by forty-one new research
citations.

Chapter 3: Racial and Ethnic Inequality In the age of
Trump, political analysis has been expanded to explain
how the alt-right views race, ethnicity, and immigration.
New discussion explores immigration policy—including
the border wall and the fate of the Dreamers—since the

Preface xxi

Chapter 9: Physical and Mental Health The revised chap-
ter has updated and expanded coverage of AIDS around
the world; the discussion reflects the increasing share of
minorities among people infected with HIV. The profiles of
health care systems in the United States and various other
nations have all been updated to reflect the latest policies
and trends. The chapter highlights changes to the nation’s
health care system under the Trump administration. There
are new data on longevity in the United States including
analysis by race, class, and gender. The chapter reports the
share of the U.S. population defined as obese, the share
experiencing a mental illness, the link between poverty
and illness in the United States and around the world, and
trends in infant mortality in the United States and around
the world. Find the latest statistics and research on the cost
of providing health care in the United States, salaries paid
to nurses and physicians in the United States, and patterns
of mental health on campus. Thirty-six new research cita-
tions inform the revised chapter.

Chapter 10: Social Media This entirely new chapter
responds to perhaps the most important development in
the last generation—the rise of social media and the rapid
expansion of internet-based communication. The chapter
briefly traces the rise of mass media and explains its impor-
tance for modern societies. Attention then turns to social
media, pointing out ways in which it differs from earlier
mass media. There is extensive discussion of social net-
working sites and other apps.

Problems linked to the media begin with ways in
which various media shape the content that they transmit.
An issue with special importance in the wake of the 2016
presidential election is media bias and claims of fake news.
Discussion highlights what we know about bias in the me-
dia and also instructs readers in pursuit of greater media
literacy. Analysis of differential access to the internet and
social media explains the digital divide both in the United
States and around the world.

Individuals use social media to construct a social
identity and build self-esteem. Research suggests that use
of social media reduces people’s capacity for empathy,
encourages conformity, and may reduce attention span.
Research links use of social media to the experience of
cyber-bullying and also increasing rates of clinical depres-
sion. There is mounting evidence to support the conclu-
sion that social media may become addictive. Social media
also shapes our relationships, including patterns of dating
and parenting. Social media is also linked to the problem
of online predators.

Social media brings change to popular culture and
encourages young people to develop an oversexualized
social identity. Social media also bring both positive and
negative changes to the workplace, politics, and other
institutions.

of elder abuse, living patterns among older people, the in-
creasing number of complaints of age discrimination, and
income and poverty data contrasting older and younger
people. New discussions include the increasing pay gap
between older women and men, why older stars such
as Meryl Streep and Samuel L. Jackson are the excep-
tions rather than the rule in the entertainment business,
and a nod to Mick Jagger, who has turned seventy-five.
There are thirty-four new research citations in this revised
chapter.

Chapter 7: Crime, Violence, and Criminal Jus-
tice There is updated and expanded coverage of mass
shootings in the United States. Recent global data show
that two-thirds of all mass shooting fatalities occur in the
United States. There is also expanded discussion of the
national debate over guns and deadly violence. Cover-
age of hate crimes is also expanded. The chapter reflects
changes in marijuana laws right up to 2018. The revised
chapter has the latest crime statistics for all major prop-
erty and person crimes, new profiles of who is arrested
for serious crimes, and arrest data for street crime that
are analyzed by age, gender, race and ethnicity, and social
class. All the crime statistics show trends over the last half
century and provide the latest data for 2016. A National
Map provides the most recent laws, state by state, regu-
lating gun ownership. The latest data inform the discus-
sions of mass incarceration and the death penalty in the
United States. Current examples and illustrations include
the 2017 automobile murder of an anti-white-supremacy
protestor in Charlottesville, the 2018 mass shooting at the
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Santa Fe High
School, the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the on-
going gang violence crisis in Chicago, and expanding
violence linked to the opioid epidemic throughout the
United States. Where appropriate, new Trump adminis-
tration policies and their consequences are noted. A new
Understanding the Other interactive exercise called “On
the Street: Do I Look Dangerous to You?” links race to per-
ceptions of criminality. Forty-eight new research citations
inform the revised chapter.

Chapter 8: Alcohol and Other Drugs There is updat-
ed and expanded discussion of the opioid crisis in the
United States. New topics include the shifting federal
drug policy under the Trump administration. There are
updates on a record high in public support for legal mar-
ijuana, the latest in state laws permitting marijuana use,
changes in European laws regarding marijuana, binge
drinking by college students, the share of U.S. adults
who define drug use as a social problem, the share of the
adult population using various categories of legal and
illegal drugs, and the extent of cigarette smoking around
the world. Fifty-five new research citations inform this
revised chapter.

xxii Preface

Chapter 14: Education The revised chapter has new
discussion of the 2018 teachers’ movement for higher sal-
aries and greater public investment in education. There is
expanded and updated discussion of school violence and
coverage of the student movement to end mass murder in
schools. There is new discussion of education policy un-
der the Trump administration. The revised chapter has up-
dates on the educational attainment of the U.S. population
and the share of women and men in U.S. higher education.
Updated coverage includes educational performance ac-
cording to race, class, and gender; rates of illiteracy in the
United States and around the world; the global ranking of
the United States in measures of academic performance;
and the rates of dropping out of school for various catego-
ries of the U.S. population. The chapter notes with sadness
and respect the death of racial segregation activist Linda
Brown. This revised chapter is supported by twenty-six
new research citations.

Chapter 15: Urban Life The revised chapter has updates
on the extent of racial segregation in U.S. cities, the extent
of bankruptcy of U.S. cities, the rate of urban sprawl, the
poverty rates for various sectors of urban and rural places,
the extent of homelessness in U.S. society, the population
shift from snowbelt to sunbelt cities, and the increasing
size of cities in developing nations. This revised chapter is
supported by seventeen new research citations.

Chapter 16: Population and Global Inequality There is
updated and expanded discussion of how women’s social
standing is fueling global population increase. There is ex-
panded coverage of the importance of gender in patterns of
global poverty and also the extent of global poverty among
children. The revised chapter provides the latest data for
all demographic indicators, including fertility, mortality,
and population increase. Find the latest statistics for world
population and its rate of increase. There are also the most
current data for global inequality with comparisons to na-
tional inequality data in the United States. Discussions of
global slavery and global sweatshops have been expand-
ed and updated. This revised chapter is supported by
twenty-nine new research citations.

Chapter 17: Technology and the Environment The re-
vised chapter has updated and expanded discussion of the
increasing global shortage of fresh water. There is also new
and expanded discussion of climate change, including the
Trump administration withdrawal from the Paris climate
accords. The revised chapter has updates on the upward
trend in global carbon emissions, the declining rate of
population increase, the environmental consequences
of rising global affluence, and the increasing production of
solid waste. This revised chapter has the most recent data
available and is supported by twenty-six new research
citations.

The new chapter highlights the power of social media
to advance social movements, including the #MeToo and
#TimesUp responses to sexual harassment. The content
of this new chapter reflects several dozen recent research
citations.

Chapter 11: Economy and Politics The chapter con-
tains a new discussion of the rising power of the far right in
U.S. politics. There is updated and expanded discussion of
Trump administration policies and increasing political po-
larization in the United States. There is new and expanded
discussion of campaign financing and how money drives
U.S. politics. The revised chapter analyzes the role of wom-
en voters in the 2016 presidential election. There are up-
dates on the level of trust the U.S. public has in government
and other national institutions, the extent of political free-
dom in nations around the world, the share of the economy
represented by government for the United States and oth-
er nations, and the size of economic conglomerates in the
United States. Also covered is voting turnout in the 2016
elections by age, race, ethnicity, and gender. Twenty-three
new research citations support this revised chapter.

Chapter 12: Work and the Workplace A new chapter-
opening story describes gender imbalance in the work-
force of high-tech companies in the United States. The
revised chapter has a new discussion of the gig economy
and also describes changes to conditions in the workplace
under the Trump administration. There are updates on the
unemployment rate, including data by age, gender, and
race; the median income for U.S. workers by race, ethnic-
ity, and gender; the distribution of U.S. workers in three
sectors of the economy; the intersection of race and eth-
nicity with the type of jobs people hold; relative wages for
workers around the world; the number of workers killed
or injured in the workplace; the level of workplace vio-
lence; and the current state of labor unions in the United
States. There is a new Understanding the Other interactive
exercise called “Finding a Job: The Hidden Importance
of Race.” This revised chapter is supported by seventeen
new research citations.

Chapter 13: Family Life A new chapter-opening story il-
lustrates change over time in our cultural definition of the
family. Discussion of gay and lesbian families in the Unit-
ed States and around the world has been expanded and
updated. The revised chapter provides the latest data on
trends in marital status, cohabitation, age at first marriage,
single parenting, and divorce. The most recent statistics
inform analysis of the links between income, poverty, and
type of family. International data contrast divorce rates in
the United States to rates in other nations. Maps showing
divorce across the United States and the legal status of
same-sex marriage around the world have been updated.
This revised chapter is supported by twenty-two new re-
search citations.

Preface xxiii

– Journal assignments at the end of each major sec-
tion ask students to apply what they learn to their
own lives.

– Where Do You Stand? writing opportunities end-
ing each Defining Solutions feature encourage stu-
dents to state their own positions on controversial
issues and choose policies that support their solu-
tions to social problems.

– Shared Writing: Envisioning a Better Society
prompts, found at the end of each chapter, encourage
students to use what they have learned to imagine
how to improve their social world. These exercises
can form the basis of lively class discussion.

– Essay prompts are from Pearson’s Writing Space,
which allow instructors to assign both automatical-
ly graded and instructor-graded prompts. Writing
Space is the best way to develop and assess concept
mastery and critical thinking through writing. Writ-
ing Space provides a single place within Revel to
create, track, and grade writing assignments, access
writing resources, and exchange meaningful, person-
alized feedback quickly and easily to improve writ-
ing. Writing Space provides everything students need
to complete and track their writing assignments, to
access assignment guides and checklists, to write or
upload completed assignments, and to receive grades
and feedback—all in one convenient place. For ed-
ucators, Writing Space makes assigning, receiving,
and evaluating writing assignments easy. It’s simple
to create new assignments and upload relevant ma-
terials, to see student progress, and to receive alerts
when students submit work. Writing Space uses
customized grading rubrics so students can receive
personalized feedback. Writing Space can also check
students’ work for improper citation or plagiarism by
comparing it against the world’s most accurate text
comparison database available from Turnitin.

The Documentary Sociology/Pearson Originals highlight
stories that bring sociological concepts and today’s politi-
cal controversies to life. These outstanding videos connect
students with the problems, politics, and controversies of
today’s world.

Supplements
Make more time for your students by using instructor re-
sources that offer effective learning assessments and in-
crease classroom engagement. Pearson’s partnership with
educators does not end with the delivery of course materi-
als; Pearson is there with you on the first day of class and
beyond. A dedicated team of local Pearson representatives
will work with you to not only choose course materials
but also integrate them into your class and assess their

Chapter 18: War and Terrorism This revised chapter
has updates on the “doomsday clock” indicating the risk
of global destruction, the number of active military con-
flicts in the world, the loss of life in all U.S. wars, the size
of the U.S. military budget, and the number of recent acts
of terrorism. Changes in military policy under the Trump
administration are also highlighted. The revised chapter is
supported by twenty-five new research citations.

Revel for Social Problems
Providing educational technology for the way today’s stu-
dents read, think, and learn, Revel is an interactive learn-
ing environment that offers a fully digital experience. It uses
frequent updates of articles and data to illustrate the current
state of society. Students can interact with multiple types of
media and assessments integrated directly within the author’s
narrative:

• Chapter-opening Trending Now features provide arti-
cles written by the author that put breaking news and
current events into the context of sociology. Examples
include the increasing suicide rate in the United States,
the record level of racial and ethnic diversity in the Con-
gress that opened in 2019, the record level on women
in positions of political leadership in 2019, Trump ad-
ministration efforts to define sex in binary terms, recent
mass shootings and the debate over gun control, the
controversy over vaping, concerns about addiction to
social media, the increasing number of states that have
increased the minimum wage, the controversy over
separating parents and children on the border, activ-
ism among the nation’s public school teachers, and the
record loss of life from wild fires in California.

• Understanding the Other interactive learning exercises
in five chapters offer data-driven snapshots of day-to-
day situations from the perspective of marginalized
individuals, providing the opportunity for students to
see the world from a new perspective.

• Interactive maps, figures, and tables feature Social
Explorer technology, which allows for real-time data
updates and rollover information to support the data
and show movement over time.

• Chapter Evaluate features include a reflection ques-
tion to encourage students to critically assess the in-
sights gained from theoretical analysis.

• Assessments tied to primary chapter sections, as well
as full chapter exams, allow instructors and students
to track progress and get immediate feedback. All as-
sessments are written by the author, John Macionis.

• Integrated Writing Opportunities: To help students
reason and write more clearly, each chapter offers three
varieties of writing prompts:

xxiv Preface

exams can be easily authored and saved online and then
printed for classroom use, giving you ultimate flexibility
to manage assessments anytime and anywhere. To learn
more, visit www.pearsonhighered.com/mytest.

PowerPoint Presentations The Lecture PowerPoint slides
follow the chapter outline and feature images from the
textbook integrated with the text. Additionally, all of the
PowerPoints are uniquely designed to present concepts in
a clear and succinct way. They are available to adopters for
download from the Pearson Instructors Resource Center at
www.pearsonhighered.com/irc.

In order to support varied teaching styles while
making it easy to incorporate dynamic Revel features in
class, two sets of PowerPoint presentations are available for
this edition: (1) A set of accessible lecture PowerPoint slides
outlines each chapter of the text. (2) An additional set of the
lecture PowerPoint slides includes LiveSlides, which link to
each Social Explorer data visualization and interactive map
within the Revel product. These presentations are available
to adopters in digital formats at the Instructor’s Resource
Center (www.pearsonhighered.com/irc) or in the Instruc-
tor’s Resources folder within the Revel product.

I offer this new edition of Social Problems in the hope that
this new digital age will elevate teaching and learning to a
new level of excellence.

As always, please feel free to contact me by email:
[email protected]

With my best wishes to my colleagues,

John J. Macionis

effectiveness. Our goal is your goal—to improve the qual-
ity of instruction with each semester.

Pearson is pleased to offer the following resources to qual-
ified adopters of Macionis’s Social Problems. Several of these
supplements are available to instantly download from Revel
or on the Instructor Resource Center (IRC); please visit the IRC
at www.pearsonhighered.com/irc to register for access.

Instructor’s Manual Create a comprehensive road map for
teaching classroom, online, or hybrid courses. John Macionis
has prepared this Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank for every
chapter in this title. Each chapter in the Instructor’s Manual
includes the following resources: Chapter Update; Author’s
Note; Chapter Outline; Learning Objectives; Detailed Teach-
ing Objectives; John’s Chapter Close-Up; John’s Personal
Video Selection; Research for a Cutting-Edge Classroom;
Teaching Suggestions, Exercises, and Projects; Revel Features;
Essay Questions; and Film and Video List. Designed to save
preparation time and to make your lectures more effective,
this extensive resource gathers together useful activities and
strategies for teaching the Social Problems course. Available
within Revel and on the IRC.

Test Bank Also available is a Test Bank of more than 900
multiple-choice and essay questions. You can easily cus-
tomize the assessment to work in any major learning man-
agement system and to match what is covered in your
course. Word, Black-Board, and WebCT versions are avail-
able on the IRC, and Respondus versions are available on
request from www.respondus.com.

MyTest This powerful assessment generation program in-
cludes all of the questions in the Test Bank. Quizzes and

John Macionis recently retired from full-time teaching
at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he served as
Professor and Distinguished Scholar of Sociology. During
his long career at Kenyon, he chaired the Sociology De-
partment, directed the college’s multidisciplinary program
in humane studies, presided over the campus senate, was
president of the college’s faculty, and taught sociology to
thousands of students. Kenyon recognized his decades of
service by awarding him an honorary doctorate of humane
letters in 2013.

Professor Macionis has been active in academic pro-
grams in other countries, having traveled to some fifty na-
tions. He writes, “I am an ambitious traveler, eager to learn
and, through the texts, to share much of what I discover
with students, many of whom know little about the rest
of the world. For me, traveling and writing are all dimen-
sions of teaching. First and foremost, I am a teacher—a
passion for teaching animates everything I do.”

At Kenyon, Macionis taught a number of courses, but
his favorite classes were always Introduction to Sociology
and Social Problems. He continues to enjoy contact with
students across the United States and around the world.

John works every day on his Pearson titles. In his free
time, he enjoys tennis, swimming, hiking, and playing old-
ies rock-and-roll. Macionis is an environmental activist in
the Lake George region of New York’s Adirondack Moun-
tains, working with a number of organizations, including
the Lake George Land Conservancy, where he served for
more than a decade as president of the board of trustees.

JOHN J. MACIONIS [pronounced ma-SHOW-nis] has
been in the classroom teaching sociology for more than
forty years. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsyl-

vania, John earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell Uni-
versity and a doctorate in sociology from the University of
Pennsylvania.

His publications are wide-ranging, focusing on com-
munity life in the United States, interpersonal intimacy in
families, effective teaching, humor, new information tech-
nology, and the importance of global education.

In addition to authoring this best-seller, Macionis
has also written Society: The Basics, the most popular in-
troductory title in the field, now in its fifteenth edition.
The full-length Macionis introductory title is Sociology,
which is now in its seventeenth edition. He collaborates
on international editions of these titles: Society: The Basics:
Canadian Edition, Sociology: Canadian Edition, and Sociology:
A Global Introduction. All the Macionis titles are available
for high school students and in various foreign-language
editions.

All the texts are now offered in low-cost electronic
editions in the Revel program. These exciting learning ma-
terials encourage students to read and provide an interac-
tive learning experience on a variety of electronic devices.
Unlike other authors, John takes personal responsibility
for writing all electronic content, just as he authors all the
assessment and supplemental materials. John proudly
resists the trend toward outsourcing such material to
non-sociologists.

In addition, Macionis edited the best-selling anthology
Seeing Ourselves: Classic, Contemporary, and Cross-Cultural
Readings in Sociology, also available in a Canadian edition.
Macionis and Vincent Parrillo have written the leading
urban studies text, Cities and Urban Life, currently in a
sixth edition.

Follow John on his Facebook author page, John J.
Macionis, [author page, John J. Macionis, and find the
latest information on all the books. You can also access
downloadable teaching material at his website: www.
macionis.com or www.TheSociologyPage.com. A full suite
of instructor resources is found at the Pearson site: www.
pearsonhighered.com.

In 2002, the American Sociological Association
presented Macionis with the Award for Distinguished
Contributions to Teaching, citing his innovative use of
global material as well as the introduction of new teaching
technology in his textbooks.

About the Author

xxv

2

1.4 Discuss the methods sociologists use to
study social problems.

1.5 Identify factors that shape how societies
devise policy to respond to social problems.

1.6 Analyze how political attitudes shape the
process of constructing social problems and
defining solutions.

1.1 Explain the benefits of learning about
sociology and using the sociological
imagination.

1.2 Define the concept “social problem” and
explain how the people in a society come
to define some issues—and not others—as
social problems.

1.3 Apply sociological theory to the study of
social problems.

Chapter 1

Sociology: Studying Social
Problems

Constructing the Problem

Learning Objectives

W
ill

ia
m

T
ho

m
as

C
ai

n/
S

tr
in

ge
r/

G
et

ty
Im

ag
es

.

A
le

x
W

on
g/

G
et

ty
Im

ag
es

.

C
on

or
C

af
fr

ey
/S

ci
en

ce
S

ou
rc

e.

What turns an issue into a social
problem?

Social problems come into being as
people define an issue as harmful and
in need of change.

Aren’t we always dealing with the
same problems?

Most of today’s problems differ from
those that concerned the public several
generations ago.

Isn’t a social problem any condition
that is harmful?

Many conditions harmful to thousands
of people are never defined as social
problems.

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 3

Tracking the Trends

Researchers try to gauge the public’s confidence in the country by asking gen-
eral questions such as this one:

“Do you think the country is on the right track or the wrong track?”

In early 2016, 65 percent of U.S. adults said they thought that the country was
“on the wrong track,” more than twice the share who thought the country was
“going in the right direction.” Back in 2002, just 35 percent of U.S. adults said the
country was on the wrong track. In recent years, dissatisfaction with government
emerged as the most commonly cited social problem in the United States. Polls
taken at the end of 2017 show two-thirds of U.S. adults disapprove of President
Trump’s performance in office—further evidence of widespread dissatisfaction
with the country’s direction. Do you think the country can continue without the
confidence of a majority of the people?

Survey Question: “Do you feel things in this country are
generally going in the right direction or do you feel things

have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track?”

P
er

ce
nt

ag
e

R
es

po
nd

in
g

0%

2002
Year

20142004 2006 2008 2010 2012

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

2016

“Wrong Track”

“Right Track”

SOURCE: CBS News/New York Times Poll, January 12, 2016.

4 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

Chapter Overview
This chapter introduces the study of social problems by defining the sociological
imagination, explaining sociology’s theoretical approaches, and describing the ways
sociologists carry out research. You will learn how people’s political attitudes define
the issues they are likely to view as social problems and what policies they are likely
to favor as solutions. You will gain the ability to describe the political spectrum and to
analyze social issues from various positions on the political spectrum.

Marcos Jorman was already late as he rushed out the
door of his apartment. He ran down the stairs, briefcase
in hand, and crashed through the old wooden door of the
apartment building. He looked north up Chestnut Street.
What luck! The bus was right there, just half a block away!
Catching his breath, Marcos climbed aboard as the bus
pulled out into the heavy traffic. He saw Jan, a neighbor
and co-worker, standing in the rear of the bus.

“I just got a text from Sandra,” Jan blurted out, look-
ing a little desperate. “She says everyone is getting laid
off. We’re all out. The company is shutting down the whole
division and moving operations out of the country.” Her
head dropped along with her spirit. “What am I going to
do? How am I going to manage with my kids?”

Marcos checked his own phone. He, too, had messages—
several from co-workers who had already arrived at work
and confirmed the bad news. “Oh, man, it’s true,” he said
softly. The two stood silently for the rest of the ride.

The day turned out to be one of the toughest in Marcos’s
entire life. He knew the start-up company was struggling
with rising costs and heavy competition. Only two months
earlier, new management had come in to “reorganize” and to
cut costs. The decision to close local operations was the result.

As he entered his workstation, he was handed a short
letter spelling out the dismissal. He joined dozens of others
at a brief meeting with a human relations officer and then
went back to pack up his things. He was home again by
early afternoon.

Marcos sat in his apartment with a cup of tea looking
out the window at nothing in particular. He felt weak, al-
most ill. He kept telling himself that we live in a world full
of risks. He knew the company was in trouble. But, some-
how, he could not shake the idea that the job loss was his
own fault, his own personal failure.

This story could be told millions of times because
millions of people—including those who work in construc-
tion, sales, communications, management, and teaching—
lose their jobs every year.

Seeing Patterns: The
Sociological Imagination
1.1 Explain the benefits of learning about sociology

and using the sociological imagination.

Living in a society that teaches us to feel personally respon-
sible for whatever happens to us—good or bad—we easily
understand Marcos’s reaction to being laid off. We imagine
Marcos second-guessing himself: Should he have majored
in something else? If only he had taken that other job in
Atlanta! If only he had listened to his father and stayed in
school. We all tend to personalize our lives and blame our-
selves for our troubles.

However, when we apply the sociological imagination,
a point of view that highlights how society affects the experiences
we have and the choices we make, the picture changes. Using the
sociological imagination, we see that the operation of U.S.
society—including an economy that makes unemployment
a normal part of doing business—causes the loss of millions
of jobs every year. These losses are far greater in times of eco-
nomic recession. For this reason, losing a job can hardly be
said to be simply a matter of bad personal choices.Fr

an
ck

re
po

rt
er

/E
+/

G
et

ty
Im

ag
es

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 5

By helping us to see the world in a new way, the socio-
logical imagination gives us power to bring about change.
But a sociological viewpoint can also be a bit disturbing. A
course in social problems asks us to face the fact that many
people in our communities lose their jobs, become victims of
crime, and go to bed hungry through no fault of their own.
When the economy turns bad, as it did when a recession
began in 2008, tens of millions of people suddenly find that
they are unemployed and many of them may still be out of
work a decade later. In this richest of nations, even during
“good times,” some 45 million people (especially women
and children) are poor. The study of social problems helps
us see these truths more clearly. It also encourages us to play
a part in shaping the future of our nation and the world.

Social Problems: The Basics
1.2 Define the concept “social problem” and explain

how the people in a society come to define some
issues—and not others—as social problems.

A social problem is a condition that undermines the well-being
of some or all members of a society and is usually a matter of
public controversy. In this definition, the term “condition”
refers to any situation that at least some people define as
troublesome, such as not having a job, having huge college
loans, living in fear of crime, being overweight or living in
poor health, or worrying about the effects of toxic chemi-
cals in our drinking water.

Sociology is the systematic study of human societies.
Society refers to people who live within some territory and
share many patterns of behavior. As sociologists study society,
they pay attention to culture, a way of life including wide-
spread values (about what is good and bad), beliefs (about what is
true), and behavior (what people do every day).

Cultural patterns in the United States are diverse,
but one widely shared value is the importance of
individualism, the idea that, for better or worse, people
are responsible for their own lives. In the case of Marcos
Jorman, it is easy to say, “Well, he lost his job because he
decided to sign on with a start-up company in the first
place. He really brought this on himself.” In other words,
our common sense often defines personal problems—even
when the problems affect millions of people—as the result
of personal choice. Without denying that individuals do
make choices, sociologists point to ways in which society
shapes all our lives. Thinking sociologically, we see that
widespread unemployment may be a personal problem
(especially to people who lose their jobs), but it is also a
social issue.

Sociology’s key insight is that many of the personal
troubles people face are really social issues with their roots in
the operation of the larger society. As the U.S. sociologist C.
Wright Mills (1916–1963) explained, using the sociological
imagination helps us “kick it up a level” and see how soci-
ety shapes our personal lives. The Social Policy box takes
a closer look at how sociology can help you do this for
yourself.

SOCIAL POLICY

C. Wright Mills: Turning Personal Troubles into Social Issues
All of us struggle with our own problems, which might include
unemployment, falling into debt, falling out of love, drug or alcohol
abuse, poor health, or suffering from violence. We experience these
problems; we feel them, sometimes on a gut-wrenching level. Our
problems are personal. But C. Wright Mills (1959) claimed that
the roots of such “personal” problems lie in society itself, often
involving the ways our economic and political systems work. After
all, the normal operation of our society favors some categories
of people over others: the rich over the poor, white people over
people of color, middle-aged people over the very young and the
very old. When people see their problems as personal, all they
can do is try to deal with their troubles as one individual. Isolating
one life in this way keeps people from seeing the bigger picture of
how society operates. In the end, as Mills explained, people feel
that “their lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their
everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles” (1959:3).
Because we live in an individualistic culture, we are quick to
conclude that the troubles we experience are simply our own fault.

A more accurate and more effective approach is to
understand that it is society that shapes our lives. The
sociological imagination transforms personal troubles into social
issues by showing us that these issues affect not only us but
also countless people like us. This knowledge gives us power
because, joining with others, we can improve our lives—and
break free of our traps—as we set out to change society.

What Do You Think?
1. Provide three examples of personal problems that Mills

would define as social issues.

2. To what extent do you think people in the United States
believe that problems such as unemployment result from
bad personal choices or even bad luck? Explain.

3. Have you ever taken part in a movement seeking change?
What was the movement trying to achieve? What were your
reasons for joining?

6 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

Washington, D.C., and the election of Donald Trump as
president, dissatisfaction with government and political
leadership topped the list in 2017. Of course, concern about
the economy was still with us in 2017, along with fears
about terrorism, immigration, and deep political division
across the nation.

Comparing the two lists in the table, we find three
issues on both: the economy, unemployment, and dissatis-
faction with government. But the other issues are different,
showing that the public’s view of social problems changes
over time. Terrorism, for example, was not a widespread
concern in 1935, although it has become a major issue today.
Sometimes, public opinion shifts dramatically even over
short periods. In the months after the allegations of sexual
assault against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in
2017, women as well as men across the country mobilized
against sexual harassment leading to additional allega-
tions against hundreds of important people and millions
of women breaking their silence as they joined the #MeToo
movement (Chira, 2017; Patel & Miller, 2017).

The Social-Constructionist Approach
The fact that over time, people define different issues as
social problems points to the importance of the social-
constructionist approach, the assertion that social problems
arise as people define conditions as undesirable and in need of
change. This approach states that social problems have a
subjective foundation, reflecting people’s judgments about
their world. For example, the public has yet to include
obesity on the list of serious social problems, even though
health officials say that most adults in the United States are
at risk of poor health because they are overweight. This is
true despite the objective fact that illness brought on by
obesity claims the lives of hundreds of thousands of people
in our country each year, which is many times the num-
ber of people who die as a result of terrorist attacks or the
number of soldiers who were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Figure 1–1 explains the subjective and objective foun-
dations of social problems. Box A includes issues—such as
homicide—that are objectively very harmful (more than
16,000 people are murdered each year in the United States)
and cause widespread concern (polls show that a major-
ity of U.S. adults worry about gun violence and want the
government to reduce crime) (Pew Research Center, 2016).
Box  B includes issues—such as the use of automobiles—
that, objectively speaking, cause even greater harm (more
than 32,000 people in the United States die each year in auto
accidents), and yet hardly anyone sees these issues as social
problems. Of course, one reason people overlook the high
death toll on our highways is that we can’t imagine our
way of life without automobiles. Box C represents issues—
such as school shootings—that, objectively speaking, cause
relatively limited harm (only a few dozen people have

A condition that “undermines the well-being” hurts
people, either by causing them immediate harm or, per-
haps, by draining their spirit or limiting their choices. For
example, poverty not only deprives people of nutritious
food and safe housing, but it also takes away their dignity,
leaving them passive and powerless.

Because any issue affects various segments of our
population differently, a particular social problem is rarely
harmful to everyone. During the recent recession, some
executives earned huge salaries and bonuses, just as some
corporations (such as Walmart, which sells at very low
prices) actually did pretty well. Even war that brings injury
and death to young soldiers brings wealth to the compa-
nies that make and sell weapons and confers greater power
on the military leaders who head our country’s armed
forces. As a result, the full consequences of any particular
social problem are rarely simple or easy to understand.

Social problems spark public controversy. Sometimes
a social problem (such as the mass shooting in Las Vegas
in 2017) rocks the whole world. In other cases (such as
the spread of the Zika virus in 2016), a small number of
government leaders and public health officials take action,
perhaps by stockpiling vaccine and restricting travel to
areas where infections have been reported (Tavernise, 2016).

Social Problems over Time
What are our country’s most serious social problems? The
answer depends on when you ask the question. As shown
in Table 1–1, the public’s view of problems changes over
time. Back in 1935, a survey of U.S. adults identified the
ten biggest problems facing the country, which we can
compare to a similar survey completed in 2017 (Gallup,
2017). In the mid-1930s, the Great Depression was the
major concern because as much as 25 percent of U.S. adults
were out of work. Not surprisingly, unemployment topped
the list of problems that year. After years of gridlock in

Table 1–1 Serious Social Problems, 1935 and 2017

1935 2017

1. Unemployment and a poor
economy

1. Dissatisfaction with
government/poor leadership

2. Inefficient government 2. Terrorism

3. Danger of war 3. Health care/insurance

4. High taxes 4. Economy in general

5. Government overinvolvement 5. Unemployment/jobs

6. Labor conflict 6. Race relations/racism

7. Poor farm conditions 7. Lack of national unity

8. Inadequate pensions for the
elderly

8. Illegal immigration

9. High concentration of wealth 9. Moral/ethical/family decline

10. Alcohol consumption 10. International problems

SOURCE: Gallup (2017).

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 7

died from such incidents, which is actually fewer than the
number of people who die each year from bee stings), but
these issues are widely viewed as horrifying and serious
problems all the same (National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration, 2017; U.S. Department of Justice, 2017).
Finally, Box D includes the use of cell phones, football, and
a host of other activities that are not thought to be harmful
and do not show up on survey listings of “problems.”

Over time, issues may move from one box to another.
In the years after the invention of cell phones in the 1980s,
for example, few people worried about their use even by
those operating motor vehicles. With little evidence that
this practice posed a threat, cell phones belonged in Box D.
More recently, however, studies have reported that the use
of cell phones by people driving automobiles plays some
part in more than 1.6 million accidents a year, claiming
thousands of lives. As the number of deaths linked to cell
phone use increases, this issue will move toward Box  B.
By 2018, as a result of increasing public concern, fifteen
states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois,
Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and
West Virginia) plus the District of Columbia banned talking
on handheld phones while driving; thirty-eight states have
outlawed cell phone use by new drivers, and forty-seven
states have prohibited texting by anyone behind the wheel.
Before long public opinion could define cell phone use in
cars as a serious problem, moving the issue from Box  B
to Box A (Governors Highway Safety Association, 2017;
National Safety Council, 2017).

Any issue that is not considered a problem now may
be viewed quite differently at some point in the future. For
example, there are few things as American as football, a
game that has gained popularity over recent decades and is
now the most popular sport in the country. In recent years,
however, an increasing number of players and ex-players
have spoken out about possible concussion-related brain
injury called chronic traumatic encephalophy (CTE). The
National Football League has acknowledged that a problem
exists and that efforts are being made to more carefully mon-
itor the well-being of players. Exactly how widespread CTE
is among players remains an open question. The 2015 film
Concussion starring Will Smith raised concern about CTE
among the general public (Siegel, 2015; Kindelan, 2016).
Should this concern over potential injuries increase, football
might well move from Box D to Box C, Box B, or even Box A,
depending on how many people are found to be harmed.

Another change in public opinion involves government
efforts to track people’s movement, telephone calls, and
internet activity. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks,
most people in the United States did not know much about
efforts by the National Security Administration and other
government agencies to identify suspicious behavior on the
part of potential terrorists. When asked about government

Does it objectively
cause serious harm
to thousands of
people?

Is it subjectively considered a
very serious problem?

Yes

Yes

No

No

A
Homicide

C
School

shootings

D
Use of

cell phones

B
Use of

automobiles

Figure 1–1 The Objective and Subjective
Assessment of Social Issues

This figure shows that some issues (such as homicide) are both
objectively harmful and widely seen as problems. But many issues
that are objectively harmful (the use of automobiles results in more
than 32,000 deaths each year) are not perceived as serious social
problems. Likewise, some issues that are viewed as serious social
problems (school shootings, for example) may be tragic but they
actually harm relatively few people. Many other issues (such as using
cell phones or playing football) are not viewed by most people as
harmful, although this may change at some point in the future.

tracking of individuals, most people offered the opinion
that this was good and necessary. There was little public
awareness of how government can use computer technol-
ogy to threaten personal privacy (Scherer, 2013). As a result,
the government’s use of computer technology fell in Box D.
In recent years, revelations about the extent of government
monitoring of people’s movement and communication
have convinced an increasing share of the public that this
issue poses a real danger to the personal freedom of every-
one. For this reason, this issue appears to be moving to Box
B. Perhaps, at some point in the future, most people will
consider government monitoring of the public to be a seri-
ous social problem, placing the issue in Box A.

Recognizing that the subjective and objective impor-
tance of social issues may differ opens the door for a
deeper understanding of social change. Consider this curi-
ous pattern: A century ago, it was objectively true that the
social standing of women was far below that of men. In
1900, nine out of ten adult men worked for income, and
nine out of ten adult women remained in the home doing
housework and raising children. Women didn’t even have
the right to vote.

Although some people condemned what they saw as
blatant inequality, most people did not define this situation
as a problem. Why not? Most people believed that because
women and men have some obvious biological differences,
the two sexes must have different abilities. Thinking this
way, it seemed natural for men to go out to earn a liv-
ing while women—who were thought back then to be
the “weaker sex”—stayed behind to manage the home.

8 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

A much greater threat to the public than any terror-
ism is gun violence. For years, more than 30,000 deaths
due to gun violence (including murder, suicide, and acci-
dents) have occurred annually, which is about 100 deaths
every day. And for years, few people defined gun violence
as a social problem. In the 2017 listing of the most serious
social problems in the United States, gun violence is not to
be found.

The point is that much public concern is directed
against immigrants, the vast majority of whom pose very
little danger to anyone; far less public concern is directed
against far-right extremists who pose far greater danger.
Even more significant, gun violence involving tens of
thousands of deaths each year has long been ignored and
has only recently gained widespread public attention. Put
another way, someone in the United States is 5,000 times
more likely to be killed by gun violence than by a jihadist
terrorist. Subjective fear does not necessarily reflect objec-
tive facts (Kristof, 2015; Bergen, 2016; Blinder & Victor, 2018).

Claims Making
For gun violence to be defined as a serious social problem,
more of the political leadership in the United States—
starting with the president—will have to stand up to
special interests and recognize the harm involved.

Claims making refers to efforts by officials, individuals,
and organizations to convince others that a particular issue or sit-
uation should be defined as a social problem. This process begins
by rejecting the status quo (Latin words meaning “the situa-
tion as it is”) and calling for change. Put another way, claims
making creates controversy by defining the existing situation
as unacceptable. The process continues as people explain
exactly what changes are needed and why they are needed.

Claims making is illustrated in the history of another
issue that has been with us for almost forty years. Back
in 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
first received reports of a strange disease that was killing
people. The victims were mostly homosexual men. The
disease came to be known as “acquired immune deficiency
syndrome” (AIDS). For several years, even as the numbers
of cases in the United States climbed into the thousands,
AIDS received limited media coverage and there was little
public outcry. By 1985, however, the public as a whole had
become concerned about the danger of AIDS, and this dis-
ease was defined as a serious social problem.

What brought about this change? For any condition
to be defined as a social problem, people—usually a small
number at first—make claims that the situation is unac-
ceptable and that change is needed. In the case of AIDS,
medical officials first sounded the alarm, and the gay com-
munities in large cities (notably San Francisco and New
York) mobilized to spread information about the dangers
posed by this deadly disease.

Objectively, gender inequality was huge; subjectively,
however, it was rarely defined as a social problem.

Today, women and men are far closer to being socially
equal than they were in 1900. Yet awareness of a “gender
problem” in the United States has actually become greater.
Why? Our cultural standards have changed, to the point that
people now see the two sexes as mostly the same, and so we
expect women and men to be socially equal. As a result, we
view even small instances of gender inequality as a problem.

Would anyone doubt that sexual violence was a bigger
problem in 1900 than it is today? The norms of the time—
and, in many cases, the laws as well—made husbands’ use
of physical discipline against wives either “acceptable”
or a “private matter” to be resolved within a household.
Today, despite a decline in sexual assault and the fact that
such behavior is now widely condemned and everywhere
against the law, public concern is greater than ever. Just con-
sider how many millions of women and men have signed
on in support of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

When we investigate social issues, it is important to
consider both objective facts and subjective perceptions.
Both factors play a part in the social construction of social
problems.

What powerful people say about issues can have big
consequences for public opinion. In 2016, for the first time,
immigration showed up on the public’s list of the most seri-
ous social problems. To some extent, this concern reflects
the fact that thousands of people cross the southern U.S.
border illegally each year. But much of the concern reflects
fear that immigrants from the Middle East might engage in
terror. After his election in 2016, President Donald Trump
fanned these fears and called for “building a wall” and
enacted a “travel ban” barring people from a number of
mostly Muslim countries from entering the United States
until the government could ensure that no would-be jihad-
ists were admitted (Suleiman, 2018).

Does this subjective fear square with the objective
facts? The truth is that, since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, some
390 people have been charged with crimes relating to jihad-
ist terrorism, but nine in ten of these people have been
U.S. citizens or people who have permanent legal resi-
dency (green cards). An isolated case of a recent immigrant
engaging in deadly jihadist terrorism is Tashfeen Malik
(a legal U.S. resident) who, along with her husband Syed
Rizwan Farook (a natural-born U.S. citizen), killed fourteen
people in a 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino, California.

Almost all terrorism that takes place in the United
States is “home grown” and is not the work of immi-
grants. In addition, the number of people killed by right-
wing extremists (who strike out against the power of the
U.S. government) is also high. But while fears of jihadist
terrorism have figured into national political debate (espe-
cially on the part of Republicans), far-right terrorism is not
widely viewed as a social problem.

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 9

the shooting death of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin,
an activist in California posted a statement that “black lives
matter.” Another activist transformed these words into the
hashtag #blacklivesmatter, and this claim suddenly spread
across the country, sparking a social movement. By 2018, in
response to the deaths of African Americans at the hands
of police, the phrase “black lives matter” was tweeted
some 50 million times.

In other cases, the process of claims making may
result in change only after many years. As noted earlier,
although experts estimate that talking on handheld cell
phones while driving causes hundreds of deaths every
year, only fifteen states have passed laws banning this
practice (Governors Highway Safety Association, 2017).
The people of Flint, Michigan, spoke out for several years
before public officials began to respond. Individual women
have complained about sexual harassment and assault for
decades before, helped by the power of social media, they
succeeded in defining this issue as a serious social problem
in 2017.

As the process of claims making gains public atten-
tion, it is likely to prompt counterclaims from opponents.
In other words, most controversial issues involve claims
making from at least two different positions. Take the
abortion controversy, for example. One side of the debate
claims that abortion is the wrongful killing of unborn
babies. The other side claims that abortion is a woman’s
right, a reproductive choice that should be made only
by the woman herself. Politics—how power plays out in
a society—is a process built around claims and counter-
claims about what should and should not be defined as
social problems.

How do we know when claims making brings about
change? The people of Flint will know they have been
heard when scientists confirm that their water is safe. In

Of course, public officials and powerful individuals
often engage in the “loudest” claims making. We can see
this process today with increasing attention given to the
opioid epidemic of government officials. But ordinary peo-
ple can make claims more powerful by joining their voices.
In 2016, people in the city of Flint, Michigan, began to
come together and speak out about the dirty-looking and
foul-tasting tap water that was coming into their homes
from the city water supply. Scientists at a university labora-
tory were engaged and confirmed the presence of danger-
ously high levels of lead in the city’s water (Smith, 2016).

Social media have greatly increased the potential
impact of claims making. Along with television, radio,
and newspapers, our computers and smart phones quickly
spread information to tens of millions of people who can
join together in groups actively seeking change. Stories in
the mass media about the dangers of tap water in Flint,
Michigan, as well as the use of social media by the pub-
lic, not only elevated this situation into a major problem
that led to criminal charges against public officials but also
alerted people in other cities to the risk of water contam-
ination. In the last year, social media have been responsi-
ble for fueling the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements in
opposition to sexual harassment and assault.

In general, the greater the media coverage of a topic and
the more media stories argue for change, the more likely the
issue in question is to develop into a social problem. Media
outlets devote far more attention to tornados than they do
to a disease like asthma. Perhaps this is why the public per-
ceives tornados as more serious despite the fact that such
storms kill several dozen people a year while the death toll
from asthma runs well into the thousands (Pinker, 2018).

In an age when social media connect people as never
before, success in claims making can occur quickly. In 2013,
shortly after a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman in

Claims making is the process of defin-
ing certain issues as social problems.
In 2017, sexual harassment rose to the
level of a national problem as a result of
the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements
that carry forward the message that
women would no longer remain silent
about the experience of sexual abuse.

Sundry Photography/ Shutterstock.

10 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

Problems and Social Movements
The process of claims making almost always involves the
deliberate efforts of many people working together. A
social movement is an organized effort at claims making that
tries to shape the way people think about an issue in order to
encourage or discourage social change. Over the past several
decades, social movements have played a key part in the
construction of numerous social problems, including the
AIDS epidemic, family violence, the debate over a national
health insurance program, and sexual harassment.

Stages in Social Movements Typically, social move-
ments progress through four distinct stages, shown in
Figure 1–2, in the effort to define a condition as a social
problem (Blumer, 1969; Mauss, 1975; Tilly, 1978):

1. Emergence. The emergence of a movement occurs
when people (initially just a few) come together shar-
ing their concern about the status quo and begin to
make claims about the need for change. In 2011, for
example, a group of activists proposed a gathering of
people in New York City’s Zuccotti Park, and this ef-
fort launched the Occupy Wall Street movement. The
protestors drew attention to increasing economic in-
equality, corporate greed, and the great influence that
large businesses (especially those on Wall Street) have
on the U.S. system of government.

2. Coalescence. The coalescence of a movement occurs as
a new organization begins holding rallies and demon-
strations, making public its beliefs, and engaging in
political lobbying. After the initial “encampment”
in the Wall Street area of New York, similar protests
spread to dozens of other cities across the country and
in other nations. The mass media began to discuss the
claims made by the Occupy movement.

3. Formalization. Social movements become formalized
as they become established players on the political
scene. Although social movements usually begin with
only volunteers, at this stage the organization is likely
to include a trained and salaried staff. The Occupy
movement has attracted many volunteers and has de-
veloped a strong presence on Facebook and other social

many other cases, success in claims making is marked by
the passing of a law. Enacting a law is a clear statement that
some behavior is now defined as wrong, and the power of
government will be used to enforce it. In recent decades,
the passage of laws against stalking and sexual harass-
ment have clearly defined these behaviors as problems and
directed the criminal justice system to act against offenders
(Welch, Dawson, & Nierobisz, 2002).

One important dimension of claims making is the delib-
erate use of language. Consider the case of the Affordable
Care Act, enacted in 2010. Under this law, health insurance
companies could no longer refuse insurance to someone
who was already sick. Opponents of the law character-
ized this policy as “socializing” risk, meaning that the law
forces other people to subsidize the cost of the sick individ-
ual’s insurance. The word “socializing” (which sounds a
lot like “socialism”) suggests that this policy is outside this
country’s tradition of people taking personal responsibil-
ity for their own health and insurance. On the other hand,
supporters of the health care law praised an end to what
they called “discrimination against those with preexisting
conditions.” The use of the word “discrimination” implies
that such refusal is unjust and a violation of people’s basic
rights. In the same way, young people brought to the coun-
try without documentation are described as “Dreamers”
by those who support their right to stay and as “illegals”
by those who oppose their presence.

The same careful use of language applies to debates
about how to solve problems. In general, advocates choose
language that makes their policy seem reasonable and nec-
essary; by contrast, opponents describe the same policy in
language that makes it seem unreasonable and perhaps
even dangerous. In 2013, for example, Chicago mayor
Rahm Emanuel tried to address his city’s budget crisis by
closing some public schools and moving their students to
other, nearby schools. Supporters cheered what they saw as
a responsible and necessary step toward a balanced budget.
Opponents, alarmed at the thought of children having to
walk through unfamiliar neighborhoods that might have
gang activity, condemned the mayor’s policy as “killing our
children” (Rogers, 2013). In short, people on both sides of
any issue use language to spin claims in one way or another.

Emergence
(Initial claims are made)

Coalescence
(Claims are publicized)

Formalization
(Claims are recognized
as part of political debate)

Decline
(Public interest in
claims goes down)

Figure 1–2 Four Stages in the Life Course of a Social Movement

Social movements typically pass through these four stages over time. How quickly this process
unfolds varies from movement to movement.

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 11

salary policies, and government tax policies that dis-
tribute income more and more unequally. In the same
way, the loss of industrial production in the United
States means that millions of people are finding only
low-paying jobs or no jobs at all. In other words, prob-
lems such as income inequality and unemployment
have their roots in the way our economic and politi-
cal systems operate. For this reason, correcting social
problems requires change to society itself.

2. Social problems are not caused by bad people. This is
the flip side of the first assertion. Especially when some
individual harms a lot of innocent people—as when
Bernard Madoff swindled investors out of $65 billion
or when Stephen Paddock shot and killed fifty-eight
people attending a Las Vegas concert—we think of the
problem in terms of bad actions by evil people. The law
holds us as individuals accountable for our actions.

But, in general, pointing to “bad people” does little
to explain social problems. It is true that some people
commit serious crimes that hurt others. But whether
the crime rate is high or low depends not on individu-
als but on how society itself is organized. As Chapter 7
(“Crime, Violence, and the Criminal Justice System”)
explains, how many police we hire, how many pris-
ons we build, whether the economy is strong or not,
and whether all categories of people have access to
good jobs or not will go a long way toward explaining
whether the crime rate is low or high. In the same way,
the policies toward firearms that we adopt have a lot
to do with the amount of deadly violence we endure.

3. Problems are socially constructed as people define
a condition as harmful and in need of change.
Whatever the objective facts of any situation, people
must come to see the condition as a serious social
problem. Claims making is the process of defining a
condition as a social problem.

4. People see problems differently. Some issues, such as
the high unemployment rate during the recent recession,
are widely regarded as serious problems. But most is-
sues are matters of controversy. For example, the Obama
administration created the Affordable Care Act (ACA),
which supporters see as a needed step toward the goal of
providing everyone with health insurance. Opponents
of this law, including leadership in the Trump admin-
istration, claim that government is inefficient, so giving
government greater control over health care is likely to
make care less affordable and reduce people’s range of
choices about their care. As this example suggests, one
person’s “solution” may be another person’s “problem.”

5. Definitions of problems change over time. The pub-
lic’s views on what constitutes a serious problem
change as time goes on. A century ago, the United
States was a much poorer nation where no one was

media. By 2014, however, Occupy was not as prominent
as it had been years before, and it now seems clear that
it never did develop the level of formalization needed
to remain a part of the political scene. But the message
of the movement has certainly been adopted by the
Democratic Party, and the issue of economic inequal-
ity was widely discussed during the 2016 presidential
election, especially by candidate Bernie Sanders.

4. Decline. Becoming established is no guarantee of con-
tinuing success. Social movements may decline because
they run out of money, because their claims fail to catch
on with the public, or because opposing movements are
more convincing. Sometimes, the powers that be simply
have the clout to crush a social movement that threatens
the status quo. The legacy of the Occupy movement will
depend on whether the trend toward income inequality
continues as well as on the share of our population that
is willing to become invested in change, as indicated by
the extent to which the Democratic Party embraces the
goal of reducing economic inequality.

At the same time, a movement can decline simply
because it is successful. If enough people demand greater
economic equality, and changes to our economic and polit-
ical systems are made, movements such as Occupy Wall
Street may no longer be necessary. Even when organiza-
tions succeed in reaching an initial goal, however, they
may adopt new goals so that they continue to operate. The
feminist movement began with the goal of getting women
the right to vote and moved on to improving the stand-
ing of women in the workplace and in the home. More
recently, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) shifted
its attention from combating drunken driving to the goal of
opposing another movement that seeks to lower the drink-
ing age from twenty-one to eighteen.

Social Problems: Eight Assertions
To conclude this section of the chapter, the following eight
assertions describe how sociologists approach social prob-
lems. These statements sum up much of what has already
been presented in this chapter, and they form the founda-
tion for everything that follows.

1. Social problems result from the ways in which
society operates. Society shapes the lives of each and
every one of us. Because U.S. culture stresses individu-
alism, we tend to think that people are responsible for
their own lives. As C. Wright Mills (1959) pointed out,
however, a sociological perspective shows us that so-
cial problems are caused less by personal failings than
by the operation of society itself. For example, the in-
creasing income inequality in the United States results
not from the fact that some people are working harder
than others but from our economic system, corporate

12 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

problems for some people are advantageous to others,
and sometimes those who benefit are powerful enough
to slow the pace of change or to prevent change entirely.

The driving force behind the ACA was the fact
that the United States was and remains the only in-
dustrial nation without a tax-funded system that helps
pay for everyone’s medical care. When Congress en-
acted this new system, 33 million people still lacked
health insurance, largely due to strong political oppo-
sition to universal health care (especially a system that
is entirely government funded) and lobbying by orga-
nizations representing physicians and insurance com-
panies. During its first year, the Trump administration
made several failed attempts to repeal the ACA.

Even problems that everyone wants to solve
sometimes defy solution. For instance, almost every-
body hopes researchers find a cure for AIDS. But, de-
spite advances that make “living with AIDS” a reality,
the research breakthrough that finally cures this dis-
ease may lie years in the future.

8. Various social problems are related. Because social
problems are rooted in the operation of society, many
social problems are related to one another. This means
that addressing one problem—say, reducing the num-
ber of children growing up in poverty—may in turn
help solve other problems, such as the high rate of
high school dropouts, drug abuse, and crime.

It is also true that solving one problem may create a
new problem that we did not expect. For example, the in-
vention of the automobile in the late 1800s helped people
move about more quickly and easily, but as decades went
by, automobiles were polluting the air and causing tens
of thousands of traffic deaths every year (32,166 in 2015).

surprised to find many rural people living in shacks
and many city people living on the streets. But as living
standards rose, members of our society began to think
of safe housing as a basic right, and so bad housing and
homelessness emerged as social problems. Going in
the other direction, some “problems” of the past have
largely gone away because people no longer think of
them as problems. For example, sixty years ago, inter-
racial marriage was looked down upon and was actu-
ally illegal in many places; such marriages, however,
are now widely accepted and are legal everywhere in
the country.

6. Problems involve subjective values as well as objec-
tive facts. Today, about one-third of people who have
ever been married have also divorced. But does this
mean that there is a “divorce problem”? Facts are im-
portant, but so are subjective perceptions about any
issue. People who value traditional families are likely to
view a high divorce rate as a serious problem. But oth-
ers who think family life can limit individual opportu-
nities, especially those of women, are likely to disagree.

7. Many—but not all—social problems can be solved.
One good reason to study social problems is to improve
society. Sociologists believe that many social problems
can be effectively addressed, if not eliminated entirely.
Back in 1960, for example, 35 percent of elderly men
and women in the United States lived below the pov-
erty line. Since then, rising Social Security benefits and
better employer pensions have reduced the poverty
rate to about 9.3 percent of all seniors, which is less
than one-third of what it used to be.

But sociologists do not expect that every social prob-
lem will be solved. As already noted, situations that are

Compared with women fifty years ago, women today are much more equal to men in terms of rights
and opportunities. Actress Emma Stone, for example, makes as much money for a film as her male
costars. Yet today’s women are more likely to see gender inequality as a problem. Can you explain
this apparent contradiction?

D
Fr

ee
/S

hu
tt

er
st

oc
k

Th
e

A
dv

er
tis

in
g

A
rc

hi
ve

s/
A

la
m

y
S

to
ck

P
ho

to
.

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 13

Guatemala, three children is the norm. In the poorest
nations, the number goes even higher: In Ethiopia, four
children is common; in Nigeria, it’s five; and in Somalia,
it’s more than six.

Analyzing Social Problems:
Sociological Theory
1.3 Apply sociological theory to the study of social

problems.

Sociologists weave various facts into meaning using
theory, a statement of how and why specific facts are related.
Building a theory, in turn, depends on a theoretical
approach, a basic image of society that guides theory and
research. Using a particular theoretical approach leads
sociologists to ask certain questions. The following sec-
tions present the discipline’s most widely used theoretical
models: the structural-functional, social-conflict, feminist,
and symbolic-interaction approaches.

The Structural-Functional Approach
The structural-functional approach is a theoretical framework
that sees society as a system of many interrelated parts. Sociologists
describe the main parts of this system as social institutions,

Together, these eight assertions form a sociological
understanding of social problems. We now turn to another
important idea: Addressing many social problems requires
the use of a global perspective.

Social Problems: A Global Perspective
Many beginning students of sociology find it hard to imagine
just how serious problems such as poverty and hunger are
in the poorest regions of the world. To help you understand
the seriousness of global problems, the Social Problems in
Global Perspective box describes patterns of inequality in a
world represented by a village of 1,000 people.

Adopting a global perspective also shows us that
some social problems cross national boundaries. For exam-
ple, Chapter 16 (“Population and Global Inequality”)
explains that Earth’s increasing human population threat-
ens the well-being of everyone on the planet. Chapter 17
(“Technology and the Environment”) offers another example,
showing how people living in rich countries are consuming
the planet’s resources very quickly and, as they use up these
resources, they are polluting the planet’s air and water.

Finally, a global perspective shows that many dimen-
sions of life—and many of life’s challenges—may be quite
different elsewhere. Global Map 1–1 shows us that in rich
countries such as the United States, the typical woman
has one or two children. But in a poorer country such as

SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

The Global Village: Problems around the World
To see just how desperate the lives of many of the world’s 7.6
billion people really are, imagine the entire planet reduced to
the size of a “global village” of 1,000 people. The global village
contains 599 Asians (including 187 citizens of the People’s
Republic of China), 160 Africans, 101 Europeans, 86 Latin
Americans, 5 residents of Australia and the South Pacific, and
49 North Americans, 44 of them from the United States.

The village is a very rich place with a vast array of goods
and services. Yet anything beyond the basics is too expensive
for almost everyone. This is because of economic inequality: The
richest 1 percent of all villagers—the ten richest people—earn 15
percent of all income, and the richest 100 villagers (10 percent)
earn about half of all the income. By contrast, the worst-off 200
villagers (20 percent) earn just 2 percent of all income. These
people are hungry every day and even lack safe drinking water.
Because of their deprivation, the poorest villagers have little
energy to work and fall victim to life-threatening diseases (Ortiz &
Cummins, 2011; Milanovic, 2016).

Villagers boast of their fine schools, yet only 67 people (6.7
percent) have a college degree, and 137 of the village’s adult
population (13.7 percent or one in seven) cannot read or write.

Many troubling issues such as health, illiteracy, and
poverty are much worse elsewhere in the world than in a rich
nation such as the United States. In fact, 15 percent of the
world’s people live on less than $2 a day—a standard of living
far below what we in the United States consider “poor.” This
harsh reality of suffering—detailed in Chapter 16 (“Population
and Global Inequality”)— is one good reason to take a global
perspective in our study of social problems (Milanovic, 2016;
Population Reference Bureau, 2017; UNESCO, 2017; World
Bank, 2017).

What Do You Think?
1. Do any of the facts presented in this box surprise you?

Which ones? Why?

2. As a person living in a rich nation, do you think you have a
responsibility to help solve problems in poor nations? Why
or why not?

3. Can you see ways that you, personally, benefit from the
economic inequality of our world? Can you point to ways
that you are harmed by inequality? Explain.

14 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

were quick to assume that pathologies must be caused
by bad or weak people. The English sociologist Herbert
Spencer (1820–1903) made the claim that the problem of
poverty was the result of some people lacking the ability
and personal discipline to work. Spencer based his think-
ing on the ideas of the biologist Charles Darwin, who
published a groundbreaking theory of evolution in 1859.
Spencer’s “social Darwinism” viewed the rich as society’s
most successful members and the poor as those who could
not keep up. To Spencer, the harsh competition of the mar-
ketplace was good for society because it guaranteed, as he
put it, the “survival of the fittest.” For this reason, Spencer
opposed social welfare programs as harmful to society
because they transfer wealth from the people he consid-
ered the most able to the ones he regarded as the weakest.

There is no surprise in the fact that Spencer’s ideas
were very popular among the rich industrialist owners of
his day. But sociologists gradually turned against Spencer
because there is no scientific evidence that the rich and pow-
erful are any more worthy than others or that a competitive

major spheres of social life, or societal subsystems, organized to meet
a basic human need. For example, the structural-functional
approach might explore how the family is a system to ensure
the care and raising of children, how schools provide young
people with the skills they need for adult life, how the econ-
omy produces and distributes material goods, how the
political system sets national goals and priorities, and how
religion gives our lives purpose and meaning.

Early Functional Theory: Problems as Social Pathology
A century ago, the structural-functional approach stud-
ied society as if it were a living organism. This view led to
social pathology theory, a model that treats social problems
as a disruption in society’s normal operation, in the same
way that a disease upsets the operation of the human body.
Crime, truancy, and premarital sex were all seen as pathol-
ogies (from a Greek word meaning “disease”) that threat-
ened the health of society.

What caused society to break down? Because early
functionalists viewed society as good and healthy, many

Average Number of
Births per Woman

6.0 and higher

5.0 to 5.9

4.0 to 4.9

3.0 to 3.9

2.0 to 2.9

1.0 to 1.9

Cindy Rucker, 29 years old, recently
took time off from her job in the
New Orleans public school system
to have her first child.

Although she is only 28 years old,
Baktnizar Kahn has four children,
a common pattern in Afghanistan.

Area of inset

ANTARCTICA

TUVALU

SAMOA

FIJI

TONGA

NEW
ZEALAND

SOLOMON
ISLANDS

VANUATU

PALAU

KIRIBATI

MARSHALL
ISLANDS

FEDERATED STATES
OF MICRONESIA

NAURU

BRUNEISRI
LANKA

PHILIPPINES

MAURITIUS

LESOTHO
SWAZILAND

MOZAMBIQUE

MALDIVES

SEYCHELLES

COMOROS

SAO TOME & PRINCIPE

REP. OF THE CONGO

EQ. GUINEACÔTE D’IVOIRE
TOGO

GAMBIA
GUINEA-BISSAU

GUINEA
SIERRA LEONE

LIBERIA

CAPE
VERDE

ST. VINCENT & THE GRENADINES

BAHAMAS

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO

ANTIGUA & BARBUDA
DOMINICA

ST. LUCIA
BARBADOSGRENADA

GUYANA

CHILE

ECUADOR

URUGUAY

HAITIJAMAICA

NICARAGUA

CUBA

DOM. REP.

GUATEMALA
EL SALVADOR

BELIZE

HONDURAS

COSTA RICA
PANAMA

U.S.
ST. KITTS & NEVIS

SOUTH
AFRICA

BOTSWANA

EGYPT
LIBYAALGERIA

Macao

New
Caledonia

(Fr.)

TaiwanPuerto Rico (U.S.)

French Guiana
(Fr.)

Martinique (Fr.)

ZAMBIA

GABON

DJIBOUTI

NIGERMALI

NIGERIA

DEM. REP.
OF THE
CONGO

SUDANCHAD

KENYA

BENIN

MADAGASCAR

MAURITANIA

SENEGAL

SOMALIA

BURUNDI

TANZANIA

NAMIBIA ZIMBABWE

ANGOLA MALAWI

UGANDA
RWANDA

CAM.

CENT.
AFR. REP.

ETHIOPIAS.
SUDAN

YEMENERITREA

BURKINA
FASO

GHANA

IRAQ

RUSSIA

SURINAME

PARAGUAY

ARGENTINA

PERU

COLOMBIA

BOLIVIA

VENEZUELA

BRAZIL

OMAN

IRAN

INDIA

BANGLADESH

KUWAIT

SAUDI
ARABIA

MOROCCO

U.A.E.

JORDAN BAHRAIN
QATAR

ISRAEL
LEBANON SYRIA

AZERBAIJAN
ARMENIA

TUNISIA

West Bank

KYRGYZSTAN
TAJIKISTAN

UNITED
STATES

CANADA

GEORGIA KAZAKHSTAN

UZBEKISTAN

TURKMENISTAN

PAKISTAN

Greenland
(Den.)

JAPAN

NORTH
KOREA
SOUTH
KOREA

I N D O N E S I A

BHUTAN
NEPAL

MYANMAR
(BURMA)

Hong
Kong

VIETNAM

LAOS

THAILAND

CAMBODIA

MALAYSIA
SINGAPORE

PAPUA
NEW GUINEA

TIMOR-LESTE

MEXICO

AFGHANISTAN

U.S.

AUSTRALIA

CHINA

RUSSIA

MONGOLIA

Western Sahara
(Mor.)

SPAIN

ANDORRA

NORWAY

IRELAND

UNITED
KINGDOM

DENMARK

POLANDGERMANY
NETH.

BEL.

LUX.
AUS.

CZECH
REP.

SWITZ.

ITALY

FRANCE SLO.
CROATIA

BOS. & HERZ.

FINLANDSWEDEN

ROMANIA
HUNG.

SERBIA

SLVK.
UKRAINE

MOLDOVA

BELARUS

ALB.

BULGARIA
MAC.

GREECE

MONT.
KOS.

PORTUGAL

ESTONIA

LATVIA
LITHUANIA

ICELAND

Global Map 1–1 Women’s Childbearing in Global Perspective

How people live and the challenges they face differ dramatically around the world. If you are a
woman living in a high-income nation, the chances are that you will have one or two children during
your lifetime. But had you been born in one of the low-income nations of Africa, four, five, or even
six children would be the rule. Can you point to several reasons for this global disparity?

SOURCE: Population Reference Bureau (2017).

Window on the World

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 15

on various forms of sexual violence that promises to produce
some lasting changes for the better.

EVALUATE

Although the structural-functional approach has been influen-
tial for more than a century, its importance has declined in recent
decades. For one thing, many of today’s sociologists have a
renewed interest in activism and shy away from a “hands-off”
approach that they think defends the status quo. For another, by
viewing society as a smoothly functioning system, the structural-
functional approach pays little attention to social divisions based
on race, class, and gender. Since the 1960s, more attention has
been paid to a second theoretical framework: the social-conflict
approach.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING In a sentence, how does the
structural-functional approach view society? How has this approach
explained social problems in terms of social pathology, social disor-
ganization, and social dysfunction?

The Social-Conflict Approach
The social-conflict approach is a theoretical framework that
sees society as divided by inequality and conflict. In general,
conflict theories claim that social problems arise from the
division of our society into “haves” and “have-nots.”

Marxist Theory: Problems and Class Conflict Marxist
theory, sometimes called “class conflict theory,” is an
explanation of social problems guided by Karl Marx’s the-
ory of class struggle. Marx (1818–1883), a German-born
thinker and social activist, was amazed by how much the
new industrial factories could produce. Yet Marx criticized
society for concentrating most of this wealth in the hands

economy benefits everyone. Social Darwinism has little
support among sociologists today. But understanding this
approach is important if only because lots of people, includ-
ing some of our political leaders, still think this way.

The Chicago School: Problems as Disorganization A
second type of structural-functional theory—often called the
“Chicago School” because it originated at the University of
Chicago, home of the first sociology department in the United
States—linked problems not to deficient people but to social
“disorganization” (Park & Burgess, 1970, orig. 1921). Social
disorganization theory holds that problems arise when society
breaks down due to social change that occurs too rapidly.

A century ago, evidence of disorganization was easy
to find as industrial cities grew rapidly with the arrival of
millions of immigrants. Many saw traditional family pat-
terns and long-held attitudes breaking down. Schools were
filled to overflowing, there was not enough housing for
everyone, and crime seemed to be rising out of control.

In response to such problems, many Chicago sociolo-
gists in the 1920s and 1930s became active reformers. They
supported local settlement houses, set up programs to
teach English to immigrants, and in a few cases even ran
for public office (Faris, 1967).

More Recent Functionalism: Problems as Dysfunctions
By about 1950, the structural-functional approach had
changed its emphasis from activism to scientific analysis.
Sociologists then began to study the positive functions (or
“eufunctions”) of patterns like sports; they identified both
functions that are intended and widely recognized (the
“manifest functions”) as well as others that are unintended
and less well known (called “latent functions”). A manifest
function of sports is improving phys-
ical fitness; a latent function of sports
is strengthening the cultural values of
individual effort and personal achieve-
ment. Sociologists noted that social
patterns also have negative functions
(called “dysfunctions”). For example,
one important dysfunction of sports on
many campuses is leaving college ath-
letes with little time for their studies.
From this point of view, social problems
can be thought of as the dysfunctions of
various social patterns.

These sociologists also pointed out
that just as “good” things such as sports
can have some bad consequences, “bad”
things such as sexual assault can some-
times do some good for society as a
whole. For example, the many incidents
of sexual harassment and assault have
greatly harmed many women, but in
2017 they also sparked a national debate

The structural-functional approach points to the contribution young people working in
factories in Indonesia make to their families’ income. The social-conflict approach provides
a different insight: Many of the products popular in the United States are made by young
people in sweatshops that pay pennies an hour to workers.

D
ea

n
C

on
ge

r/
C

or
bi

s
H

is
to

ric
al

/G
et

ty
Im

ag
es

.

16 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

Inequality”) points out, white people continue to enjoy
privileges based on race, and racial and ethnic minorities
remain disadvantaged and at higher risk of poverty, poor
health, street violence, and numerous other social problems.
In addition, racial and ethnic prejudice is great enough on
the part of some people that they see the very presence of
minorities in their communities as a social problem.

EVALUATE

Offering a striking contrast to the structural-functional view of society
as a well-integrated system, various social-conflict approaches now
dominate the study of social problems. But taking a social-conflict
approach also has limitations.

Critics fault this approach for overstating the extent of social divi-
sions. They point out that, because of the general pattern of upward
social mobility over the past century, few members of our society today
show interest in the type of revolution advocated by Marx. Although
there is still much to be done, progress has been real: Over the past
century, living standards have risen and African Americans and other
minorities have far more opportunities than they did in the past.

A second criticism is that social-conflict analysis rejects scien-
tific objectivity in favor of political activism, which calls into question
the truth of some of its claims. Marxists and multiculturalists con-
cede that their work is political, but as they see it, so is any theo-
retical approach, including structural-functionalism. They add that
functionalism escapes the criticism of being biased only because it
supports the status quo.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING In a sentence, how does the social-
conflict approach view society? Explain what Marxist theory and
multicultural theory identify as the causes of social problems.

The Feminist Approach
The feminist approach, also called the “gender-conflict”
approach, is another type of social-conflict approach in
sociology. Because of its increasing importance to sociolo-
gists, this approach is appropriately treated on its own terms.

Feminism is a political movement that seeks the social
equality of women and men. Feminists claim that women
suffer more from poverty and many other social problems
because society places men in positions of power over
women. Gender-conflict theory explains social problems in
terms of men’s dominance over women.

Chapter 4 (“Gender Inequality”) points out that
although the social standing of women and men has
become more equal during the past century, women work-
ing full time still earn just 80.5 percent as much as men
do (Semega et al., 2017). In recent decades, an increasing
share of the poor is made up of women (especially single
women) and their children. Just as important, working
women remain concentrated in a number of low-paying
jobs, and from childhood to old age, women are subject
to everyday disadvantages—from subtle prejudice to out-
right violence—at the hands of men.

of a few. How, he wondered, could a society so rich contain
so many people who were so poor?

Marx devoted his life to analyzing capitalism, an eco-
nomic system in which businesses are privately owned by
people called “capitalists” who operate them for profit. To
Marx, social problems are the inevitable result of the normal
operation of a capitalist economy. The industrial technology
of modern societies produces enough to meet everyone’s
needs; modern society therefore has the productive capacity
to end human suffering. Yet, Marx observed, allowing this
technology to operate under a capitalist economy means
that this bounty will be distributed to only a few. Capitalism,
explained Marx, is a system that does not serve the people
but only seeks profit for the small share of people who own
factories and other productive property. Therefore, he con-
cluded, it is a system that does not operate to meet human
needs. As a result, the normal operation of the capitalist
system creates social problems such as poverty.

Marx was critical of modern society, but he was also
optimistic about the future. He predicted that, as a sys-
tem that failed to meet the needs of most people, capital-
ism would bring about its own destruction. In the short
term, Marx concluded, the rich would become richer and
richer, while the poor would have less and less. Industrial
workers, whom he called “proletarians,” performed hard
labor in factories for low wages while facing the ever-present
threat of being replaced by machines. In the long term, Marx
was certain that workers, holding little hope for the future,
would join together, rise up, and end this oppressive system.

As Chapter 2 (“Economic Inequality”) explains, how-
ever, such a revolution has not yet happened, at least not
in industrial-capitalist nations. But followers of Marx
still support a radical restructuring of society—especially
the economy—as the best means to address most social
problems.

Multiculturalism: Problems of Racial and Ethnic Inequality
Sociologists study conflict based not only on class but also on
color and culture. Societies attach importance to skin color and
cultural background, which leads to ranking people in a hier-
archy based on race and ethnicity. Multicultural theory explains
how social problems arise from racial and ethnic inequality.

The great social diversity of the United States and the
rest of the Western Hemisphere is the result of centuries
of immigration. Every person who lives anywhere in the
Americas, from the northern reaches of Canada to the
southern tip of Chile, either migrated here from someplace
else or has an ancestor who did. Here in the United States,
some categories of people (especially white Anglo-Saxon
Protestants, or WASPs) have enjoyed higher social stand-
ing than others (especially people of color).

In 1865, the United States ended centuries of slavery, an
important step in the process of giving people more equal
standing before the law. Yet as Chapter 3 (“Racial and Ethnic

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 17

loneliness or as a means of economic survival. Whatever
the reason, Davis found, the women she studied gradually
“drifted” toward prostitution, usually taking years to learn
the skills, norms, and attitudes that characterize the profes-
sional sex worker. In short, people learn such roles one step at
a time, eventually reaching the point where the role becomes
their livelihood as well as part of their social identity.

Labeling Theory: Problems and Social Definitions The
symbolic-interaction approach also explores how people
socially construct reality. Labeling theory states that the
reality of any particular situation depends on how people
define it. For example, the spirited consumption of alcohol
that young people view as normal partying may be labeled
by college officials as dangerous binge drinking.

The distinction between a “social drinker” and a “prob-
lem drinker” often depends on which audience is watching
(do parents view drinking the same way that friends do?), who
the actor is (do we view women who drink the same as we
view men who do?), where the action takes place (is drinking
in a park the same as drinking at a bar?), and when the action
occurs (is drinking on Sunday morning different from doing
the same thing on Saturday night?). Obviously, many factors
come into play as people socially define a given situation.

EVALUATE

Like Marxism and multiculturalism, feminism seeks to change the
status quo just as it challenges the structural-functional view of society
as a well-integrated system. In recent decades, feminism has become
a widely supported point of view in sociology, and it is commonly used
in the analysis of social problems. But, like Marxism and multicultur-
alism, this variant of the social-conflict approach also has limitations.

In the same way that critics fault Marxism for overstating “class
warfare,” critics claim that feminism overstates the degree of inequal-
ity that separates the sexes. Over the course of the past century, the
opportunities for women—in politics, in the workplace, and in other
arenas such as sports—have increased dramatically. Without deny-
ing that gender inequality is still a reality, critics claim that women (like
all minorities) enjoy far greater opportunities than they did in the past.

The charge of political bias is also made against feminism by its crit-
ics. The fact that feminism explicitly seeks social change means that this
approach is clearly a form of social activism. As in the case of Marxism
and multiculturalism, defenders of feminism respond that they are com-
mitted to the pursuit of social justice. They also point out that any analy-
sis is political in that it either calls for social change or it does not.

A final criticism, which applies to both the structural-functional
and all the social-conflict approaches, is that these macro-level
approaches make use of broad generalities that seem removed from
how individuals actually experience their world. This concern has
led to the development of a third theoretical model: the symbolic-
interaction approach.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING In a sentence, how does feminist
theory see the world? Explain how feminist theory understands
social problems.

The Symbolic-Interaction Approach
The goal of describing society more in terms of how people
experience the world underlies the symbolic-interaction
approach, a theoretical framework that sees society as the
product of individuals interacting with one another. We can
apply this approach to social problems by asking two
questions: How do people become involved in problem-
atic behavior? And more generally, how do people come to
define issues as social problems in the first place?

Learning Theory: Problems and the Social Environment
Why do young people in one neighborhood get into more
trouble than those who live in another neighborhood?
Learning theory claims that people learn troublesome atti-
tudes and behaviors from others around them. The point
here is that no one sets out to become a burglar, a Wall
Street swindler, a drug abuser, or an industrial polluter;
rather, people gradually engage in such behavior as they
learn skills and attitudes from others.

A learning approach guided Nanette Davis (1980,
2000) in her study of thirty women performing sex work.
Interviewing these women, Davis discovered that no one
simply decides to sell sex. A woman might turn to such a life
for any number of reasons, perhaps as a way to cope with

Reality is often less a matter of what people do than of how they
define their own behavior. Studies show that many college students
consume large amounts of alcohol on a regular basis. To these
students, drinking heavily may just be “partying.” College officials,
however, may define such behavior as “binge drinking” or “alcohol
abuse,” which can result in serious penalties.

S
ha

w
n

Th
ew

/E
PA

/R
E

X
/S

hu
tt

er
st

oc
k.

18 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

poor people, or are successful people also victimized in
this way? After interviewing 100 of the most successful
African American men and women in the United States,
Benjamin concluded that success provides no escape from
racial prejudice. Even African Americans at the top of their
fields encounter racial hostility in their daily lives.

William Julius Wilson (1996) conducted interviews
and examined available data in a major study of poor peo-
ple living in Chicago. He found that people who have lived
in poverty for many years contend with a host of social
problems, including joblessness, unstable families, and,
perhaps worst of all, a loss of hope. Wilson found that the
major reason for this poverty is the disappearance of good
jobs from Chicago’s inner city.

These brief accounts are just a few examples of the
research being done by thousands of sociologists across the
country. The following sections provide a brief description
of the research methods used by Ehrenreich, Benjamin,
Wilson, and many others to study social problems—and to
make the world a better place.

Research Methods
Sociologists use four major research methods in their
investigation of social problems: surveys, field research,
experimental research, and secondary analysis.

Survey Research: Asking Questions The most widely
used research procedure is the survey, a research method
in which subjects respond to items on a questionnaire or in an
interview. A questionnaire is a series of items a researcher
presents to subjects for their response. Researchers may
deliver questionnaires in person, send them through the
mail, or use e-mail.

Of course, the success of a project depends on your
ability to locate the people you want to survey. If you are
studying, say, homeless people, identifying and tracking
down subjects may be difficult because many have no

EVALUATE

The symbolic-interaction approach adds a micro-level or “real-world”
view of social problems. But by highlighting how individuals differ in
their perceptions, this approach overlooks the extent to which social
structure, including class and race, shapes people’s lives. In other
words, pointing out that prostitution involves both learning and labeling
is worthwhile, but we don’t want to forget the broader issue that men
dominate society and cast women into sexual roles in the first place.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING How does the symbolic-interaction
approach view society? How do learning theory and labeling theory
help us to understand social problems?

This completes the introduction to sociology’s major
theoretical approaches, summarized in the Applying
Theory table. But sociologists not only use theory to ana-
lyze social problems, they also engage in research to gather
relevant facts. We turn next to the ways in which sociolo-
gists conduct research.

Finding the Facts:
Sociological Research
1.4 Discuss the methods sociologists use to study

social problems.

Many sociologists devote their lives to investigating the
nature and causes of social problems in the hope of mak-
ing the world a better place. Barbara Ehrenreich (2001),
for example, spent months working alongside low-wage
workers in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, documenting
the many challenges faced by this country’s “working
poor.” The willingness to work hard, she found, is some-
times not enough to escape poverty, as millions of people
throughout the United States know all too well.

The sociologist Lois Benjamin (1991) investigated the
problem of racial prejudice. Is prejudice directed only at

APPLYING THEORY

Sociology’s Major Theoretical Approaches

Structural-Functional
Approach

Social-Conflict and
Feminist Approaches

Symbolic-Interaction
Approach

What is the level of
analysis?

Macro-level Macro-level Micro-level

What is the basic image
of society?

Society is a system of interrelated
parts, all of which contribute to its
operation.

The social-conflict approach sees society as
a system of social inequality in which some
categories of people benefit at the expense
of others.
The feminist approach highlights inequality
between men and women.

Through social interaction, we con-
struct the variable and changing reality
we experience.

How do we understand
problems?

Society is basically good; problems
are the result of deficient people,
too rapid change, or dysfunctional
consequences.

Problems result from inequality in terms of
class (Marxism), gender (gender-conflict
theory and feminism), and race
(multiculturalism).

People learn attitudes and skills for all
patterns of behavior; this approach
explores how people may or may not
define situations as problems.

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 19

time, often a year or more. Finally, field researchers have to
balance the demands of being a participant, who is person-
ally involved in the setting, with those of an observer, who
adopts a more detached role in order to assess a setting or
situation more objectively.

Experimental Research: Looking for Causes Why are
this country’s prisons so violent? Philip Zimbardo and his
colleagues investigated this question using an experiment,
a research method for investigating cause-and-effect relationships
under tightly controlled conditions. Unlike field research,
which takes place almost anywhere, most experiments
are carried out in a specially designed laboratory. There,
researchers change one variable while keeping the others
the same. Comparing results allows them to identify spe-
cific causes of patterns of behavior.

To investigate the causes of jailhouse violence,
Zimbardo built an artificial prison in a basement at
Stanford University. He recruited male students as volun-
teers and then assigned the most physically and mentally
healthy subjects to the roles of inmates and guards. After
the “prison” had been in operation for just a few days,
Zimbardo was alarmed to see that on both sides of the
bars, people performing their assigned roles were becom-
ing hostile and violent. In fact, the aggression was so great
that Zimbardo had to end the research for fear that some-
one would get seriously hurt.

Zimbardo’s research highlights the responsibility
researchers have for the safety and well-being of their
subjects. His study also points to a fascinating conclusion:
The prison system itself—not any personal problems on
the part of inmates or guards—can trigger prison violence
(Zimbardo, 1972; Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973).

Secondary Analysis: Using Available Data Sometimes
all that is needed to study social problems is a trip to
the local library. Easier still is going online, where a
vast amount of sociological information can be found.
Secondary analysis is a research method that makes use of data
originally collected by others. In simple terms, why go to the
trouble and expense of collecting information for yourself
if suitable data already exist?

Just because data are easy to find does not mean that
the data are accurate. Much information that is readily
available on the internet, for example, is misleading, and
some of it is just plain wrong. Always look carefully to
learn as much as you can about the source: Is it a repu-
table organization? Does the organization have a politi-
cal bias? Asking these types of questions and using more
than one source will improve the quality of the data you
find.

The federal government is a good source of data about
almost all aspects of U.S. society. The Census Bureau contin-
uously updates a statistical picture of the U.S. population—
counting people, tracking immigration, assessing patterns

stable addresses. Alternatively, it would not be hard for
researchers studying the medical system from the patient’s
point of view to find sick people in hospitals, but gaining
access to them and getting them to complete a question-
naire may be challenging.

The interview is a more personal survey technique in
which a researcher meets face-to-face with respondents to
discuss some issue. This interactive format allows an inves-
tigator to probe people’s opinions with follow-up ques-
tions. Interviews take a lot of time, of course, which usually
limits the number of people one can survey in this way. A
good way to think about surveys is this: Questionnaires
offer the chance for greater breadth of opinion, and inter-
views can provide greater depth of understanding.

Whether you use a questionnaire or an interview for-
mat, the key to a successful survey is selecting a sample
of people that represents the larger population of interest.
For example, researchers try to reach conclusions about all
the police officers in a city by studying only a small num-
ber of them. To make a sample representative of the larger
population, researchers typically use various techniques to
select subjects randomly.

Sometimes, researchers pursue a case study, in which
they focus on a single case: a person (say, a divorced
mother), an organization (a college or a gambling casino),
or an event (a rock concert or a hurricane). The advantage
of this approach is that focusing on a single case allows
greater detail and depth of understanding. However,
because this strategy involves a single case, researchers are
not able to generalize their results.

Field Research: Joining In Have you ever walked
through an unfamiliar neighborhood and observed the
people who lived there? If so, you have some experience
with field research (also called participant observation),
a research method for observing people while joining them in
their everyday activities. Field research might mean inves-
tigating a particular community to understand the prob-
lems and hopes of its people. Elijah Anderson (1999) did
this when he studied families in some of Philadelphia’s
poor African American neighborhoods. Anderson discov-
ered that although most people in these neighborhoods
had “decent” values, some had come to accept what
Anderson calls the “code of the streets.” Such people
were likely to have weak family ties, to use drugs, and,
especially if they were males, to engage in episodes of
violence in an effort to defend themselves and to gain the
respect of others.

Field studies involve a number of challenges. For exam-
ple, the researcher benefits from observing people in their
natural surroundings, but as Anderson’s work suggests,
fieldwork can be dangerous, especially to a researcher
working alone. In addition, although this method makes
sense for researchers with little money, it requires a lot of

20 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

is. In defense of this value commitment, many sociolo-
gists (especially those using the social-conflict approach)
argue that objective research is impossible because what-
ever theory we use or whatever we may say (or not say)
about the world, we end up taking some position (even
if we do so by remaining silent). If this is true, then all
knowledge is political, and trying to be neutral is itself a
political position that ends up favoring the status quo. In
the end, critics of Weber’s view say, all sociologists must
take one side or another on any issue they study. This
activist orientation was the hallmark of Karl Marx, who
summed up his view of this controversy in words placed
on his tombstone: “The philosophers have only inter-
preted the world in various ways; the point, however, is
to change it.”

Truth and Statistics
Finally, a brief word about statistics, the numerical results
that researchers often include when they report their
findings. Statistics are easy ways to characterize a large
number of subjects, as when a professor announces that
members of a class had an average grade of 90 on a mid-
term examination.

Many of us have been brought up to think of statis-
tics as “facts.” How often have we been told that “numbers
don’t lie”? But numbers are not always so truthful, for two
reasons.

First, like all research findings, numbers must be inter-
preted. A class exam average may be 90, but does that
mean the students studied hard or that the exam was fairly
easy? Similarly, one person can point out that the official
U.S. unemployment rate fell to about 3.7 percent in 2018
and interpret this as good news because the rate has come
down in the past few years, while another claims the same
number is bad news because it accepts the fact that mil-
lions of people are out of work. In addition, the official
unemployment rate understates unemployment because
it does not include people who have given up looking for
work. Second, organizations, politicians, and even sociol-
ogists often present statistics that support some preferred
conclusion. How are we to know whether the statistics we
read are presented in a misleading way? There is no easy
answer, but here are three tips to make you a more critical
reader:

1. Check how researchers define their terms. How peo-
ple define terms affects the results. Even the most care-
ful counts of the poor will vary widely, depending on
how each researcher defines poverty.

2. Remember that research is never perfect. Even if we
agree on how to define the poor, actually counting
millions of poor women, men, and children is a very
difficult task. This is especially true of those who are

of health, and reporting levels of employment, income,
education, and much more. Other government agencies
also collect specific information; for example, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation publishes detailed statistics on
crime in the United States.

Secondary analysis is often quick and easy, but this
approach has its own problems. For one thing, a researcher
who has not collected the data personally may be unaware
of any bias or errors. Fortunately, however, the quality of
most government data is high, and enough material is
available to satisfy almost any researcher.

Truth, Science, and Politics
Once sociologists have data in hand, they must decide what
to do with them. Sociologists turn to science in order to gather
their data, but science cannot solve problems for us. Science
can help us learn, say, how many U.S. families are poor, and
it may even yield some insights as to why they are poor. But
science cannot tell us what we should do about poverty.

When we confront a social problem, we may use sci-
ence to gather facts, which represent one kind of truth. But
deciding how to respond to the problem always involves
another kind of truth: our political values. How should
sociologists tackle important and controversial issues such
as poverty, family violence, and abortion? Should we sim-
ply try to discover the “facts”—reporting what is happen-
ing and perhaps why—and leave the political decisions
about what the problems and solutions are to others? Or
should we take a stand and actively try to change society
for the better?

Sociologists have long debated how to square science
and politics. No one wrestled more with this question
than the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), who
urged his colleagues to focus on the facts in an effort to
make research value-free. Weber knew that personal values
lead people to choose one topic over another. But, Weber
insisted, once a topic is selected and research is under way,
social scientists should keep a professional objectivity in
their work. This means that as much as possible, research-
ers should hold their personal politics in check to avoid
distorting the results. In practice, for example, a researcher
who personally supports the death penalty must be will-
ing to accept any and all results—even those that show
that capital punishment has little or no effect on the mur-
der rate. For Weber, the sociologist’s main goal should be
discovering truth rather than engaging in politics and pro-
moting change.

In recent decades, however, an increasing number of
sociologists have taken an opposing view. Many believe
that sociologists have a responsibility not just to learn
about the world but also to help improve the lives of
people who suffer from poverty and prejudice. This pur-
suit of social justice might seem like taking sides—and it

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 21

Responding to Social
Problems: Social Policy
1.5 Identify factors that shape how societies devise

policy to respond to social problems.

How does a society respond to social problems? This ques-
tion brings us to the topic of social policy, formal strategies
that affect how society operates. Organizations, including
governments and colleges, create social policy to get their
work done and to address social problems. Sociologists
play an important role in developing social policy. Over the
years, sociologists have helped direct our nation’s policy in
dealing with racially segregated schools, poverty, pornog-
raphy, health care, gun regulations, homelessness, racial
discrimination, problems of family life, sexual harassment,
and many other issues.

Policy Evaluation
How do we know whether a policy works? To evaluate
any policy, we must answer the following, often difficult,
questions:

1. How do we measure “success”? There is more than
one way to measure the success of any policy or pro-
gram. Take, for example, a rehabilitation program for
young people who abuse drugs. Does “success” mean
that those completing the program stay “clean” for a
year? Five years? Show a greater rate of completing
high school? Or finding a job? There are many ways
to measure the success or failure of any policy or
program, so researchers must look at more than one

homeless and therefore difficult to contact. In most
cases, researchers end up undercounting the poor and
especially the homeless.

3. Researchers may spin their statistics. What does a
“steep decrease” in the homicide rate really mean?
“Low unemployment” means low in relation to
what? There are countless ways to select and present
statistics, and researchers often present their findings
in a way that advances the argument they wish to
make.

Use special care when reading tables and graphs.
Figure 1–3 illustrates the problem with three graphs show-
ing changes in the U.S. unemployment rate. All three
figures are drawn using data from the U.S. government.
Graph (a) might be titled “Unemployment Goes Up and
Down!” because it presents data across a time frame that
shows both a decreasing and an increasing rate of unem-
ployment. Graph (b) uses the same time frame but changes
the scale to flatten the line, supporting a title such as
“Unemployment Holds Steady!” Graph (c) uses a limited
time frame over just five years to display the decline in
unemployment from 2009 to 2016. Here we can announce
“Unemployment Coming Down!”

Ideally, sociologists strive for accuracy, clarity, and
fairness in their work and use statistical data with the
intent to convey information rather than to mislead read-
ers. But, keeping in mind that researchers have to make
choices about how to present their numbers, you should
always think critically about statistical information and
how it is presented, whether it appears in textbooks
or anywhere else. Never assume that statistics are the
absolute truth.

P
er

ce
nt

o
f

La
b

o
r

Fo
rc

e
(%

)

P
er

ce
nt

o
f

La
b

o
r

Fo
rc

e
(%

)

P
e r

ce
nt

o
f

La
b

o
r

Fo
rc

e
(%

)

Year(a) (b) (c)Year Year

0

20

40

60

80

100

1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 2020

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

2012 2014 2016 2018 2020

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Figure 1–3 Do Statistics Lie?

Analysts, including sociologists, can “spin” their data to encourage readers to reach various
conclusions. These three graphs are based on the same factual data. Yet the way we construct each
graph suggests a different reality. The scale used in graph (a) gives the impression that the employment
rate displays a lot of volatility, rising and falling over time. Graph (b) changes the scale to flatten the line,
thus giving the impression that the unemployment rate has changed little. Graph (c) presents data only
for the years 2011 through 2018, giving the impression that the unemployment rate is sharply falling.

SOURCE: Data from U.S. Department of Labor (2018).

22 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

to eliminate it; a policy to guarantee a minimum income
would end the problem very quickly. But because our way
of life stresses self-reliance, there is not much support for
what would be widely criticized as “handout” policies.
Guided by a culture that defines people as responsible for
their social standing, we tend to see the poor as “unde-
serving” of assistance. Such cultural values were at work
in 1996 when Congress and the White House acted with
widespread public support to change public assistance
programs so that fewer people were dependent on govern-
ment support.

Policy and Politics
The kinds of policies people favor depend on their political
point of view. People with a politically conservative outlook
usually turn to the past for guidelines about how to live
in the present and how to shape the future. Conservative
people try to limit the scope of societal change. They tend
to view the existing society as good, leading them to con-
clude that problems arise mostly because of the actions and
choices of bad individuals. This is why conservatives favor
policies that treat problems as shortcomings of particular
individuals rather than as shortcomings of society. If the
problem is unemployment, for example, conservatives
might suggest helping jobless people get more schooling
or learn new skills in order to make them more attractive to
employers. By supporting policies that place more respon-
sibility on individuals to take care of themselves, conserva-
tives accept society as basically good the way it is. In short,
they support the status quo.

By contrast, people with more liberal views see problems
in the organization of society itself and favor greater social
change. They are more likely to understand unemployment,
for example, as caused by a society’s economy. Therefore, to
combat unemployment, liberals seek societal reforms, such
as strengthening antidiscrimination laws, expanding the
power of labor unions, or calling for government to create
enough jobs to provide work for the people who need it.

People with radical-left views seek policies that go
beyond the reforms suggested by liberals. From their point
of view, social problems exist because the entire system
is flawed in some basic way. For example, Marxists claim
that replacing the market-based, capitalist economy with
a government-controlled economy is the only real answer
to problems such as high unemployment and increasing
economic inequality. Because radical policies are, by defi-
nition, outside the political mainstream, they spark both
committed support and widespread opposition.

We conclude this chapter—and each of the remaining
chapters—with a discussion of how political attitudes lead
people to define certain situations as problems in the first
place and to define certain kinds of policies and programs
as solutions to those problems.

before deciding whether a particular program is a fail-
ure or a success.

2. What are the costs of the policy or program? We live
in a world of limited budgets and competing priorities,
so policy evaluation means weighing results against
costs. It may be possible to improve schools by increas-
ing funding, for example, but a local community may
not support raising property taxes.

The costs of any program involve not just money
but ethical concerns as well. For example, installing
surveillance cameras on public streets may reduce
crime or at least drive criminal activity elsewhere. Yet
many citizens object to having their movements—
including which stores they visit and with whom they
strike up a conversation—recorded in computer files
by public officials. In short, street surveillance may be
successful in reducing crime but may involve an unac-
ceptable cost by taking away people’s privacy.

3. Who should get the help? In assessing a social pol-
icy, another key question is whom the policy should
target for assistance. To combat poverty, should agen-
cies work with adults who need jobs? Provide a good
breakfast to poor children in school? Provide prenatal
care to pregnant women? All of these things may be
helpful, but limited budgets require agencies to make
choices about whom to target.

One guideline for making such decisions is
Benjamin Franklin’s old saying, “An ounce of preven-
tion is worth a pound of cure.” Generally, the earlier the
intervention, the more successful a policy is and the
lower the costs. For example, helping boys before they
get into trouble costs less—and accomplishes more—
than putting them in jail later on.

Sherry Deane of the National Black Child
Development Institute says that too many programs
kick in too late: “We spend so much more money after
the problem has occurred—after a baby is born at low
birth weight, after a child begins to fail in school, after
a child is in trouble with the law—instead of making an
early investment in the child with prenatal care, preven-
tive health care, early education” (Goldman, 1991:5).

Policy and Culture
Social policy is also shaped by cultural values. That is,
societies respond to a social problem in a particular way
not necessarily because that approach is cheapest or works
best but because a particular response, according to the
society’s culture, seems to be “the right thing to do.”

There are more than 40 million poor people in the
United States, many living with inadequate nutrition,
unsafe housing, and little or no medical care. Poverty
persists in this country not because no one knows how

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 23

2010 elections marked a shift to the right. In 2012, President
Obama was reelected in another shift leftward, and
Republican gains in Congress marked another rightward
shift in 2014. In 2016, in a closely contested election, Donald
Trump won the presidency and shifted national politics fur-
ther to the right.

But at any time, there is always wide variation in this
nation’s political thinking. Some of this variation is regional:
The people of Massachusetts and Minnesota almost always
elect liberal candidates, just as those living in Mississippi
and Texas usually elect conservatives. Similarly, some eth-
nic categories, such as African Americans, Jews and, to a
lesser extent, Hispanics, historically have favored liberal
positions; others, such as Asian Americans, tend to be rela-
tively more conservative.

Conservatives, Liberals, and Radicals
What do labels such as “conservative,” “liberal,” and “rad-
ical” really mean? Here is a brief statement to get us going.
The deeper meaning of these three concepts will become
clear as you read through the chapters that follow, apply-
ing each point of view to various issues.

Conservatives look to the past for guidance about
how to live. They believe that the past is a store of wisdom
developed by countless generations who have already con-
fronted many of the same questions and issues that we face
today. A good society, from the conservative point of view,
is respectful of traditions and tries to conserve what earlier
generations have learned. Conservatives have a special
interest in the family and religion—the social institutions
that transmit our moral traditions. Conservatives also
typically seek to limit the size and scope of government.
They tend to see “big government” as a problem because
it threatens individual freedom and undermines people’s
responsibility to take care of themselves. Typically, conser-
vative people tend to support the Republican Party and
the Libertarian Party more than the Democratic Party.

Liberals have a different view of the world. In simple
terms, liberals (from a Latin word for “free”) think people
should be free from the past to decide, on their own, ques-
tions about how to live. A good society, from a liberal point

POLITICS

Constructing Problems
and Defining Solutions
1.6 Analyze how political attitudes shape the process of

constructing social problems and defining solutions.

The social-constructionist approach described earlier is
useful for exploring how political views guide people as
they define social problems and devise solutions. Let us
begin with a look at the political spectrum.

The Political Spectrum
We become part of the political process as we form attitudes
about various issues. Social scientists measure people’s
opinions using a model called the political spectrum, a
continuum representing a range of political attitudes from “left”
to “right.” As shown in Table 1–2, attitudes on the political
spectrum range from the far left at one extreme through
“middle of the road” views at the center to the far right at
the other extreme.

The data in Table 1–2 show that 27.7 percent of peo-
ple consider themselves liberal or left of center to some
degree (adding the numbers at points 1, 2, and 3 together);
36.0 percent say they are moderates (falling in the middle
at point 4); and 32.4 percent say that they are conservative
or right of center to some degree (adding the numbers
at points 5, 6, and 7 together). The remaining 3.9 percent
of respondents did not know or simply did not answer
the question. Grouping people another way, we see that
a majority of people place themselves near the middle of
the political spectrum (points 3, 4, or 5), and just a small
percentage describe themselves as holding what might be
called a radical view, either at the far left (at point 1 on the
continuum) or the far right (point 7 on the continuum).

Over time, political attitudes may shift to the left (as
they did during the 1960s) or to the right (as they did in
the 1980s). Recent years reveal short-term political trends:
In 2008, the election of Democratic candidate Barack Obama
marked a shift to the left, and the Republican gains in the

Table 1–2 The Political Spectrum: A National Survey, 2016
Survey Question: “We hear a lot of talk these days about liberals and conservatives. I’m going to show you a
seven-point scale on which the political views people might hold are arranged from extremely liberal—point 1—to
extremely conservative—point 7. Where would you place yourself on this scale?”

SOURCE: The data in this figure are from General Social Surveys, 1972–2016 (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 2017).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Extremely liberal Liberal Slightly liberal Middle of the road Slightly conservative Conservative Extremely conservative

4.7% 12.2% 10.8% 36.0% 13.3% 14.9% 4.2%

[Don’t know/no answer 3.9%]

24 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

marijuana, the death penalty, immigration, transgender
rights, gender inequality, and sexual harassment.

Leaning Left People who lean to the left on social issues
are called “social liberals.” In general, social liberals think
that people should be free to shape their lifestyles for
themselves. In practice, then, social liberals are broadly
tolerant of various alternative lifestyles. They also favor
expanding opportunities for women, oppose all forms of
sexual assault, support the pro-choice side of the abortion
controversy, look favorably on racial and ethnic diversity
and welcome immigrants coming to the United States,
support legal marriage for gay and lesbian people, and
favor expanding rights for transgender people. On the
other hand, social liberals oppose the death penalty partly
because, in the past, states have been more likely to exe-
cute African Americans than whites and the poor rather
than the rich, even considering people convicted of the
same crimes.

Leaning Right People who lean to the right on social
issues are called “social conservatives.” Social conser-
vatives are respectful of traditional values and want to
conserve them. Conservatives criticize what they see as
too much tolerance in today’s society, which amounts to
moral decline. Social conservatives favor the pro-life side
of the abortion controversy. In addition, they are con-
cerned about controlling this country’s borders, both to
uphold the law and also to protect our cultural traditions.
Social conservatives also support the traditional family in
which women and men have different roles and responsi-
bilities. Social conservatives also endorse the death pen-
alty as a necessary moral response to especially brutal
criminal acts.

Economic Issues
The second type of issues involves economics. Economic
issues are political debates about how a society should produce
and distribute material resources. These debates typically
focus on the degree to which the economy should be under
the control of government or a market system. (Chapter 11,
“Economy and Politics,” explores these issues in depth.)

Leaning Left In general, economic liberals (who lean
to the left on economic issues) favor government regu-
lation of the economy in order to reduce inequality. A
free-market system, liberals claim, too often works to
the advantage of a select few and leaves everyone else
behind. For this reason, economic liberals support strong
government that is able to regulate the economy through
policies such as raising the minimum wage, setting high
taxes especially on the rich, and using tax revenues to
pay for health care, free education, and other social ser-
vice programs that help average families and, especially,
the poor.

of view, is one in which people are able to make choices
for themselves. This requires that society be both tolerant
and respectful of individual rights. It also requires that cat-
egories of people be more or less equal in terms of basic
rights and opportunities. Therefore, liberals have a special
interest in the economy and politics because these are the
social institutions that distribute wealth and power. Liberals
typically seek to expand the size and scope of government.
They see government power as a solution because it is an
effective way to reduce inequality and to make other pro-
gressive changes that benefit everyone. In general, lib-
eral people support the Democratic Party more than the
Republican Party.

Although liberals and conservatives differ in some
important ways, both accept the existing political system,
at least in most respects. In contrast, people with more
extreme views seek more basic change in society. Such are
the attitudes of radicals (from Latin meaning “of the root”)
because they hold that the system must be changed right
down to its roots. Radicals point to some basic flaw in soci-
ety that is responsible for any number of social problems.
For people on the far right, the historical expansion of “big
government” is the basic flaw, leading to the claim that
government is involved in far too many dimensions of our
daily lives. In a few cases, people who hold far right views
try to escape the reach of government to remote places
where they live as “survivalists.” Radicals also include
people on the far left. For Marxists, the basic flaw in society
is the capitalist economic system that creates social classes;
as they see it, a socially just society could exist only after
the abolition of capitalism. Similarly, for radical feminists,
the basic flaw is the concept of gender that gives rise to
patriarchy, the power of men over women. They claim that
a socially just society could exist only with the abolition
of gender differences. Typically, people with radical views
do not support either the more mainstream Democratic
Party or Republican Party. Some may vote for the main-
stream candidate closest to their political position; others
may support “fringe” candidates; still others may choose
not to vote at all.

Can we sum up these different views of the world
in a single sentence? It might go something like this:
Conservatives talk about the importance of traditions and,
in most respects, keeping society the way it has been; lib-
erals talk about the need to reform society to make it more
equal; radicals talk about organizing society in some com-
pletely new way.

Social Issues
People hold political positions on two types of issues:
social issues and economic issues. Social issues are politi-
cal debates involving moral judgments about how people should
live. Some of today’s leading social issues include abortion,

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 25

likely to support government-enacted economic programs
that may benefit them, which makes them economically
liberal (Kohut, 2012).

Keep in mind that most of us—whatever our social
standing—tend to hold some combination of liberal and
conservative attitudes. This inconsistency helps explain
why so many people call themselves “moderates,” “cen-
trists,” or “middle-of-the-roaders.”

A Word about Gender Finally, what about any differ-
ences between women and men? Political analysts have
documented a modest gender gap in voting patterns that
paints women as slightly more liberal than men. Surveys
of voting behavior show that women are somewhat more
likely to vote for Democratic candidates, and men are more
likely to favor Republicans. In the 2008 presidential elec-
tion, for example, 56 percent of women but only 49 per-
cent of men voted for the Democratic candidate, Barack
Obama. This pattern was repeated in 2012 with 55 per-
cent of women compared with 45 percent of men voting
for President Obama. In the 2016 presidential election, 54
percent of women and 41 percent of men supported the
Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump won
the election with support of 53 percent of men and 42 per-
cent of women voters. In general, men express greater con-
cern about having a powerful military to ensure national
security (generally viewed as a conservative or Republican
issue), and women express greater concern about keeping
an adequate social safety net to help those in need (a liberal
or Democratic issue) (Pew Research Center, 2012; Tyson &
Maniam, 2016).

A Word about Political Parties and the 2016 Presidential
Election In general, people who lean left support the
Democratic Party and people who lean right support the
Republican Party. The presidential elections of 2004, 2008,

Leaning Right By contrast, economic conservatives (who
lean to the right on economic issues) call for a smaller role
for government in the economy. From their point of view,
the market—not government officials—can set wage levels
more fairly and efficiently. In addition, conservatives claim
that motivated individuals and the businesses they create
(rather than government agencies) are the key to growing
the economy, generating greater wealth that benefits every-
one. Government regulation of economic activity limits
economic growth and raises the cost of doing business and
also reduces personal choice and freedom. Economic con-
servatives support lower tax rates in the belief that peo-
ple should be able to keep more of their own earnings and
use this money as they choose to spend or to invest and
expand the economy. In doing so, people take responsibil-
ity for their own well-being.

Who Thinks What?
What types of people are likely to fall on each side of the
political spectrum? Social standing is a good predictor, but
it turns out that most people are actually liberal on one
kind of issue and conservative on another.

People of high social position, those with lots of
schooling and above-average wealth, tend to be liberal on
social issues. But they are more conservative on economic
issues. That is, most highly educated people are tolerant of
lifestyle diversity (the liberal view), but many privileged
people also seek to protect their wealth (the conservative
position).

People with less education and wealth show a differ-
ent pattern. Typically their values are more traditional so
that they tend to see moral issues as clear-cut choices that
are right or wrong, which is the socially conservative view.
At the same time, with less economic security, they are

Lower-income people tend to be very concerned about economic issues, for the simple reason that they
lack economic security. Recently, thousands of people marched in Los Angeles to demand a $15/hour
minimum wage. Higher-income people, by contrast, take economic security for granted. They are likely
to be more concerned about social issues, such as ending discrimination against LGBT people. The
people in the photo at the right are speaking up for transgender rights.

M
ic

ha
el

N
ig

ro
/P

ac
ifi

c
P

re
ss

/L
ig

ht
R

oc
ke

t /
G

et
ty

Im
ag

es
.

X
in

hu
a/

A
la

m
y

S
to

ck
P

ho
to

.

26 Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

Keep in mind this key fact: Social problems are socially
constructed. Political attitudes guide what we define as a
problem and what policies we are likely to support as solu-
tions. Recognizing and respecting the diversity of political
attitudes in the United States, this text does not assume
that everyone will agree about what the problems are or
what the best solutions might be. On the contrary, we all
should expect and welcome disagreement. The goal is to
engage in conversation. The word “conversation” is closely
linked to the word “convert,” meaning “to change.” When
we engage in good-faith conversation, we take respon-
sibility for stating our own opinions, listening to others,
and asking and answering questions. Most of all, as we
exchange ideas with others, we should have a willingness
to change our positions as a result of learning more.

Throughout this text, you will read diverse analysis
explaining how the libertarian, conservative, liberal, and
left-radical political attitudes lead people to define social
problems and to decide what we ought to do about them.
Try to understand each of the various points of view. You
will soon see for yourself that to come to a point where
you can claim any one point of view as your own requires
familiarity with all points of view. In addition, understand-
ing various points of view helps to explain why our soci-
ety has such long-standing and intense debates over social
issues. Finally, gaining a diverse understanding of politics
also helps us understand that one person’s solution often
turns out to be another’s problem.

What should you expect by the time you have finished
this text? You will have learned a great deal about many
of the social issues that command the attention of govern-
ment officials and the public, both in the United States and
around the world. You will gain familiarity with sociology’s
theoretical approaches so that you can apply them to new
issues in the future. Finally, with a firm grasp of the various
political positions and arguments, you will find it easy to
analyze new issues as you confront them. With this ability,
you become an active participant in the political process.

A social problems course is an invitation to get
involved in political debates and political action. Each
chapter of this text provides a feature called “Constructing
Social Problems: A Defining Moment” that shows how
easy—and how important—it is to become involved in
the political life of our nation. Throughout the text photo
essays provide a look at people and organizations mak-
ing a difference in the country and in the world. You will
find many examples of “ordinary” people like you or me
who decided to take some action in a way that made a dif-
ference. Let us be inspired by them and live in a way that
inspires others!

2012, and 2016 yielded two victories for Democrats (Obama
in 2008 and 2012) and two victories for Republicans (Bush
in 2004 and Trump in 2016). This pattern suggests that,
over the years, power tends to shift back and forth from
one major party to the other.

In 2016, the election of Donald Trump was not good
news to Democrats. But Trump is also not a conventional
Republican; news reports indicated, for example, that
no one in the Bush family voted for him. Trump had the
support of many pro-business Republicans and many
religious or Evangelical Republicans. But his victory was
based on a high turnout among people who, in the past,
were less likely to vote at all. These voters included rural
people, working-class urban people, and people without
college degrees. They are concentrated in regions of the
country that have experienced economic downturns—
especially in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and
Pennsylvania—all of which were carried by Trump. What
all these various Trump voters had in common is that they
felt left behind by both major parties. In addition, they see
the United States as being in decline, losing our economic
power, military might, and cultural heritage. In short,
Trump victory depended on support from people who
wanted to “make America great again.” The major reason
most analysts (and probably even Trump himself) were
surprised at the outcome of this election is that these “dis-
affected voters” turned out in far greater numbers than
anyone expected.

A year in to Trump’s term, polls showed party affili-
ation to be a strong predictor of people’s support for the
president. Not surprisingly, support was highest among
people who claimed to be Republican (about 80 percent)
and lowest among those who said they are Democrats (7
percent). With President Trump’s approval rating hovering
around 40 percent, the nation remains bitterly divided—
especially in the wake of Brett Kavanaugh taking a seat
on the Supreme Court, there may be a significant political
shift in the 2018 midterm elections (Burlij & Agiesta, 2017;
Dugan, 2017; Gallup, 2018).

Going On from Here
This chapter has presented important information that you
will need in order to understand the rest of the book. Each
chapter that follows focuses on important issues that are
debated by politicians and the public across the country. To
make better sense of these issues, each chapter will present
research findings and will also apply sociology’s major theo-
retical approaches—the structural-functional, social-conflict,
feminist, and symbolic-interaction approaches—to the issues.

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 27

Martin Luther King Jr. is one of only four people in the history
of our country whose birthday has become a national holiday
(George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Christopher Colum-
bus are the others). When we celebrate King’s life, we recognize
that our society has grappled with the issue of racial inequality for
centuries and that this problem has yet to be solved.

CONSTRUCTING SOCIAL PROBLEMS

A Defining Moment
A Call to Action: The Message of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was born in Atlanta at a
time when black people and white people were kept apart by a
strict system of racial segregation. Taught in racially segregated
classrooms, King graduated from high school at the age of fifteen.
Then, like his father and grandfather, he earned a bachelor’s
degree from Morehouse College, a traditionally black institution.

Also like his father and grandfather, King set out to become
a preacher. He enrolled at the Crozer Theological Seminary in
Pennsylvania, where his mostly white classmates elected him
president of the senior class. He received his theology degree
in 1951. King continued his studies at Boston University, which
awarded him a doctorate in 1955.

In 1954, King was appointed pastor at the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Quickly, he became a
community leader, heading up not only his church but also the
local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP). The city of Montgomery—like the rest
of the South—was still racially segregated, and people of color
were restricted to their own businesses and neighborhoods and
required to sit in separate sections at the rear of city buses. King
condemned racial segregation as morally wrong and decided
to take action to challenge the status quo. In December 1955,
he led a nonviolent social movement that came to be known as
the Montgomery bus boycott. Thousands of people pledged
that they would no longer ride the buses until the city allowed
all people equal access to seats on public transportation. The
boycott continued for more than a year, ending only after the
U.S. Supreme Court declared that the racial segregation of public
transportation was unconstitutional.

King had won a great victory, but there was still powerful
resistance to racial equality, which made his life difficult and
dangerous. King faced hostility not only from members of the
public but also from police. He was arrested dozens of times,
his home was attacked, and some opposed to his cause made
threats against King’s life. But King held firm in his beliefs.
In 1957, he was elected president of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, emerging as the leader of the national
civil rights movement. His activism continued for another decade,
culminating in a civil rights march in Washington, D.C., that
included more than 250,000 people who gathered to hear him
deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

King was a great national and international change-maker,
and he stands among a handful of people in the United States
honored with a national holiday each year (celebrated on the third
Monday in January, near King’s birthday). But King was the first to

say that his life should not be taken to mean that only great people
can accomplish great things; he saw his own life as evidence the
power to make a difference is within the reach of everyone. King
held the view that anyone can be great because anyone can serve
others. He did not think that great people had to be rich or well
educated. Rather, he reminded us that to serve others, all anyone
needs is a heart full of grace and the desire to help.

King’s message is an invitation to each and every one of
us to learn more about our society and to recognize that, as
human beings, our lives are bound up with the lives of everyone
else whether they live around the corner or around the world.
Following King’s example, look for a way in which you can make
a positive difference in the life of at least one other person. Get
involved!

B
et

tm
an

n/
G

et
ty

Im
ag

es
.

Whose problem is it?

This chapter has explained that different political attitudes lead people to disagree about what
the problems are. And even when we do agree about the problems, we are likely to define differ-
ent courses of action as solutions. Over the past several years, almost everyone has recognized
increasing economic inequality that leaves millions of families without economic security. Look
at the accompanying photos to see two different approaches to fixing the problem.

Defining Solutions
CHAPTER 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

The more we favor the left side of the political spectrum, the more we look to government to manage the economy and
ensure that families are secure. From a left point of view, best represented in the 2016 presidential campaign by Bernie
Sanders, a job is a right to be guaranteed by government, which should set a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour rather
than allow pay to reflect market forces of supply and demand.

K
ev

in
L

am
ar

qu
e/

Th
om

so
n

R
eu

te
rs

(M
ar

ke
ts

) L
LC

.

28

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 29

Hint: A key difference between the two sides of the political spectrum is how economic life

should be organized. Seen from the political right, the economy should be based on a market

system in which people freely act according to their individual interests. Therefore, primary

responsibility for finding and holding a job lies with the individual. Conservatives tend to support

the free market, and they distrust “big government” as a threat to personal freedom and limiting

to economic expansion. From the political left, by contrast, the government should represent the

public interest, regulating the economy through policies such as setting minimum wage levels

and mandating working conditions. When operating on its own, liberals claim, “big business”

creates economic inequality by concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. As for personal

responsibility, liberals believe that because many problems are rooted in society, individuals

cannot solve such problems for themselves. In the 2016 presidential campaign, the Democratic

candidates Hillary Clinton (a moderate liberal) and especially Bernie Sanders (farther to the left)

both claimed that people’s success or failure is not so much about who is smarter or works

harder but how wealth and power are distributed in the United States. Republicans candidates,

including Donald Trump, took a more conservative position, claiming that a productive and

free society rests on a market system that allows people to pursue their dreams. Democrats

called for higher taxation to reduce economic inequality and fund new government benefits;

Republicans, however, won the election and went on to reduce taxes on individuals and,

especially, on corporations with the goal of encouraging investment and economic growth.

1. Explain how the following slogans from bumper
stickers are examples of claims making: (a) “Build the
Wall”; (b) “Guns Don’t Kill People; People Kill Peo-
ple”; (c) “It’s a Child, Not a Choice”; (d) “When You
Elect Clowns, Expect a Circus”; and (e) “I’m a Republi-
can: I work so you don’t have to.”

2. What kinds of questions might you ask about, say, pov-
erty, using the structural-functional, symbolic-interaction,
feminist, and Marxist social-conflict approaches?

3. Identify several national politicians—try to include
your own members of Congress—who fall on the

conservative and liberal sides of the political spectrum.
What are their views on social issues such as sexual vi-
olence and transgender rights and on economic issues
such as U.S. corporations moving abroad and raising
taxes to reduce income inequality?

4. Explain how people’s political attitudes affect the
kinds of issues they are likely to define as social prob-
lems. For example, do conservatives or liberals see the
“breakdown of the traditional family” as a social prob-
lem? Why? Are conservatives or liberals more con-
cerned about economic inequality? Explain.

Getting Involved: Applications and Exercises

The more we favor the right
side of the political spectrum,
the more we expect people to
set their own goals and to solve
economic problems for them-
selves. Conservatives claim that
a job is a personal responsibility,
and they suggest that, to find a
good job, people have to ensure
that they have the necessary
personal skills and ambition as
well as sufficient training for the
type of job they are seeking.

Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images.

30

Making the Grade
CHAPTER 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems

Seeing Patterns: The Sociological
Imagination

1.1 Explain the benefits of learning about sociology
and using the sociological imagination.

Sociology is the systematic study of human societies.

• Sociologist C. Wright Mills coined the expression
“the sociological imagination” to encourage people to
view their own personal problems as connected to the
workings of society.

Social Problems: The Basics

1.2 Define the concept “social problem” and explain
how the people in a society come to define some
issues—and not others—as social problems.

A social problem is a condition that undermines the
well-being of some or all members of a society and is usu-
ally controversial.

• A social-constructionist approach holds that a social
problem is created as society defines some condition
as undesirable and in need of change.

• The specific conditions defined as social problems
change over time.

• At any particular time, the objective facts and the sub-
jective perception of any social issue may or may not
be the same.

• A global perspective is important because many social
problems cross national boundaries. Also, many prob-
lems, such as poverty, are more serious elsewhere in
the world than in the United States.

Claims making refers to efforts by officials, individuals,
and organizations to convince others that a particular issue
or situation should be defined as a social problem. Claims
made by one group of people typically prompt counter-
claims by other groups.

Social movements typically go through four stages: emer-
gence, coalescence, formalization, and decline.

sociological imagination (p. 4) a point of view that highlights
how society affects the experiences we have and the choices we
make
sociology (p. 5) the systematic study of human societies
society (p. 5) people who live within some territory and share
many patterns of behavior
culture (p. 5) a way of life including widespread values (about
what is good and bad), beliefs (about what is true), and behavior
(what people do every day)

social problem (p. 5) a condition that undermines the well-
being of some or all members of a society and is usually a matter
of public controversy
social-constructionist approach (p. 6) the assertion that social
problems arise as people define conditions as undesirable and in
need of change
claims making (p. 8) efforts by officials, individuals, and orga-
nizations to convince others that a particular issue or situation
should be defined as a social problem
social movement (p. 10) an organized effort at claims making
that tries to shape the way people think about an issue in order to
encourage or discourage social change

Analyzing Social Problems:
Sociological Theory

1.3 Apply sociological theory to the study of social
problems.

Sociologists use theoretical approaches to guide their
research and theory building. The major theoretical
approaches—structural-functional, social-conflict, femi-
nist, and symbolic-interaction—all provide insights into
various social problems.

Macro-Level
The structural-functional approach sees society as a com-
plex system of many different parts.

• Early social pathology theory viewed problems as dis-
ruptions in society’s normal operation.

• Later, social disorganization theory linked social prob-
lems to rapid change.

• More recently, functionalism views social problems in
terms of the dysfunctions of various social patterns.

The social-conflict approach highlights social inequality, in-
cluding inequality based on class and on race and ethnicity.

• Class conflict theory, based on the ideas of Karl Marx,
links social problems to the operation of a capitalist
economic system.

• Multicultural theory spotlights problems arising from
inequality between people in various racial and ethnic
categories.

The feminist approach highlights social inequality based
on gender. Feminist theory links social problems to men’s
domination of women.

Micro-Level
The symbolic-interaction approach helps us understand
how people experience social problems in their routine, ev-
eryday interactions.

Chapter 1 Sociology: Studying Social Problems 31

• The learning approach links social problems to the learn-
ing of undesirable skills and attitudes from others.

• The labeling approach investigates how and why people
come to define certain behaviors as problematic and
others as normal.

Social policy refers to strategies that societies use to
address problems.

• A society evaluates a social policy based on its
success, its cost, and whether the population it targets
represents the best solution to a social problem.

• Societies favor social policy that reflects important
cultural values.

• The kinds of policies individual people favor depend
on their political attitudes.

theory (p. 13) a statement of how and why specific facts are related
theoretical approach (p. 13) a basic image of society that guides
theory and research
structural-functional approach (p. 13) a theoretical framework
that sees society as a system of many interrelated parts
social institution (p. 13) a major sphere of social life, or a societal
subsystem, organized to meet a basic human need
social-conflict approach (p. 15) a theoretical framework that sees
society as divided by inequality and conflict
feminism (p. 16) a political movement that seeks the social equal-
ity of women and men
symbolic-interaction approach (p. 17) a theoretical framework that
sees society as the product of individuals interacting with one another

Finding the Facts: Sociological Research

1.4 Discuss the methods sociologists use to study
social problems.

Sociologists use a variety of methods to investigate social
problems.

Survey research can take different forms:

• A questionnaire is a series of items a researcher presents
to subjects for their response.

• An interview is a more personal survey technique in
which a researcher meets face-to-face with respon-
dents to discuss some issue.

• A case study focuses on a single person, organization,
or event.

Field research allows a researcher to observe people over a
long period of time.

Experimental research is carried out in a laboratory.
Researchers change one variable while keeping the others
the same in order to identify causes of patterns of behavior.

Secondary analysis of existing data can be quick and easy,
but a researcher must be careful not to rely on data that
may be incorrect or contain a political bias.

survey (p. 18) a research method in which subjects respond to
items on a questionnaire or in an interview
field research (participant observation) (p. 19) a research
method for observing people while joining them in their everyday
activities
experiment (p. 19) a research method for investigating cause-
and-effect relationships under tightly controlled conditions
secondary analysis (p. 19) a research method that makes use of
data originally collected by others

Responding to Social Problems: Social
Policy

1.5 Identify factors that shape how societies devise
policy to respond to social problems.

social policy (p. 21) formal strategies that affect how society
operates

POLITICS
Constructing Problems and Defining
Solutions

1.6 Analyze how political attitudes shape the process of
constructing social problems and defining solutions.

The political spectrum is a model representing people’s
attitudes about social issues and economic issues.

Conservatives claim that social problems arise from the
shortcomings of particular individuals or the bad choices
people make about how to live.

• Conservatives see the family and religion as import-
ant social institutions transmitting the moral traditions
that guide people to live good lives.

Liberals claim that social problems arise from the operation
of society, including patterns of social inequality that pre-
vent categories of people from having equal opportunity.

• Liberals seek reform rather than radical change in so-
cial institutions.

On the radical left, Marxists claim that social problems re-
sult from the operation of the capitalist economic system.

• From the far-left point of view, the solution to social
problems requires radical change to our society’s insti-
tutions, beginning with the economy.

The radical right claims that the most serious problem
our society faces is the growth of big government, which
threatens individual freedoms.

• Some people on the far right withdraw from society
altogether to live as survivalists in remote areas.

Generally speaking, conservatives favor the Republican
Party, while liberals favor the Democratic Party.

political spectrum (p. 23) a continuum representing a range of
political attitudes from “left to right”
social issues (p. 24) political debates involving moral judgments
about how people should live
economic issues (p. 24) political debates about how a society
should produce and distribute material resources

32

2.4 Explain the changing ways our society has
used the social welfare system to respond to
poverty.

2.5 Apply sociological theory to the issue of
poverty.

2.6 Analyze economic inequality from various
positions on the political spectrum.

2.1 Describe the distribution of income and
wealth in the United States.

2.2 Assess differences in the lives of the rich
and the poor in the United States.

2.3 Analyze how poverty is linked to other
social problems.

Chapter 2

Economic Inequality

S
lim

A
ar

on
s/

P
re

m
iu

m
A

rc
hi

ve
/

G
et

ty
Im

ag
es

.

C
on

T
an

as
iu

k/
D

es
ig

n
P

ic
s

In
c/

A
la

m
y

S

to
ck

P
ho

to
.

Lu
cy

N
ic

ho
ls

on
/T

ho
m

so
n

R
eu

te
rs

(M

ar
ke

ts
) L

LC
.

Constructing the Problem

How much economic inequality
is fair?

The richest 20 percent of U.S. families
earn almost as much as the remaining
80 percent combined; the richest
1 percent of families control 40 percent
of the country’s wealth.

Do you think U.S. society is
becoming more equal?

In recent decades, income inequality
in the United States has increased.
The richest 1 percent of families own
a larger share of wealth than at any
time over the last fifty years.

Is there significant poverty in the United
States?

In 2016, 40.6 million people were counted
as poor.

Learning Objectives

Chapter 2 Economic Inequality 33

Tracking the Trends

Survey Question: “How much opportunity does the average person have to get ahead?”

Year

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1952 1998 2011 2013 2016

P
er

ce
n

ta
g

e
R

es
p

o
n

d
in

g

“Not much opportunity”

“Plenty of opportunity”

SOURCE: Gallup (2016).

One of the defining qualities of U.S. society has always been providing
opportunity for people to get ahead through their own effort. For decades, the
Gallup organization has asked survey questions about how much opportunity
our country provides. Here are two such questions:

Some people say there’s not much opportunity in America today—that
the average person doesn’t have much chance to really get ahead. Others
say there’s plenty of opportunity and anyone who works hard can go as
far as they want. Which comes closer to the way you feel about this?

Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the opportunity for a person
in this nation to get ahead by working hard?

In 1952, 87 percent of U.S. adults expressed the view that “there is plenty of
opportunity” in the United States. As recently as 1998, 81 percent of people
agreed with this view. In the following decade, however, this confidence erod-
ed and just 52 percent held the same view in 2013 with a modest increase to
70 percent by 2016. The flip side of this trend is that, back in 1952, just 8 percent
of adults claimed that “there is not much opportunity.” By 1998, that share had
more than doubled, and by 2013, 43 percent were dissatisfied with the oppor-
tunity for a person to get ahead. The latest data for 2016 show that 28 percent
of people say they feel this way. Over the long term, then, people are far less
confident about the chances to get ahead.

34 Chapter 2 Economic Inequality

Chapter Overview
How unequal is U.S. society in terms of income and wealth? This chapter documents the
extent of economic inequality and describes the contrasting lives of this country’s rich
and poor. You will analyze a range of problems—including poor health, unsafe hous-
ing, and political alienation—that are linked to poverty. You will learn what our society
has done—and has not done—to assist the poor over the course of our nation’s history.
Finally, you will carry out theoretical analysis of social inequality and learn how political
attitudes guide people to construct certain “problems” and favor certain “solutions.”

in a clean but decades-old trailer in Buena Vista Mobile
Home Park, paying $800 a month to rent a site.

Sandra and Roberto were drawn to Palo Alto by the city’s
schools, which are among the best in the country. They knew
that graduating from the local high school would give their
daughters an excellent chance to get a college education and
to have a much richer life than their parents have known.

But the family’s future in Palo Alto suddenly became un-
certain. The mobile home park, like all the local land, had be-
come very valuable. The park owners decided to sell the land
to a group of investors who planned to close the mobile home
park and build luxury apartments. In 2014, after a hearing
that included statements by both park owners and park resi-
dents, the city officials decided to allow the park to be closed
and the land sold. That decision meant that the roughly 400
people in Buena Vista would be forced to find other housing
with assistance by the park owners and the city.

Many residents of the larger community were concerned
that closing this neighborhood—in which 80 percent of the
people were Hispanic and almost all had relatively low

Twelve-year-old Jennifer Muñoz Tello keeps an eye on her
two-year-old sister as she looks down the street hoping to see
a friend come out to join her. On this June afternoon in Palo
Alto, California, the girls enjoy the sunshine in front of the
trailer where they live with their mother, Sandra, and their
father, Roberto. Sandra works long days cleaning houses,
and Roberto works almost until sundown in construction.

The Muñoz Tello family is not like most of the people
who live in their community. Palo Alto has a median in-
come of about $137,000, making it one of the richest cities
in the United States. Many of the local people drive BMWs,
Audis, or one of the new Tesla electric cars. The average
home sells for about $2 million. This affluence is rooted
in the computer revolution, which transformed the whole
Silicon Valley region into an economic growth machine.

This widespread affluence hides the reality of people
like Jennifer and her family, who earn barely enough to
meet the high cost of living. Sandra could never hope to
live in one of the houses she cleans or one of the new homes
that Roberto helps to build. The Muñoz Tello family lives

Jerzy Dabrowski/Picture-alliance/Dpa/AP Images.

Chapter 2 Economic Inequality 35

striking contrast to small homes in need of repair across town.
Some children dress in the latest styles, eat nutritious meals,
have regular checkups at the doctor, and go on vacations to
destinations around the world. But others wear hand-me-
downs, eat unhealthy food, go to the emergency room when
they are injured or sick, and rarely travel anywhere.

These patterns are just some of the consequences of
social stratification, society’s system of ranking categories of
people in a hierarchy. Stratification produces social classes, cat-
egories of people who have similar access to resources and opportu-
nities. Being born into a particular social class affects people’s
life chances, including how much schooling they receive, the
kind of work they will do (or their chances of not finding a
job), and even how long they will live. Social stratification
is a powerful system, and few people realize just how eco-
nomically unequal people in the United States really are. We
begin, then, with some important economic indicators.

Inequality of Income and Wealth
Any discussion of economic inequality must begin with a
look at inequality in income, salary or wages from a job plus
earnings from investments and other sources. According to the
U.S. government, the median family income—that is, the
middle case of all families when ranked by income—was
$67,871 in 2016.

As the pie chart in Figure 2–1 shows, the highest-
earning 20 percent of U.S. families with income of at least

incomes—would wipe out most of Palo Alto’s low- income
housing and diminish the town’s social diversity. For
Jennifer and her sister, the thought of having to move had
a more personal consequence—threatening their dreams for
the future (Westervelt, 2013; City of Palo Alto, 2016).

In 2017, with widespread community support, the city
acted to purchase the park’s land and place it under the
Housing Authority of Santa Clara County. The homes of
the Buena Vista families have been saved (Kurhi, 2017).

Economic differences can be found in every community
across the United States, and often the differences are strik-
ing. Just as importantly, economic inequality in the United
States is increasing. This chapter examines poverty and
wealth in this country, explaining how income and wealth
are distributed. We begin with some basic facts about the un-
equal distribution of economic resources in the United States.

Economic Inequality
in the United States
2.1 Describe the distribution of income and wealth in

the United States.

It doesn’t take a sociologist to point out that some people have
much more money than others. The evidence of economic
inequality is everywhere: Large, fancy houses with swim-
ming pools and workout rooms in one neighborhood stand in

49.2%

9.2%

3.7%

Share of All U.S. Income Received
by Each 20% of Families (2016)

Share of
Population

Minimum
Annual Family Income

>$0100

Poorest 20%Fourth 20%Second 20%Richest 20% of families Third 20 %

0.1% $ 2,220,000

1 $ 481,000

5 $ 251,000

10 $ 200,000

20 $ 140,000

30 $ 125,000

40 $ 90,000

50 $ 72,000

60 $ 58,000

70 $ 43,000

80 $ 32,000

90 $ 20,000

22.9%

15.0%

Diversity Snapshot
Figure 2–1 Distribution of Income in the United States

Income is unequally distributed, with the highest-earning one-fifth of U.S. families receiving 49.2
percent of all income. This is more than thirteen times as much as the 3.7 percent of income earned
by the bottom one-fifth of U.S. families.

SOURCES: Internal Revenue Service (2017) and U.S. Census Bureau (2017).

36 Chapter 2 Economic Inequality

$0

$50,000

$100,000

$150,000

$200,000

$250,000

$300,000

$350,000

$400,000

$450,000

19
80

19
82

19
84

19
86

19
88

19
90

19
92

19
94

19
96

19
98

20
00

20
02

20
04

20
06

20
08

20
10

20
12

20
14

20
16

1$222,869

1$102,863

1$30,104

1$14,416

1$417

1$6,226

Year

C
o

n
st

an
t

20
16

D
o

lla
rs

Top 5 percent

Richest fifth

Fourth fifth

Second fifth

Poorest fifth

Third fifth

Figure 2–2 Mean Annual Income for U.S Families, 1980–2016 (in 2016 dollars, adjusted for
inflation)

The highest-income families are now earning much more than they did in 1980, while average families have seen only small
gains. The lowest-income families actually earned little more in 2016 than in 1980.

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau (2018).

$140,000 in 2016 and with an average (mean) of $239,486
received 49.2 percent of all income. At the other end of
the hierarchy, the lowest-paid 20 percent with income
below $32,000 in 2016 and averaging $18,202 received just
3.7 percent of all income. Comparing these categories,
we see that the high-income families earned more than
thirteen times as much as the low-income families. From
another angle, the highest-earning 20 percent of families
earned nearly as much as the remaining 80 percent of fam-
ilies combined (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018).

The table in Figure 2–1 gives a more detailed look at the
U.S. income distribution. In 2016, families in the top 10 percent
earned at least $200,000, those in the top 5 percent earned
at least $251,000, and families in the top 1 percent received
about $481,000. At the very top, in 2016, the highest-paid
one-tenth of 1 percent of families earned at least $2.2 mil-
lion. This means that a very small share of families earn as
much money in a single year as a typical family earns in an
entire lifetime.

Since about 1980, income inequality among U.S. fami-
lies has been increasing. As shown in Figure 2–2, between
1980 and 2016, the annual income of the highest-paid

20  percent of U.S. families (about half of the families
included in this category in 1980 were still there in 2016)
increased by 75 percent (from an average of $136,624
to $239,486). During this period, people in the middle
of the income distribution typically saw gains of about
25 percent. The lowest-paid 20 percent of U.S. families,
however, increased by just 2 percent, making an average
of $417 more in 2016 than they earned in 1980. In short,
economic gains have been huge for the rich and small for
average families. But the lowest-earning families today
are living on about the same money that they were thirty
years ago. Based on government data, income inequality
is now greater than at any time in the past fifty years
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2018). What do people think of
this   trend? The Social Problems in Focus box provides
some answers.

Economic inequality in the United States is even
greater when it comes to wealth, the value of all the eco-
nomic assets owned by a person or family minus any debts.
Wealth is made up of more than money earned; it
also includes the value of homes, automobiles, stocks,
bonds, real estate, and businesses. Figure 2–3 shows

Chapter 2 Economic Inequality 37

SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN FOCUS

Increasing Economic Inequality:
When Does It Become a Problem?
In the poorest communities in the United States—such as rural
Clay County, Georgia; Brooks County, Texas; and Holmes
County, Mississippi—the typical household manages to earn
barely $20,000 a year. In a rich community such as Palo Alto,
California, the average family earns eight time this much.
And in the richest communities—such as urban Greenwich,
Connecticut; Jupiter Island, Florida; and Winnetka, Illinois—the
typical household earns more than ten times that much.

In 2016, the average compensation of the 350 largest
company corporate chief executive officers (CEOs) in the United
States was $15.6 million (they earned more money in just two days
than the average worker earned all year). The very highest-paid
people in the country—the twenty-five top-earning investment
fund managers on Wall Street—averaged $436 million each in
income, any on of them earning more than all of Vermont’s public
school teachers and more than 1,100 times the salary paid to the
country’s president (Vermont Agency of Education, 2015; Mishel
& Schieder, 2017; Vardi, 2017; White House, 2017).

In any organization, we might well expect the people in
charge to earn more than ordinary workers. For example, public
high school principals earn 1.5 times as much as public high
school teachers. Similarly, hospital CEOs earn about 2.5 times
as much as the average hospital physician. The presidents of
small liberal arts colleges earn about 4 times as much as the
faculty who teach there. But the income gap can get huge in

the corporate world and on Wall Street. The CEOs of investment
banks earn 20 times as much as the typical investment banker.
Among the largest 500 corporations, CEOs earn almost 100
times as much as typical middle managers. And the 25 top
hedge-fund managers on Wall Street earn more than 2,800
times as much as the average investment fund manager (and
more than 20,000 times as much as the average U.S. worker).

Survey data indicate that an increasing share of U.S. adults
have real concerns about economic inequality and the extent of
opportunity for all. As we noted in the beginning of this chapter,
a slight majority of people say there is opportunity for people
who work hard, but this share is lower than it was several
generations ago. Almost half (45 percent) of U.S. adults now
say that our society is “divided into two groups, the ‘haves’ and
the ‘have-nots’.” When asked about the gap between middle-
class people and rich people, 70 percent of adults correctly say
that differences are greater than they were ten years ago.

Anyone who paid attention to the 2016 presidential
campaign knows that—at least among Democrats—economic
inequality is now widely defined as a serious social problem.
In addition, when researchers asked people to respond to the
statement “differences in income in America are too large,” 63
percent of U.S. adults agreed, 20 percent said they neither
agreed nor disagreed, and 16 percent disagreed (the remaining
1 percent had no opinion). Similarly, when asked if “there is

that the wealthiest 20 percent of U.S. families own about
88 percent of all privately held wealth. Near the top, the
very rich—those in the top 5 percent—own 65 percent
of all  wealth, and the super-rich, in the top 1 percent,
control 40 percent of all private assets (Wolff, 2014;
Ingraham, 2017).

The second 20 percent of U.S. families own about
9 percent of all wealth. People in this category own some
stocks and bonds, but most of their wealth is in the form
of home equity and the value of automobiles and other
consumer goods. Looking at the entire economic hierar-
chy, however, we see that about half of all U.S. families
have barely any wealth at all. In other words, most ordi-
nary families own a home and other personal property, but
the value of these assets is roughly balanced by what they
owe in home mortgages, car loans, and credit card debt.
This fact means that most families live from paycheck to
paycheck and lack cash reserves to carry them through an
emergency. In a world in which illness or unemployment
can strike unexpectedly, many families are only a paycheck
or two away from poverty.

Percentage of All U.S. Wealth

Second 20
percent: 9.3%

Third 20
percent: 2.7% Fourth 20

percent: 0.5%

Richest 20 percent
of families:

88.9%

Diversity Snapshot
Figure 2–3 Distribution of Wealth in the United States

Wealth is distributed much more unequally than income is. The
richest one-fifth of U.S. families control 88.9 percent of all privately
owned wealth; the poorest one-fifth of families have no wealth and
are actually in debt.

SOURCE: Wolff (2014).

38 Chapter 2 Economic Inequality

10 percent of all income. But by 1980, economic inequal-
ity was increasing once again. The top 1 percent earned a
larger and larger share of all income, peaking in 2007 at
almost the same level as just before the Great Depression.

The United States has always embraced a way of life
that emphasizes competitive individualism, and so most
people accept the idea that people’s rewards should reflect
their talents, abilities, and efforts. But most people now
say that our country’s economic differences are too large
(Smith et al., 2015). Even more disturbing, other surveys
find that a large majority of people in the United States
believe that our economic system is unfairly “rigged” so
that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” (Morin,
2012; Pew Research Center, 2012).

We know that many well-known people earn a lot
of money. Entertainers like Katy Perry (who earns about
$135 million a year) and Jay Z ($42 million), as well as
athletes LeBron James ($72 million) and Maria Sharapova
($30  million), earn far more money in a year than the rest of
us are likely to see in a lifetime.

But is income always a good measure of talent, ability,
and effort? In 2017, Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles
Dodgers topped the income scale of all major league ball-
players with $33 million in earnings. Even the legendary
Yankee Babe Ruth—arguably the greatest ballplayer of
all time—earned only $80,000 (or $1.1 million in today’s
dollars) in his highest-paid seasons (1930 and 1931).

In recent years, Democratic politicians (especially
2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders) have called
attention to the very high pay that goes to some people—
especially the leaders of large corporations. In 2016,
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, was the highest-earning CEO,
receiving total compensation of $150 million in salary,
bonus, stock options, and other perks. That year, the
country’s ten highest-paid CEOs averaged more than
$76 million each in earnings.

Rising CEO pay is an important dimension of increas-
ing economic inequality. Back in 1970, the compensa-
tion of top CEOs was about 40 times what the average
company employee earned. By 2016, top CEOs earned
271 times more than the average worker. This upward
trend shows no signs of ending: In 2016, these top earn-
ers saw their pay increase by about another 4 percent,

P
er

ce
n

ta
g

e
o

f
A

ll
In

co
m

e
E

ar
n

ed
b

y
th

e
R

ic
h

es
t

1%

19241913 1937 1950 1963 1976 1989 2002 2015

0%

3%

5%

8%

10%

13%

15%

18%

20%

23%

25%

28%

30%

Figure 2–4 Share of All U.S. Income Earned by the
Richest 1 Percent, 1913–2015

In 1929, the richest 1 percent of the U.S. population earned almost
one-fourth of all income. For several decades after that, the richest 1
percent’s share of income declined. But by 1980, this share began to
increase, peaking in 2007 at almost the 1929 level. The share fell during
the recent recession but then increased again to 22 percent in 2015.

SOURCE: Saez and Piketty (2016).

too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large
corporations,” 77 percent of U.S. adults agreed that this was
the case, and just 19 percent disagreed (again, the remainder
had no opinion). These responses are even more striking when
we keep in mind that the actual level of economic inequality
is much greater than the average person thinks it is (Pew
Research Center, 2013; Bloomberg News, 2015; Gallup, 2015;
Smith et al., 2015).

What Do You Think?
1. In your opinion, are economic differences in the United

States too big or not?

2. What evidence can you point to that economic inequality is
harmful to community life in this country?

3. What action, if any, should government take to address eco-
nomic inequality?

The Trend toward Increasing Economic
Inequality
In recent decades, the United States has experienced a rising
level of economic inequality. In fact, economic inequality in
this country has reached levels not seen since 1929, just before
the Great Depression. As shown in Figure 2–4, the 1920s was
a decade that saw steady gains in income for the highest-
earning 1 percent of the population who, just before the stock
market crash, received almost 25 percent of all income.

As the Great Depression came to an end, the eco-
nomic trend in the United States reversed itself and began
to move toward greater income equality. By the 1970s, as
the figure shows, the richest 1 percent received less than