Overview of Social Problems

Learning Objectives

• Identify what constitutes a social problem.
• Summarize the objectivist, subjectivist, and constructionist approaches to social problems.
• Describe the stages of the social problems process.
• List three sources of social change regarding social problems.
• Connect the concepts of agency, interdependence, and collective action to social change.
• Explain what is meant by social justice as it relates to social problems.

  

When you think about the current issues facing our society and our planet, you might name war, addiction, climate change, houselessness, or the global pandemic as social problems. You would be mostly right. However, sociologists need to be more specific than that. Because they are trying to explain what social problems are or how to fix them, they need a much more precise definition. Sociology professor and author Anna Leon-Guerrero (pictured below) defines a social problem as “a social condition or pattern of behavior that has negative consequences for individuals, our social world, or our physical world” (2016:4). We will define social problems again on the following page.

Sociologist Dr. Anna Leon-Guerrero, pictured here, defined social problems has having consequences for both our social and our physical world. Why might this matter?

Photo of Dr. Anna Leon-Guerrero, © Pacific Lutheran University (all rights reserved and included with permission)

Individuals have problems. Social problems, though, go beyond the experience of one individual. They are experienced by groups, nations, or people around the world. An individual experiences job loss, but the wider social problem may be rising unemployment rates. An individual may experience a divorce, but the wider social problem may be changing expectations around marriage and long-term partnerships. Solving a social problem is a collective task, outside of the capability of one individual or group.

In his book The Sociological Imagination, American sociologist C. Wright Mills helps us understand the difference between individual problems and social problems and connects the two concepts. Mills (1959) uses the term personal troubles to describe troubles that happen both within and to an individual. He contrasts these personal troubles with social problems, which he calls public issues. Public issues transcend the experience of one individual, impacting groups of people over time.

To illustrate, a recent college graduate may be several hundred thousand dollars in debt because of student loans. They may have trouble paying for living expenses because of this debt. This would be a personal trouble. If we look for larger social patterns, however, we see that as of 2021 about 1 in 8 Americans have student loan debt, owing about 1.6 trillion dollars (Federal Reserve Bank of New York 2021). The volume of this debt and the harm that is being caused stretch far beyond the experience of a few individuals. Student loan debt becomes a public issue.

In addition to differentiating personal troubles and public issues, Mills also connects them using the sociological imagination, a quality of mind that connects individual experience and wider social forces. In other words when we use our own sociological imaginations, we start with our own lives, our biography. We connect with the experience of other people and their history. We consider how our own past actions and the historical actions of others may have contributed to our current reality. We use our sociological imaginations to consider what the outcomes of our actions or of social policies might be. When you use your sociological imagination, complicated social problems begin to make sense.

Thus, it is not just that one person gets sick from COVID-19. The social problem is that our healthcare systems are overwhelmed with sick patients. People are experiencing different rates of exposure to COVID-19. Their health outcomes differ because of their race, class, and gender. Because social problems affect people across the social and physical worlds, the solutions to social problems must be collectively created. It is not enough for one person to get well, although that may really matter to you. Instead, we must act collectively, as groups, governments, or systems, to identify and implement solutions. Our health is personal, but getting well depends on all of us.

Current sociologists highlight other complex relationships of the social world. In the 2019 Society for the Study of Social Problems Presidential Address, society president Nancy Mezey explores the topic of climate change as a social problem. Understanding and solving climate change requires a deep understanding of the relationship between people and systems. She emphasizes that “society is not just a collection of unrelated individuals, but rather a collection of people who live in relationship with each other” (Mezey 2020:606). To make this point, she uses the work of sociologist Allan Johnson. In his book The Forest and the Trees, Johnson compares the physical world to our social world:

In one sense, a forest is simply a collection of individual trees, but it is more than that. It is also a collection of trees that exist in particular relation to one another, and you cannot tell what that relation is by looking at the individual trees. Take a thousand trees and scatter them across the Great Plains of North America and all you have is a thousand trees. But take those same trees and put them close together, and now you have a forest.

The same individual trees in one case constitute a forest and in another are just a lot of trees. The “empty space” that separates individual trees from one another is not a characteristic of any one tree or the characteristics of all the individual trees somehow added together. It is something more than that, and it is crucial to understand the relationships among trees that make a forest what it is. Paying attention to that “something more” — whether it is a family or a society or the entire world – and how people are related to it lies at the heart of what it means to practice sociology (Johnson 2014:11-12, emphasis added).

Using this comparison, Mezey reminds us that human society is made up of interdependent individuals, groups, institutions, and systems, similar to the living ecosystem of the forest. This similarity is illustrated in the figure below. The reach of a social problem can also be planet-wide. As the response to COVID-19 demonstrates, migrations between countries, vaccination policies for any nation, and the responses of health systems in local areas can all impact whether any individual is likely to get COVID-19 or to recover from it. A social problem, then, is one that involves a wider scope of groups, institutions, nations, or global populations.

A society consists of more than individual people, just like a forest consists of more than just individual trees: The forest around Cougar Hot Springs, Oregon has more than just individual trees. Tokyo, Japan has more than individual people.

“Photo” by Deric is licensed under the Unsplash License; “Photo” by Chris Chan is licensed under the Unsplash License

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In this textbook, we will introduce you to a variety of historical and contemporary social problems. We will focus primarily on the United States; however, we will also discuss a global perspective in various areas of the textbook. We will explore social problems related to economic inequality, housing, crime and social control, social institutions (family, work, education, media, and medicine), drugs, war and terrorism, and the environment. We will end with a discussion of social movements, which help create social change around social problems.

Each chapter includes an overview where we introduce the broad topic and related concepts (the Overview page), a summary of sociological theoretical perspectives that explain or frame social problems related to that broad topic (the Theoretical Perspectives page), an in-depth examination of social problems including patterns or trends, variation, historical perspectives, sociological concepts, and/or consequenes (the Patterns page), and a review of the main points of the chapter as well as thoughtful questions to ponder to connect deeper to the material (the Review page). A few chapters have an additional page on problems or concepts that deserve special attention. Additionally, the Review page includes Action Steps that you can take to help address social problems related to that chapter's topic. You have the power to take action!

Before proceeding to our sociological discussion of historic and contemporary social problems, we must describe what sociology is. In the following chapter, we introduce sociology, define the sociological imagination and several other foundational sociological concepts, present an overview of sociological theoretical perspectives, and describe different types of sociological research.

First, however, we will describe social problems in more detail in the remainder of this chapter. In the following pages, we define social problems, introduce the social problems process, and discuss social change as it relates to social problems including individual agency, interdependence, collective action, and social movements.

As you read this textbook, keep an open and brave mind toward the social problems and concepts that you learn about. Some topics are difficult or uncomfortable to encounter, and others may challenge your existing views of the social world. If that occurs, ask yourself, 'What in me is being challenged?' or 'Why am I feeling defensive?' Note that the patterns we discuss are in fact patterns. You might think of an exception to the pattern, though the general pattern still persists, and is typically very well documented. We provide much evidence (data and social science research findings) in these pages; however, there is far more evidence outside this textbook as well.

We hope that you will finish this textbook with a strong sociological understanding of social problems including their patterns, causes, consequences, and solutions. We also wish that you will feel empowered to create social change yourself, as you have the agency to help address social problems!