Sociology 211
Social Problems
Spring 2003
Dr. Scott Schaffer

Week 3 Discussion Questions: Social Problems and Social Solutions, pp. 111-184

Due Date: Th Feb 13/2003 at the start of class for discussion.

1. Define the following concepts as they are used by the authors. For each concept, be sure to identify a) the author who discussed it, b) the definition, c) the importance the concept has for the development of the author’s argument or for the study of social problems, and d) any concepts you think are related to that concept and how they’re related.

Breakdown of the family
Nostalgia trap
Welfare for the poor vs. welfare for the rich
Relationship between poverty and single parenthood
“Family values”
Tension between parenting and working
Socialization process
Tools for socialization (han, hansei, etc.)
Vocational vs. educational training
Job availability and welfare reform
“Connections”
Surplus labor pool
Rationalization of labor
“McDonaldization of society”
Maquiladora revolution (maquilazation)
Division of labor
“Ladder theory” of development
Trade preferences

2. Discuss the sociological problem lurking behind the social problems under discussion this week – education, the family, and the economy. Then, once you’ve found the sociological problems at work in these articles, build back out from the sociological problem to the “normal operation” of social life in a new way by giving a different answer to the sociological problem. How different would our social lives look if we developed new ways of organizing education and the family?

3. One of the ways in which sociologists achieve a critical distance from their own social milieu is by engaging in comparative research – studying how another society does a particular social phenomenon and comparing that method to our own. For each of the articles read for this week, identify the points of comparison between American society and the others being studied (Sweden, Germany, Japan, Guatemala). What deeper understanding do you gain of American social life by pursuing these points of comparison?

4. Gitter and Scheuer (in the article on Germany) argue that “The United States could copy some aspects of the German system with relatively little difficulty,” which raises an important question – that of the effects of incorporating new ways of doing things into our already-existing social order. For each of the social problems discussed this week – education and the family – discuss the effects of importing Japanese, Swedish, and German ways of organizing these things into our society at each of the three levels of analysis (macro, meso, micro). Overall, would the impact of this kind of incorporation be beneficial or detrimental to American social life, and why?

5. Questions such as the previous one raise an important idea when looking at social problems and the ways that other societies deal with them – how we define such evaluative criteria as “better off” and “worse off.” Using your responses for Questions 3 and 4, discuss whether or not we would be “better off” or “worse off” for pursuing other societies’ methods for dealing with our social problems, making sure to give a set of criteria for your evaluation – in other words, define how you would recognize a society as being “better off” or “worse off.”