Social Issues in Contemporary Society Unit 1

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In what year did women in the US gain the right to vote?

1920

The armed forces of the US were legally segregated by race until ___________

1948

When did the US military announce its intention to open every military assignment to women?

2015

Of the entire US population of 319 million in 2015, about how many people were born in another country?

45 Million

Social Problems

A condition that undermines the well-being of some or all members of society and is usually a matter of public controversy. They are rarely harmful to anyone

Political Specturm

A continuum representing a range of political attitudes from "left" to "right"

Analysts predict that by the year 2043, _________-

A majority of the US population will be racial and ethnic minorities

Women, even relatively privileged women, have less income, wealth, and power than men. Consequently, it seems reasonable to conclude that women should be considered to be_____________

A minority

Which of the following situations is a clear example of institutional racism?

A pattern of racial profiling by police

Feminism

A political movement that seeks the social equality of women and men

Experiment

A research method for investigating a cause and effect relationship under tightly controlled conditions

Field Research

A research method for observing people while joining them in their everyday activities

Survey

A research method in which subjects respond to items on a questionnaires or in an interview

Secondary analysis

A research method that makes use of data originally collected by others

Which theoretical approach analyzes society as a complex system of many interrelated parts?

Structural-functional

Which of the following nations is probably the least patriarchal?

Sweden

If you wanted to study how people socially construct reality, which of the following theoretical approaches would you use?

Symbolic-Interaction

Which form of theoretical analysis focuses on how gender shapes personal behavior in everyday life?

Symbolic-Interaction

Sociology

Systematic study of human societies

In the 1857 Dred Scott case, the US Supreme Court stated that ________

People of color were not citizens entitled to the rights and protections of US law

Social Imagination

Point of view that highlights how society affects the experiences we have and the choices we make

Social Issues

Political debates involving moral judgments about how people should live

Social scientist measure people's opinions using a model called the _______________

Political spectrum

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) claimed what?

Problem with poverty was resulting from people lacking the ability & personal discipline to work

Social Disorganization Theory

Problems arise when society breaks down due to social change that occurs too rapidly

After the Civil War, the social diversity of the US population greatly increased as a result of which of the following?

The Great Immigration

Claims Making

Process of convincing public & important public officials that a particular issue or situation should be defined as a social problem. They often made by ordinary people via activism & with support of mass media

Suppose that a college professor solicits sexual favors from a student and threatens a poor grade if the student refuses. This scenario describes a form of discrimination referred to as _____________ sexual harassment

Quid Pro Quo

Which of the following concepts refers to a category of people who share some biological traits that members of a society define as important?

Race

From what position on the political spectrum does a person claim that in effort to advance social equality, changes need to go far beyond adopting a government policy that assists and gives preference to minorities?

Radical left

People who take a _______ political position on the issue of gender inequality claim that fundamental changes must be made to the economic, political, and family structures within the US, in pursuit of social equality

Radical-left

Social Problems: 8 Assertions

Results from the way society operates They are not caused by bad people They are socially constructed as people define a condition as harmful and in need of change People see problems differently Definitions of problems change over time They will involve subjective values as well as objective facts Most of them can be solved Various problems are related

Decline

Run out of money, claims fail to catch on with the public, or strong opposition

A _________ 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

Social Movement

Created by a government or some other organization, a formal strategy that affects how society operates is called

Social policy

Which of the following statements best represents the sociological understanding of social problems?

Social problems are rooted in the way society operates

Social-Constructionist Approach

Social problems arise as people define conditions. Social problems have subjective foundation thus it is important to consider objective facts & the subjective perceptions

Which of the following statements best states the sociological view of social problems?

Social problems result from the ways in which society operates

Which of the following terms refer to a point of view that focuses on how society affects the experiences and choices of individuals?

Sociological imagination

A global perspective is important to the study of social problems because______________

many of the social problems we face in the U.S are far more serious in low-income countries

If you think sociologically about a problem such as crime, you would conclude that this problems is _____________

not just a matter of how people act but also how society is organized

The social-constructionist approach is based on the argument that______________

problems are created as people come to define them as problems

The social-constructionist approach to understanding social problems is based on the idea that ____________

problems come into being as people define conditions as unacceptable

Economic conservatives claim that wage levels should be

set by the market

Statistics, or the numerical data that researchers often use to support their findings, are _________________

subject to "spin" meaning they can be manipulated to support various claims

Which of sociology's theoretical approaches studies social problems in terms of everyday experiences and interaction of individuals?

symbolic-interaction

Karl Marx devoted his life to analyzing

the capitalist economic system

In general, economic liberals support a society in which__________

the government has a significant role in regulating the economy

An issue is considered to be a social problem if_____________

the issue hurts people and is controversial

Sociology's key insight is that troubles many people face are rooted in ____________

the operation of society

In general, social liberals

think that people should be free to shape their own lifestyles

According to C. Wright Mills, sociology ____________

turns personal troubles into social issues

Structural-Functional approach

A theoretical framework that sees society as a system of many related interrelated parts

Social-conflict theory

A theoretical framework that sees society as divided by inequality and conflict

Symbolic-interaction approach

A theoretical framework that sees society as the product of individuals interacting with one another

Culture

A way of life including widespread values (about what is good & bad), beliefs (about what is true), and behavior(what people do every day)

The "Great Migration" drew ten of thousands of people from the rural south to the cities of the north after WW1. This migration involved which category of the US population?

African Americans

Which of the following terms refer to the process of minorities who enter a new country gradually adopting the cultural patterns of the majority population?

Assimilation

Critical Reader Tips

Check how researchers define their terms, Remember that research is never perfect, Researchers may "spin" their statistics

At what state of its development does a social movement begin to have rallies, protests, or demonstrations?

Coalescence

Samuel claims that culture and effort are mostly responsible for setting people's social positions. In making this claim Samuel supports which position on the political spectrum?

Conservative

Which political point of view puts forward a "family values" agenda that, while supporting a larger social rule for women, includes a concern that increasing gender equality may weaken families?

Conservative

Another name for "field research" is

Participant observation

Which of the following issues topped the list of social problems identified by U.S. adults in 2016?

Dissatisfaction with government

What type of political issue involves how a society distribute material resources?

Economic

Stages in Social Movements

Emergence, Coalescence, Formalization, Decline

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states that ________

Employers cannot discriminate between men and women in hiring or in pay

Formalization

Established players on political scene emerge

________ is a political movement that seeks the social equality of women and men

Feminism

Which theoretical approach explains social problems in terms of society giving men social dominance over women?

Feminist

Sabrina was studying the Millersport community, a low-income neighborhood in a large city. For more than a year, she spent full days in this neighborhood, talking with people. Sabrina's research method was ________________

Field Research

Social Policy

Formal strategies that affect how society operates

At what stage in life of a social movement does the movement begin to have a trained, formal staff?

Formalization

Which of the following categories of the US population had the lowest average income in 2014?

Hispanic women

In general, an effective policy is likely to be one that

Involves an early intervention

Which of the following terms directly refers to laws that permitted racially segregated places after the Civil War?

Jim Crow

Nanette Davis found that people learn roles a little at a time, eventually reaching the point where their roles become their livelihoods as well as part of their social identities. Within the symbolic-interaction approach, this research highlights the basis of______________

Learning theory

From which position on the political spectrum do people typically claim that government action against discrimination is one of the best ways to advance the social standing of minorities?

Liberal

Which type of feminism might best be called "Equal Rights Amendment" feminism?

Liberal

In general,__________ think people should be free from the ways of the past and able to decide for themselves about how to live

Liberals

Social institution

Major spheres of social life, or societal subsystems, organized to meet a basic human need

Which theory empathizes the harmful consequences of cultural bias, such as the tendency to apply the term "ethnic" to anything other than English cultural patterns?

Multicultural

Coalscence

Organizations begin holding rallies and demonstration

Social Movement

Organized effort at claims making that tries to shape the way people think about an issue in order to encourage or discourage social change

Rosa Parks is remembered for her role in______________

The modern civil rights movement

The method most widely used by sociological researchers is _____________

The survey

A _____________ is a statement of how and why specific facts are related

Theory

One problem that researchers using secondary analysis may face is that

They may be unaware of any bias or errors in the data, which they did not personally collect

Global Perspective

This perspective shows us that some social problems cross national boundaries. Many dimension of life may be quite different elsewhere

One reason that some 46 million people are poor in the United States is that ___________________

U.S culture stresses self-reliance, which means we tend to think people should take care of themselves.

The German sociologist Max Weber urged his colleagues to avoid direct political engagement in an attempting to make sociological research _______

Value-free

Social problems over time

What problems U.S adults consider to be most serious have changed over time

Emergence

When people share concern about the status quo

Which of the following statements is correct?

Whether people think a policy "works" or not is affected by both politics and culture

In his study of Chicago's inner-city neighborhoods, William Julius Wilson found that unemployment, unstable family patterns, and a loss of hope were all caused by____________

a lack of good jobs

The social conflict theory approach is correctly described as

activist

The sociological perspective gives us power to change society, _________________________

and it can also help us to see that sometimes people suffer through no fault of their own

When researchers ask people to identify their position on the political spectrum, the largest share place themselves

as "middle of the road"

Sociologist caution that evaluating the effectiveness of any social policy or program

depends on precisely how one defines the "success" pf the policy or program

Economic issues are political debates about

how a society should distribute material resources


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