Preface

I wrote this text with two goals in mind: to offer a better understanding of the social problems we experience in our world and to begin working toward real solutions. In the pages that follow, I present three connections to achieve these goals. The first connection is between sociology and the study of social problems. Using your sociological imagination (which you’ll learn more about in Chapter 1), you will be able to identify the social and structural forces that determine our social problems. I think you’ll discover that this course is interesting, challenging, and sometimes frustrating (sort of like real-life discussions about social problems). After you review these different social problems, you may ask, “What can be done about all this?” The second connection is between social problems and their solutions. In each chapter, we review selected social policies along with innovative programs that attempt to address or correct these problems. The final connection is one that I ask you to make yourself: recognizing the social problems in your community and identifying how you can be part of the solution.

Learning Features of This Text

The three connections are made evident in each chapter and throughout the text through a variety of specific learning features:

A focus on the basis of social inequalities. Using a sociological perspective, we examine how race and ethnicity, gender, social class, sexual orientation, and age determine our life chances. Chapters 2 through 6 focus specifically on these bases of social inequality and how each contributes to our experience of social problems.
A focus on the global experience of social problems. Throughout the text, the consequences of social problems throughout the world are highlighted, drawing upon data and research from international scholars and sociologists. In a boxed chapter feature, Taking a World View, specific social problems or responses are examined from a global perspective. We look at China’s aging population (Chapter 6), Japan’s educational tracking system (Chapter 8), Mexico’s maquiladoras (Chapter 9), India’s all-female international news organization (Chapter 11), and marijuana legalization in other countries (Chapter 12).
A focus on social policy and social action. Each chapter includes a discussion on relevant social policies or programs. In addition, each chapter highlights how individuals or groups have made a difference in their community. The chapters include personal stories, some from professionals in their field, others from ordinary individuals who accomplish extraordinary things. Several feature those who began their activism as young adults or college students. For example, in Chapter 8, you’ll meet Wendy Kopp, the woman behind the Teach for America program; in Chapter 13, you’ll meet Max Kenner, founder of the Bard Prison Initiative, an educational program for prisoners; and in Chapter 17, you’ll read the story of Camila Vallejo, who began her activism while she was a student at the University of Chile. The text concludes with a chapter titled “Social Problems and Social Action” that identifies ways you can become more involved.
“What Does It Mean to Me?” exercises. Each chapter includes questions or activities that can be completed by small student groups or on your own. Though some questions require you to collect data and information on what is going on in your own state, city, or campus, most of the exercises ask you to reflect on the material and consider how the social problem affects you. These exercises take you out of the classroom, away from the textbook, and into your community!

Highlights of the Fifth Edition

I have made a number of revisions in response to comments and feedback from the many instructors who adopted the earlier editions and from other interested instructors and their students.

Expanding the sociological perspectives. Four theoretical perspectives (functionalist, conflict, feminist, and interactionist) are presented in each chapter, identifying how each perspective defines the causes and consequences of specific problems. Additional material has been incorporated in Chapter 3 (the 1.5 generation), Chapter 7 (cultural norms and sex education), Chapter 9 (the living wage movement), Chapter 11 (the boundary-less workplace), Chapter 13 (racial profiling), and Chapter 15 (climate change). In Chapter 1, I’ve included a general overview of basic sociological terms and concepts.
Keeping it current. The focus of this text is unlike most other social problems texts, featuring a strong emphasis on social policy and action. It is necessary with each edition to provide an update on significant social policy decisions and debates. In this edition, the following social policy discussions have been updated: immigration (Chapter 3); same-sex marriage rights, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling (Chapter 5); and an expanded discussion on the Affordable Care Act (Chapter 10).
Data matters. Data are important for understanding the extent of our social problems and recognizing populations vulnerable to them. In each revision I update data sources and incorporate new research findings. In this edition, each chapter includes a new feature, Exploring Social Problems, offering a closer empirical examination of social problems like HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, minimum-wage employment, and health care access.
Life after college. What can you do with a sociology undergraduate degree? Almost anything. And to prove it to you, each chapter includes a new Sociology at Work feature, reviewing the invaluable workplace skills that you’ll develop as a sociology major and presenting stories of sociology graduates who continue to rely on their sociological imaginations in their field of work.

I wanted to write a book that captured the experiences that I’ve shared with students in my own social problems course. I sensed the frustration and futility that many felt by the end of the semester—imagine all those weeks of discussing nothing else but “problems”! I decided that my message about the importance of understanding social problems should be complemented with a message on the importance of taking social action.

Social action doesn’t happen just in Washington, DC, or in your state’s capital, and political leaders aren’t the only ones engaged in such efforts. Social action takes place on your campus, in your neighborhood, in your town, in whatever you define as your “community.”

There were stories to be told by ordinary people—community, church, business, or student leaders—who recognized that they had the power to make a difference in the community. No act is too small to make a difference. Despite the persistence and severity of many social problems, members of our community have not given up.

I hope that by the time you reach the end of this text, with your newfound sociological imagination, you will find your own path to social action. Wherever it leads you, I wish you all the best.

Ancillaries

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