Introduction Seeing Beyond What You Already Know
CHAPTER 1
Introduction – Seeing Beyond What You Already Know
Think for a moment how often you’veheardabout incidentsof police brutality;a mass shooting at a school;or news of a sexual assault on a college campus. Maybe you and a friend recently had a conversationabout someone you both know who’s been cyberbullied;agirl from high school who got pregnant;or your mother’s coworker who is addicted to prescription pain killers. You also may have familiarity with dangers to public health, the threats terrorism poses to our safety and security, and the negative impacts our actions can have on the environment.
These harmful conditions are examples of social problems. You already know something about them because of how often they are mentioned in social media posts and dramatized in YouTube videos, Hollywood movies, and TV shows. This book will further your understanding of these critical issues by enabling you to discover previously unforeseen ways to see them.
Figure 1 – A lot of what you currently know about social problemscomes from social media.
Each chapter begins with a story that highlights your conventional wisdom about a particular social problem. This is what you believe to be true about the issue based on information you’ve acquired over the course of your life through tidbits you’ve heard or read. For example, it’s commonly believed that teenage pregnancy results from unsafe sex, bullies exploit kids who don’t fit in, andonline predators harm those who are not careful about whom they friend on social media. Conventional wisdom is valuable because it enables you to have a basic understanding of events and issues that shape the world and your place in it.
Yet, you may never have had the chance to explore what you currently believe. Perhaps, you think what you know about poverty, racism, or any other social problem is allyou really need to know. That would make sense, given that this knowledge comes from trusted experts like politicians, police, journalists, scientists, therapists, and teachers.It’s easy to take for granted that they’re giving you the whole story.
Figure 2 – While we learn many valuable things about social problems from experts like doctors and teachers, we also need to lookbeyond what they tell us.
Social Problems: The Hidden Stories reveals fascinating new ways to understand these important topics that may directly affect your own life. This book builds upon your conventional wisdom, offering tools for seeing our society in thought-provoking ways you may never have considered before. Perhaps you knew a boy in high school who had suicidal thoughts. We’ll consider the various reasons why. Maybe he suffered from mental illness. He may also have felt it wouldn’t be manly to share his pain with others. This comprehensive approach builds upon some of the assumptions you may hold about deviant behaviors. There is not a simple reason why people become drug addicts or use food stamps. The aim is for you to build upon your conventional wisdom about these and other issues, by enabling you to see the world in eye-opening ways that are typically hidden from view.
For me, this has been quite a feat given that I have a congenital visual impairment. Sociology has brought the world into clearer focus in ways that no medical intervention ever could. It’s no small irony that being a person who doesn’t see well has led me to a way of thinking that enables me to see better.My aim in this book is to share that vision with you.
LOOKING WITH EYES WIDE OPEN
Over 30 years ago, aUnitarian Universalist minister namedRobert Fulghum wrote a book with a catchy title that people continue to find inspiring. All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergartenstruck a chord with millions of readers because of its simple, yet powerful message. Fulghum, of course, is right that we acquire muchof our most important knowledge very early in life – but certainly not all. When it comes to the workings of our society, there’s a lot we cannot know unless we learn how to look for it. Sociology offers tools for opening our eyes to how our society really works, enabling us to see the social world in refreshing new ways.
Even though this may be your first exposure to sociology, you come to this subject knowing a lot about it. You’re familiar with the basic rules that guide daily life and you recognize when certain behaviors violate those rules. Still, there’s so much more of interest and importance about the workings of our society than meets the eye. Studying sociology enables you to push past these blinders. The powerful discovery you’ll make in reading this book is that there’s a lot in front of your nose you don’t notice that can help youbetter understandwhat youdo. Your exploration of different social problems will uncover the hidden workings of society, enabling you to recognize more truths about the world and your place in it.
Sociologists conduct research about people’s lives – by directly observing them doing their daily activities, interviewing them, or asking survey questions. These sources of data expose the often invisible ways our affiliation with groups shapes our thoughts and behaviors. If you stop and think for a moment, you can identify many groups you’re a part of. I don’t just mean the ones you’ve officially joined. I’m also talking about all of the varied groups with which you identify because of your gender, race, social class, sexual orientation, family, religion, generation, neighborhood, and political party.
This isn’t a complete list; any group can be sociologically significant. For example, it may matter a lot whether you are a “dog person,”a “cat person,” or don’t like pets altogether. The same goes for people who prefer Instagram as opposed to Facebook, or those who have served in the military compared to those who have lived an entirely civilian life.Your goal as a budding sociologist is to pay attention to all of the diverse groups that define who we are as humans. Doing so will enable you to uncover the hidden stories beneath social problems.
Figure 3 – People who go to NASCARevents are likely to think differently than people who attend golf tournaments. This is just one of many, many ways that group affiliations shape who we are and how we behave.
A person must do substantial research, often lasting several years, in order to earn a Ph.D. and become a professional sociologist. However, you need no prior training to begin thinking like a sociologist. All you need is an interest in exploring how data about human behavior can expand your current understanding of the social world. I recall having this insight when I took my first undergraduate sociology course and learned about the sociological imagination. Thiscreative way of thinking enables each of us to discover how groups that seemingly have little importance often significantly impact the choices we make and the beliefs we hold close to our hearts. In college, I started to recognize how paying attention to these group influences enriched the ways I saw the world and my place in it.
Over the 25 years that I have studied and taught sociology, I have learned again and again how to think in refreshingways I’d never known were possible. One of my greatest sources of satisfaction has been seeing my students come to this samerealization. You can too. The key is being open to exploring data that challenge your conventional wisdom and expose new ways to look at the world around you. In showing you how to use your sociological imagination, this book aims to instill in you a lifelong curiosity about the hidden workings of our society.
ILLUMINATING WHAT YOU KNOW
The relatabletopics in this bookwill lead you to think about movies you’ve seen, TV shows you’ve watched, and social media posts you’ve read. Your mind may wander across diverse subjects such as theoverweight person who orders supersize meals at McDonald’s;the runner who took performance-enhancing drugs and brokea world record;andthe gunman who randomly shot others at the mall.These examples similarly highlight the individual perspective, which focuses on the person who engages in deviant behavior. This is an appealing way to understand social problems because it places blame on people whom we regard as distinctly unlike us – those who violate the rules instead of playing by them.
Individualism is so prevalent in our society that you mightassume it’s the only possible lens forunderstandingsocial problems.However, this book shows how you can also see these issues through a sociological perspective, which uncovers how group affiliations shape a person’s likelihood of engaging in deviant behavior. Your aim is to start paying attention to the social forces that give rise to the harms that plague a society. Just as gravity is a physical force that explains why objects on earth fall to the ground rather than fly upward into the sky, social forces exert influence on howindividuals behave. By investigating social forces, you can recognize why certain individuals are more prone than others to bully their classmates, abuse animals, or befriend an online predator.
This recognition isn’t an excuse for people’swrongdoing. The sociological perspective has a different aim. It focuses on the social contexts that give rise to deviant behavior. Exposing these contexts offers you a richerpicture of why people act as they do. While you may not like how some individuals behave, this perspective will help you to understand the causes of and possible solutions for such problems.
Figure 4 –Groups exert a social impact on us that’s similar to the physical impact gravity has on apples once they detach from their branches.
One context that often produces deviance is social inequality – the disparities across people in their amount of money, power, status, or well-being. For example, chapter 12 reveals that the teens most likely to ignorestranger-danger warnings and forge relationships with online sexual predators are kids who’ve grown up with significant emotional vulnerabilitiesstemming from family violence. Another context is culture – the beliefs, values, and behaviors that a particular group of people share in common. Chapter 8 shows thatcheating often stems from being in a workplace or school environment that puts a premium on doing whatever it takes to beat out the competition. Cheaters, therefore, may not see their actions as shortcuts to success, but as ways to level the playing field. These examples indicate that behaviors which initially appear to us as deviant start to look more understandable and relatable – indeed more normal – when viewed through the sociological perspective.
Let’s illustrate what this shift looks like by focusing on a social problem that’s become more pronounced during your lifetime. In the United States one out of every three adults – and one in six children – has a Body Mass Index (BMI) over 30, which is the medical definition of obesity. We tend to have a narrow image of people who are obese, typically calling them “fat.” My guess is your beliefs align with the message echoed in the popular TV show The Biggest Loser: that obese people choose to overeat and prefer being sedentary to exercising. In other words, the conventional wisdom is that the obese arepersonally responsible for thehealth problems they experience. This view is sensible, given that people make choices about how much they eat and exercise.
However, there’s more to this picture than meets the eye. If you have a friend who struggles with weight, seeing obesity sociologically can enable you to look upon that person with a greater awareness about what the struggle to lose weight actually entails. It’s hardly as simple as just being a more disciplined eater. We can see why by considering data indicating that obesity is concentrated among lower-income Americans. They face constraints in their ability to make healthy food choices and in their access to fitness opportunities that those who live in wealthier communities typically do not experience. The sociological perspective recognizes that while people make choices which affect their body size, these choices mirror the unequal distribution of resources in our society.Whereas we’re inclined to see the obese as having failed to conform to societal expectations about body size, they – like each of us – behave in ways that reflect the influences of social class. (Chapter 5 offers a fuller discussion of obesity.)
Figure 5 –The sociological perspective enables you to build upon your conventional beliefs about obesity and other social problems.
This example reveals that there are multiple ways to understand social problems. They are socialconstructions; we collectively define how we understand them and can, therefore, attribute different causes to them. Both social constructions of obesity are useful ways to understand this social problem. Overweight people may irresponsibly care for their bodies and also may experience income-related challenges in accessing nutritious foods and opportunities for exercise. These are mutually compatible ways to understand the problem.
The particular perspective people use to understand a social problem informs social policy – the approach taken to remedy it. Those who see obesity strictly through an individual lens are inclined to favor diets and other measures that encourage self-discipline. One policy would be for the government to support pharmaceutical companies that produce weight-loss drugs. Embracing the sociological perspective doesn’t preclude taking this strategy, but it does highlight why it’s not enough. A sociologically-informed policy would additionally promote more equitable access to nutritious foods and fitness opportunities. One measure would be for the government to create incentives for supermarket chains to open stores in low-income urban areas where fresh fruits and vegetables are currentlyunavailable to residents.
INVESTIGATING RELATABLE TOPICS
When I teach Social Problems, I ask students on the first day of class to jot down the sorts of topics they expect to learn about during the course.Whenwe discuss their answers, I emphasizethat their current understanding is the crucial starting point for our discussion. Then, I reveal that our goal is to draw on data to test their conventional wisdom.Each chapter of this book unfolds in the same way.It begins by drawing examples from current events and popular culture to identify conventional wisdom about specific social problems. The chapters use that information as a springboard for expanding your understanding.
All of the topics students consistently tell me they expectto learn about in my course are included in this book: poverty, racism, sexism, drug addiction, mass shootings, and cyberbullying. There are also chapters about other social problems students often don’t anticipate yet find fascinating to discuss: climate change, obesity, teen sexuality, animal cruelty, online predators, and cheating. While these topics may appear to have little in common, they’re thematically similar. Each is a case study that illustrates the rich ways the sociological perspective can enable you to recognize the hidden stories beneath social problems.By uncovering these hidden stories, you will see our society in ways you likely didn’t knowwere possible.Because they openyour eyes to new ways of understanding timely issues, these case studies offer models for how you can better understand any social problem.
In the following chapters, I hope you find yourself becoming magnetically drawn to the sociological perspective's power to explain social problems. I urge you, however, to resist the temptation to abandon your conventional wisdom and see this perspective as the only fitting lens. Doing sodangerously suggeststhat forces beyond our control completely determine how we behave. That’s not true. This view, moreover, offers excuses for people who act wrongfully by rendering them incapable of acting differently, which is certainly not mygoal.Despite its limitations, the individual perspective remains useful. This book’s ultimate aimis to show you how social forces shape personal choices while validating the importance of holding people accountable for the choices they make.
Studying social problems may be the gateway toward your choice of majors or it may be your only exposure to sociology during college. Either way, this book is written for you. It offers a set of tools for better understanding how your life connects to the broader world around you. These are valuable tools to keep in your back pocket to use whenever you should need them. That’s the beauty of sociology.
Questions
- Why are people inclined to trust that experts are telling them all they need to know about social problems? Answer by discussing specific experts such as politicians, police, journalists, scientists, lawyers, and therapists.
1