Annual Editions: Social Problems 07/08 by Kurt Finsterbusch

Unit 1 Introduction: The Nature of Social Problems and General Critiques of American Society

1. 15200 Social Problems: Definitions, Theories, and Analysis, Harold A. Widdison and H. Richard Delaney, Social Problems: Definitions, Theories, and Analysis, 1995

This essay, written specifically for this volume, explores the complexities associated with defining, studying, and attempting to resolve “social” problems. The three major theoretical approaches—symbolic interactionism, functionalism, and conflict—are summarized.

2. 27890 The Fragmentation of Social Life, D. Stanley Eitzen, Vital Speeches of the Day, July 1, 2000

In this essay about America, Stanley Eitzen addresses a crucial problem: the fragmentation of social life. He suggests that America could come apart in the future. Eitzen discusses excessive individualism, heightened personal isolation, increasing inequality, and the deepening racial/ethnic/religious/sexuality divide.

3. 25162 How to Re-Moralize America, Francis Fukuyama, The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 1999

Recently many of the indicators of moral decline have started to show improvement. Francis Fukuyama reports the changes and accepts the challenge of explaining how moral regeneration occurs generally and what caused a potential moral regeneration in the 1990s. In the process he is forced to explore the basicsociological question: What are the sources of value systems? How do they arise and change? In his search for an answer he leads the reader through a sociological detective story.

Unit 2 Problems of the Political Economy

Part A. The Polity

4.22266 Who Rules America?, G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? Power and Politics in the Year 2000, Mayfield Publishing Company, 1997

G. William Domhoff is the leading proponent of the power elite view of American politics as it applies to political influence in America today.

5. 41783 Sugar Daddies, Jason Lee Steorts, National Review, July 18, 2005

Everyone knows that money influences politics to the detriment of the public good, but it is helpful to know the details of a specific informative case. Jason Lee Steorts reports on the sugar lobby as such a case.

6. 45603 Our Incompetent Government, Richard A. Posner, The New Republic, November 14, 2005

Richard A. Posner makes a serious charge against the U.S. government, which has been repeatedly proven incompetent in anticipating disasters and dealing with them. U.S. government performance is so bad as to require extensive explanation.

7. 36243 Rights, Liberties, and Security: Recalibrating the Balance After Sept. 11, Stuart Taylor, Jr., Brookings Review, Winter 2003

A rule of government is that when dangers increase liberties shrink. Yes, but how much? Where should the balance be? Stuart Taylor, Jr. analyzes the problem. Starting with the premise that “today we face dangers without precedent: a mass movement of militant Islamic terrorists who crave martyrdom, hide in shadows, are fanatically bent on slaughtering as many of us as possible and—if they can—using nuclear truck bombs to obliterate New York or Washington or both.” Taylor calls for a reassessment of the civil liberties rules that restrict the government’s investigative powers.

Part B. The Economy

8. 38978 Evaluating Economic Change, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Daedalus, Summer 2004

Stiglitz evaluates the costs and benefits of the momentous changes involved in the processes of globalization. These processes have greatly benefited some countries and hurt other countries. Surprisingly, his economic analysis leads him into an extended discussion of morals.

9. 45604 The New Rules, Betsy Morris and Patricia Neering, Fortune, July 24, 2006

This article states that the principles that make for effective large corporations are changing because the corporate environment is changing. The old rules of being the big dog, cutting out the weak, and doing all for shareholder value undercut the long term. The new rules are being agile and innovative, networked, and to enthrone the customer.

10. 41730 Born to Buy, Juliet Schor, Dollars & Sense, September/October 2004

The consumption side of the economy is quite dynamic today and Juliet Schor discusses some of its major findings in this article, including the fact that the materialism that undergirds the consumer society “undermines well-being in lots of different ways.... People who are more materialistic are more depressed, they’re more anxious, they have less vitality, they connect less-well with people, they have more stomach aches and headaches.”

Part C. Problems of Place

11. 45539 Ecopolis Now, Fred Pearce, New Scientist, June 17, 2006

The thesis of this article is that rightly constructed cities are essential to saving the ecology of the planet. Current cities are ecodisasters. Dedensifying cities is not the answer. Redesigning them is.

12. 45548 Alien Nation, Michael Maiello and Nicole Ridgway, Forbes, April 10, 2006

Immigration is a major issue that is tearing America apart and Washington cannot decide what to do about the problem other than building a fence on the border and increasing the border patrol. The authors present the many sides to this issue.

Unit 3 Problems of Poverty and Inequality

Part A. Inequality and the Poor

13. 41726 The Rich and the Rest, Sam Pizzigati, The Futurist, July/August 2005

Sam Pizzigati raises many issues about today’s very unequal income distribution that warrant thoughtful discussion, including the idea of minimum and maximum income levels.

14. 41983 Can Extreme Poverty Be Eliminated?, Jeffery D. Sachs, Scientific American, September 2005

Jeffrey D. Sachs argues that world poverty can be eliminated. The market and globalization has and will lift most people out of extreme poverty, but the elimination of extreme poverty would require the proper use of a $160 billion-a-year donation by the rich nations (0.5% of their GNP).

Part B. Welfare

15. 45544 The Great American Pork Barrel, Ken Silverstein, Harper Magazine, July 2005

The public good and the public trough are raided by thousands of special interests. Ken Silverstein explains how the process works. It corrupts the American political system though it is hard to prove that any of it is illegal.

16. 45541 Welfare Redux, Christopher Jencks, Joe Swingle, and Scott Winship, Prospect, March 2006

The authors argue that the 1996 welfare reform has been a huge success, but tougher requirements in the 2002 revision will create new hardships for many disadvantaged persons.

Part C. Racial and Ethnic Inequality and Issues

17. 45542 Virtual Equality, Virtual Segregation, Norman Kelley, Society, July/August 2006

Norman Kelley presents a negative picture of the situation of blacks in America today. Schools are as segregated now as before the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision. The Civil Rights Act has allowed significant progress for the black middle and upper classes, but the black lower class is “locked into Third World-like poverty and divorced from the black middle class. Black leadership and black politics are failing them.

18. 33333 Why We Hate, Margo Monteith and Jeffrey Winters, Psychology Today, May/June 2002

The authors demonstrate the prevalence of prejudice and hatred in America and explain this in terms of social identity theory. Whenever people are divided into groups negative attitudes develop toward the out group.

19. 45605 Arab America’s September 11, Moustafa Bayoumi, The Nation, September 25, 2006

Events have created a new prejudice with tragic results. A whole group is blamed for the actions of a few. Arab Americans are now treated with suspicion and bigotry and suspicion is prevalent within the Arab community.

Part D. Gender Inequalities and Issues

20. 36237 Human Rights, Sex Trafficking, and Prostitution, Alice Leuchtag, The Humanist, January/February 2003

One of the evil plagues haunting the world today is sex slavery and it is getting worse. It is the product of extreme poverty and considerable profits. The exploitation involved is horrendous. Human rights groups are trying to stop the practice. Alice Leuchtag covers many aspects of this issue.

21. 45538 All Happy Families, Julian Sanchez, Reason, August 2005

Julian Sanchez advocates adoptions by gay couples of children in the foster care system. Regardless of public attitudes toward gay families Sanchez shows that the children will be better off in gay families than in foster care.

22. 41541 The Conundrum of the Glass Ceiling, The Economist, July 23, 2005

Women CEOs are rare in large corporations and the situation has not changed over the past two decades despite official attention to the gender disparity. Several explanations are reviewed but the questions remain.

23. 45543 Too Many Women in College?, Phyllis Rosser, Ms., Fall 2005

Women outnumber men in college and are on a par in graduate school so some are talking about affirmative action for males. This idea is undercut by continuing society-wide inequalities favoring men. Closer examination reveals that gender differences are negligible except in the lower class and remedial actions should be focused there.

Unit 4 Institutional Problems

Part A. The Family

24. 41723 Can Marriage Be Saved?, Frank Furstenberg, Dissent, Summer 2005

Frank Furstenberg assures his readers that the institution of marriage is not on the rocks. There are family issues to be concerned about, especially the welfare of children, but the focus should be on resources. The often-cited unhealthy marriage and family trends occur only among the most socially disadvantaged.

25. 41724 Overworked, Time Poor, and Abandoned by Uncle Sam, Janet C. Gornick, Dissent, Summer 2005

According to Janet C. Gornick the above title describes the American parent, especially the mother. Yes parents are under considerable stress, but appropriate public policies would greatly help them.

26. 45537 Peer Marriage, Pepper Schwartz, The Communitarian Reader: Beyond the Essentials, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004

Pepper Schwartz celebrates the widespread diffusion of peer marriages in which spouses regard each other as full social equals, both have careers, share family decision making, and more equally share child-rearing responsibilities. He argues that peer marriages generally result in stronger families and greater satisfaction.

Part B. Education

27. 36245 Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why, John Taylor Gatto, Harper’s Magazine, September 2003

John Taylor Gatto attacks the American school system for being boring and preventing children from growing up. He suspects that this result is exactly what those who control the school system want schools to be. In arguing his radical thesis he presents a very provocative history of the evolution of the American school system.

28. 45546 Can the Center Find a Solution That Will Hold?, Chester E. Finn, Jr., Education Next, Winter 2006

American high schools are failing and Washington is not going to fix them. Chester E. Finn, Jr. describes six major problems and proposes six solutions.

Part C. Health

29. 41790 Fixing Hospitals, Robert Langreth, Forbes, June 20, 2005

Robert Langreth accepts the report that medical errors kill 100,000 Americans every year and then proposes reforms that will dramatically reduce this number.

30. 45547 Medical Guesswork, John Carey, BusinessWeek, May 29, 2006

John Cary reports that most doctors’ medical decisions are based on very little empirical evidence. His report features medical crusader Dr. David Eddy who is championing evidence-based medicine.

Unit 5 Crime, Law Enforcement, and Terrorism

Part A. Crime

31. 41722 Fighting Crime, John J. Donohue, Milken Institute Review, First Quarter, 2005

It is amazing what conclusions we would come to concerning crime and punishment if we used economic logic as John J. Donohue shows in this article. We would stop building prisons, abolish the death penalty, expand the police force, adopt sensible gun controls, and legalize drugs among other things.

32. 36897 The Aggregate Burden of Crime, David A. Anderson, Journal of Law and Economics, October 1999

David A. Anderson makes a valiant effort to compute the annual costs of major types of crime and the net annual total costs of all crime, which he claims annually exceeds $1 trillion or over $4000 per capita. Fraud and cheating on taxes costs Americans over 20 times the costs of theft, burglary, and robbery.

33. 41365 America’s Most Dangerous Drug, David J. Jefferson, Newsweek, August 8, 2005

David J. Jefferson reports on the latest chapter in the crazy world of harmful drugs and addiction: methamphetamine. Ruined minds, bodies, and lives usually do not stop the addiction.

Part B. Law Enforcement

34. 36247 Causes and Consequences of Wrongful Convictions, Hugo Adam Bedau, Current, March/April 2003

Recently much light has been shed on the injustices of the criminal justice system. Hugo Adam Bedau has spent several decades researching wrongful convictions and lays out the evidence for its prevalence and suggests reforms that should greatly reduce them.

35. 43065 Reforming Juvenile Justice, Barry Krisberg, The American Prospect, September 2005

Juvenile Justice needs to be reformed. Barry Krisberg reviews the history of the oscillation between punitive and rehabilitation phases in juvenile justice. Science supports the rehabilitation model and public fears support the punitive model, which is in force today. But rehabilitation of children often occurs and society gains from it.

Part C. Terrorism

36. 41733 EMP: America’s Achilles’ Heel, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Imprimis, June 2005

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. reports on the threat of a terrorist group detonating a single specialized nuclear weapon 300 miles above the United States creating an electromagnetic pulse that could destroy America as a twenty-first century society and superpower by knocking out all unhardened computers and badly damaging the country’s electricity infrastructure.

37. 45551 Homegrown Terrorism and the Radicalization Process, Robert S. Mueller, III, Vital Speeches of the Day, August 2006

Robert S. Mueller, III, Director of the FBI, provides an update on the situation of terrorism in the United States: Al-Qaeda has been weakened worldwide and two of their terrorist plots in America have been prevented since 9/11, but the danger from home-grown terrorists has increased. On the positive side he argues that the skill and capacity of the FBI in countering terrorism has increased.

Unit 6 Problems of Population, Environment, Technology, and the Future

Part A. Population and Environment Issues

38. 41750 The Challenge of an Aging Society, Richard D. Lamm and Robert H. Blank, The Futurist, July/August 2005

According to the authors, when we look into the future of health care, it becomes clear that we will have to ration health care because of the unmanageable costs of the aging population. The big question is: How do we do what needs to be done while being fair to present and future generations?

39. 45549 SOS: We Need a Plan B, Lester R. Brown, Population Press, Winter 2006

Lester Brown describes many of the ways that the ecology of the planet has seriously declined over the past half century and identifies trends that provide grim prospects for the future. He also provides a rescue plan.

40. 43048 By Any Measure, Earth Is at the Tipping Point, Jeffrey Kluger, Time, April 3, 2006

An important feature of the environment is its interconnectedness, which means that all changes cause multitudes of secondary- and higher-order changes. These in turn can unexpectedly push ecosystems past their tipping points and thereby greatly increase the speed of change. Jeffrey Kluger explores some of the effects of this phenomenon with respect to global warming.

Part B. Technological Issues

41. 30489 The Secret Nuclear War, Eduardo Goncalves, Ecologist, April 2001

An extremely consequential technology is nuclear. The energy it produces has greatly benefited mankind, but at what price? Eduardo Goncalves reports on all the nuclear accidents, testings, experiments, leaks, production, cover-ups, and storage and reuse of nuclear materials that he can find out about. The death toll could be as high as 175 million, and the shameful behavior of countless agencies that he reports on is shocking.

Part C. The Future

42. 42907 Update on the State of the Future, Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon, The Futurist, January/February 2006

In this article two leading futurists provide a wide range of trends and predictions on the future. Their environmental predictions are particularly frightening but they do point to increasing awareness of the problems and support for measures that favor sustainability.

43. 41738 Embracing Today’s Global Economy, John A. Challenger, USA Today, September 2005

One of the biggest issues today is globalization, which has its supporters and attackers. John Challenger is a defender who argues that a world of trading partners who depend on each other will be better than the world is today.

44. 41739 Understanding Our Moment in History, William Van Dusen Wishard, Vital Speeches of the Day, May 1, 2005

The author is a specialist in trend analysis and his research convinces him that the world is transiting between two ages. The world as we know it is coming to an end because of globalization, information technologies, urbanization, the explosion of knowledge and technologies, the quickening pace of change, and a long-term spiritual and psychological reorientation.