Assignment contemporary social issues essay

“The definition of a social problem, also called a social issue, is an undesirable condition that people believe should be corrected” (http://www.yourdictionary.com/social-problem).

Contemporary social issues that negatively impact local and global communities are numerous and may vary from country to country and community to community. Social issues often result from circumstances beyond a person’s control and unduly affect people who share the same traits such as economic status, religion, race, or geographic location.
These issues may include, but are not limited to Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Teen Pregnancy, Crime, Underage Drinking, Racism, Sexism, Pollution, Social Discrimination, Poverty, Gay marriage, Censorship, Human Trafficking, violence, abuse, and racism.

Objective: To critically analyze a social problem in modern society from a sociological perspective. In a

short paper students should carefully craft a discussion of one social problem of their choosing. The

social problem you analyze is of your choosing, but I would urge you to choose a problem/condition we

have not discussed in great detail during this course. This paper should be well-organized and address

the following:

1. Give a sense of the prevalence/magnitude of this social problem. How common is this social

problem and are there certain groups within society that are more greatly affected by it? Here

students should use a citation for a specific statistic regarding this social problem.

2. Use one of the theoretical perspectives that we’ve discussed in class to help analyze/explain the

existence of this problem (e.g. functionalist, conflict, feminist, or interactionist). Be sure to

clearly explain the basic ideas/tenants behind this perspective and why this perspective is useful

in helping us to understand the existence of the chosen social problem.

3. Discuss possible policy responses to address this problem. You do not need to solve the

problem, simply suggest areas of social life and society where we might start to address the root

causes and/or conditions that lead to or exacerbate the problem. Students should discuss at least

one existing policy that attempts to combat this problem. The policy may be current or a

previously existing policy. The policy may address this problem in any context that you choose

(e.g. governmental policy or institutional policy). The policy may address this social problem

federally across the whole United States, within a specific state, a specific town, a specific

institution (e.g. MSU), or within the context of another country. In addition to briefly describing

this policy, students should provide some discussion of how this policy attempts to address this

problem and a critique of how well this policy addresses the complexity of their social problem.

When discussing specific aspects of a policy, students should provide a citation of where they got

that information. The U.S. State Department is a good starting place to find information on

policies within the United States: http://www.state.gov/policy/

Related posts: