Social Work and Social Problems

SOCIAL WORK

SOCIAL WORK AND
SOCIAL PROBLEMS
DEFINING SOCIAL PROBLEM
SOWK 204
OBED ADONTENG-KISSI

DEFINITION OF SOCIAL PROBLEM, CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL PROBLEM, DEFINITION OF
PERSONAL PROBLEM, CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSONAL PROBLEM & THEORIES EXPLAINING SOCIAL
PROBLEMS

SOCIAL PROBLEM
Defining Social Problem
One mark of your skill as a Macro Social Worker would be your ability to understand why social problems exist critique the conventional understandings of social problems and developing your own working definitions of social problems. One place to begin is with the understanding of how social problems differ from personal problems.
Definition of Social Problems
Social problems have been defined in various ways, according to Lauer and Lauer (2002) a social problem ‘‘is a condition or pattern of behaviour that contradicts some other condition or pattern of behaviour and is defined as incompatible with the desired quality of life; is caused facilitated or prolonged by factors that operate at multiple levels of social life; involves intergroup conflict and requires social action to be resolved.’’
Sullivan and Thompson assert that a ‘‘social problem exist when influential group defines a social condition as threatening its values, conditions affects a large number of people, and it can be remedied by collective action.’’
This definition was echoed by Charles Zastrow, again Robert Merton and Robert
Nisbert two influential sociologists have defined social problems as ‘‘the substantial, unwanted discrepancies between what is in a society and what a functionally significant collectivity within that society seriously desires to be in it.’’
We can critique the conventional definition of social problem and develop a new definition that would encompass all the components of a social problem. Now the definition of social problem would be given as ‘‘a condition that is experienced collectively by an identifiable group or community of people, caused by a source external to them that harms their welfare in specific ways, and can only be resolved by the people themselves in partnership with the public and private sectors of society.’’

Characteristics/Components of Social Problems
Many sociologists tend to agree that social problems have the following characteristics and components.
1. The problem must have social causation rather than be an issue of individual behaviour. That is, to say, the cause of the problem must lie outside the individual and his/her immediate environment.
2. The problem must have social and collective solution rather than be an issue of individual solution.That is, to say, the solution of the problem must lie outside the individual and his/her immediate environment.
3. The problem must affect a large number of people.
4. It must be judged by influential number of people to be undesirable.
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Characteristics/Components of Personal Problems
1. Personal problem is one whose cause lies within the individual and the individual’s immediate environment.
2. Again, its solution lies within the individual and the individual’s immediate environment. The distinction between social and personal problems is not based on the individual’s experience of suffering because a certain amount of suffering occurs in either case (Lauer and
Lauer, 2002).
For example, in Ghana rural farmers experience a high level of poverty. If we viewed the problem as personal, we would blame the farmer for low production due to his personal inadequacies and the government would not feel obliged or the need to intervene and the problem would continue. If we define the problem as a social problem and state it is due in part to lack of crop diversification, poor rainfall and access to limited farm equipment, it would result in collective action taken by government. New crops irrigation schemes and equipment loaning would all be introduced.

Social Change
Social Change is the alteration of the basic social structures or social organisation. We would probably always look at the human condition from the perspective of problem orientation, but there may be a better way to approach how to achieve a better social world. One way is by looking at society from the perspective of ‘‘social change.’’Social change is a proactive approach rather than a reactive one. Instead of looking to the past to discover what went wrong, the social change approach looks ahead to see what is possible. Rather than weaknesses pathologies and problems, people are seen as having strengths, possibilities and solutions with which to build their own futures. Instead of assuming communities are arenas of neglect, crime, and poverty, community is perceived as full of resources, assets and strengths that can be used make better a society. The social change approach/model utilises this assets-based strength approach. AnnWeick and Dennis Saleeby assert that ‘‘to examine the strength and resiliencies ofpeople in their everyday lives signals, an important shift in our thinking.’’ When this happens, often with the help of a macro social worker, people begin to gain power. This power comes from a new way of thinking called ‘‘social thinking’’ in contrast to ‘‘rational problem solving thinking.’’Thinking socially begins when people apply their common experiences to mutual reflection, thinking through the issues that plague them, and then arrive at a strategy of action. People who felt helpless, separated and defeated begin to think anew and act anew.
They become new people and begin to conceive and construct the world out of those new perceptions of themselves and one another. What began as a problematic and even selfdefeating situation becomes transformed into an opportunity for re-birth and renewal. Macro

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Social Workers help mobilise people to utilise their assets so they can construct their communities and build their social reality in the way they conceive best.

Future Shock
Future shock is the term used to describe the trauma experienced by those who are having difficulty accepting the new roles, such as women/girls. Rapid changes like urbanisation can also cause a host of new and unexpected problems like increased crime, faulty shelter and overcrowding. Social Denial
Denial takes many forms. We refuse to acknowledge the existence of social problems. When we do admit their existence, we look at them as ‘‘personal’’ problems instead of
‘‘social’’problems. We also deny their existence by excluding problem people from our lives or by rationalising about our inaction.

The Objective& Subjective Elements in the Definition of Social Problems
A social condition maybe defined as a social problem in two ways:
(1) Objectively
(2) Subjectively
The objective definition recognises that a social problem exist as soon as a significant number of individuals are adversely affected by the phenomenon related to social factors, even if no one recognises it (Henshel, 1990). The objective element makes the condition a verifiable situation which can be checked as to the existence and magnitude by impartial observers. This idea was raised by Merton and Nisbert (1971) who made the distinction between a manifest social problem and latent social problem. Latent ones, though real are unnoticed and not defined as problematic. Merton and Nisbert assert that, social problems must be manifest to be objective. This distinction is particularly important one to make in the Africa where social conditions that have historically been perceived as normative are now being redefined as problematic in the context of modernisation. One major example is that of female genital circumcision, which is culturally normal tradition in several African societies but now being redefined as barbaric, dangerous and repressive act used to control the instincts of women.
In spite of its significant recognition of the social condition as a problem, the example also highlights a fundamental issue contained in the subjective definition of social problems.
The subject definition implies the awareness of certain individuals, not a significant number, that a social condition is a threat to certain cherished values. In the example, it is not the behaviour itself or the social condition that are inherently problematic, but the perception of
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the event (barbaric, dangerous and repressive) that define the problem. In this regard, one could say that the social problems are fundamentally products of a process of collective definition instead of existing independently as a set of objective social arrangements (Blumer, 1971). In other words, an individual or group often defines a social condition as problematic in terms of his or her own ideology and perceived self interest.
The church, the media, lobby groups and social workers, who may not necessarily be in the majority, may consider a social condition as problematic based on their own values and principles. Religious groups are the most obvious examples of those who proselytise about problem areas such as prostitution, homosexuality and drug taking. They therefore, will obviously promote legislations protecting what they consider to be threatening morality. Indeed the role of the media in defining what is and what is acceptable as a social problem, especially to government, cannot be ignored.
The process whereby social conditions become defined as a social problem then is complex and problematic in itself. The question that one must is: ‘‘to whom is the event a problem?’’ Although we might normally state a definition of crime, for example based on specific society’s legal code, this conceptualisation has been challenged by some sociologists
(Schwendinger and Schwendinger, 1970). Such a legalistic, state the definition of crime, they argue needs to be considered within a context of universal social justice, ethics, and public wrong and antisocial behaviour. Generally, in developing societies, one issue in re-defining and recognising social condition as social problems, is that this process is now likely to be carried out within an international human rights discourse and related policy documentation, declarations and covenants. However, governments of many African societies regard these developments with suspicion. The question most of them are asking is: ‘‘To whom is the condition problematic?’’ They argue that the very idea of individual human rights is
Eurocentric and maybe foreign to African societies where traditionally, economic, political, cultural and judicial rights were more likely to be held by communities and not by individuals.
Shiviji (1989) also maintains that the main human rights discourse in and on Africa, however well mentioned, has objectively been a part of the ideologies of domination. He emphasises that human rights need to be considered within the wider context of the struggles of the African people and the central human rights are the right to self-determination and the right to organise.
While considering some of the objective and subjective views inherent in defining social problems, a related issue is that of how social problems should be ranked in terms of their level of seriousness. In the ‘‘Gallup Poll Ratings’’, one sociologist compared the content of thirty-four social problems texts with public definition of social problems over a forty-year period. He found very little similarity between the two. Of the three issues that ranked highest on sociologists’ list (crime and delinquency, marriage and family, and population), two were identified at all in public opinion polls, and one (crime and delinquency) ranked seventh in terms of the frequency with which it was mentioned by the public (Laurer, 1976).
In ranking social problems on the African content, Rwomire (2001), asserts that social problems should be classified on the basis of their hypothesised influences. Primary problems

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as wars and discrimination are the most serious and can lead to secondary problems, which themselves can lead to tertiary problems.
War has been one of the most serious and severed social problems experienced in Africa during the past forty (40) years, although paradoxically, it can also be considered a part of the solution to some social problems. One immediate example of the consequence of war in Africa is the destructive capacity of landmines often indiscriminately used over large areas of land.
Their capacity to maim and kill arbitrarily long after the wars have ended leads to unacceptable levels of human suffering. The medical care, physical and social rehabilitation of these people is a challenge and a burden to their respective societies. The severe damage caused by landmines is reflected in the ration of amputees to the total population in countries such as
Angola (1:470) and Uganda (1:1,100).
Wars lead deaths, physical and mental injuries as well as waste of resources. Deaths lead to bereavement, widowhood and orphanhood. Physical and mental injuries lead to occupational handicaps, dependency and traumatic stress disorder. Waste of resources, on the other hand, in turn leads to shortage of consumer goods and increased cost of living. Part of the objective and subjective definition of any social problem, and a necessary pre-requisite for the analysis, interpretation and explanation of the problem is the nature and extent of that problem. What is the problem exactly? How do we measure it? How much of it actually exist?
To whom is it a problem? These can be difficult to answer. Individual and group efforts to provide answers to them are not devoid of their own value and principle assumption.

The Sociological Study of Social Problems
The conduct of human affairs is still outside science in many circles. (Millions of Americans, for example, turn to newspapers astrology for some guidance through their personal problems.
In 1977 two out of every three newspapers in the United States carried daily horoscopes. And even within the social sciences there is a constant and bitter controversy about the appropriate mode of thinking about, and gathering information on, social problems. But there is general agreement that sociological knowledge and understanding of social problems must involve two dimensions: The first of these is a systematic set of concepts; the second is that there must be a systematic pursuit of data of evidence about the real world, using these concepts. It is exactly which set of concepts and which data that is still the subjects of argument.
Nevertheless, there exist some major sets of concepts, or theories or theoretical perspectives. We shall discuss these briefly because some of them are widely accepted, some are partially accepted, and all are, at the least, interesting for the fifty (50) years. First, we shall discuss concepts from the view point of level of analysis. More simply, we shall see whether theories focus on the individual level of analysis, the cultural level of analysis, or the social structural level of analysis. Second, we shall discuss some perspectives that have been widely used in recent years for the study of social problems. These perspectives will reappear in particular discussions dealing with certain social problems. Some theories are very closely related to particular social problem, for example, individual male pathology may be related to
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the social problem of rape. Other perspectives are relevant in a broad way to a wide range of social problems, as for example, the American cultural preoccupation with discrimination is an important factor in the social problem of race. Culturally sanctioned discrimination is also important in understanding the social problems of city and country, poverty and affluence, and yet other problems. Third, we shall discuss some of the major sources of evidence used by social scientist in the study of social problems. Sociology also has some special difficulties in the analysis of social problems.

Levels of Analysis: Individual, Cultural and Structural Analysis
The very first thing that should be understood when we read the literature of sociology is that social scientist cannot search for‘‘the whole truth.’’It is important to accept the perhaps unwelcome notion that scientific and empirical verification must be limited to a very small piece of social reality. This self-limited sociological approach differs from the manner in which most people apprehend the social realities around them. Perhaps an example will make this clearer. Let us suppose that an average newspaper reader wishes to understand the problem of drug addiction. To help him, a newspaper journalist will write an article purporting to explain the problem. Typically (that is, a good article in a good newspaper, written by reputable and competent journalist), the scientific findings on drug addiction will be presented as a sort of zoo, offering a large collection of truths on a number of levels.
The discussion may dwell on body chemistry and about ‘‘neurotransmitters that are involved in feelings of well beings.’’ It may mention ‘‘genetic mechanisms’’and suggest that heredity may play a major role in predispositions to drug addiction. Quite possibly it will use the terms ‘‘learned behaviour,’’ ‘‘conditioning,’’‘‘personality deficiency,’’‘‘self-esteem,’’ and ‘‘ego defence.’’ Probably it will offer information about ‘‘drug subcultures,’’ ‘‘social deviance,’’ ‘‘maturing out of drug use,’’ ‘‘social deviance,’’ ‘‘maturing out of drug use,’’ and why the absence of job opportunities in urban minority ghettoes is an important source of
‘‘frustration.’’
For the average reader this collection of scientific ideas may offer some approximation to the whole truth, but he or she is still looking for the whole truth and is vaguely irritated by this collection of partial truths: Aren’t body chemistry and genes the most ‘‘basic’’ possible explanation of drug addiction? Why is it necessary for a group of psychiatrists and psychologists to study self esteem? Surely the whole truth is there somewhere in the basic genetic mechanisms. Surely the whole truth is there somewhere in the basic genetic mechanisms. Or if there is a drug subculture, why isn’t it possible just to change the subculture and end the problem of drug addiction?
A social scientist will look at the problem of drug addiction in quite a different way. He or she attempts to explain the problem in terms of several levels of analysis. He or she attempts to explain the problem in terms of several levels of analysis. Each level is a system of concepts,
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or a theory. (The relationship between the levels of analysis may also be built into a theory).
On the individual level, for instance, personality theory assumes (or takes for granted) the level of body chemistry and neurotransmitters and interest itself in the level of human functioning that involves personality development, where a biologist may dismiss study of personality as secondary, derivative, or even caused by physiology. The social psychologist might be interested in the group processes that influence perception. For him or her, body chemistry and personality are only remotely related to perception. The levels of analysis offered by biology and by personality theory are much less important.
The newcomer to the analysis of such a social problem as drug addiction may find this artificial separation of possible causes strange. It is artificial, and it is strange. Yet it is only through such discipline sorting out levels of analysis that meaningful theories can be developed and tested. Without the growth of hypotheses and theories it will not be possible to obtain valid and useful insights into the problems of drug addiction. Without insights public policy on drug addiction will be nothing more useful than a series of falters and stumbles.

The Individual Level of Analysis of Social Problems
As we deal with the individual level in this discussion, we will be concerned with biological and psychological theories. Such theories are particularly relevant to social problems that involve 1. Certain types of people. Good examples are the youth, the aged, women, blacks and
Hispanics. Theories relating to the individual are particularly useful when the social problems involve
2. Special types of behaviour. Good examples are homosexuality and drug abuse
There are important and useful biological and psychological theories about why women are different from men and why young people and old people are different from middle-aged people. Individual explanations are useful in understanding why blacks are different from whites. In general, there are three basic grounds for the importance of the level of analysis:

(a) Question about the functioning of individuals are well within the interests of sociologists working with social problems. Certain family patterns greatly affect individual development and ‘‘difficult’’ behaviour of adulthood. A significant example is the impact of an absent father on young male children. Lack of a father is supposed to produce certain personality effects. These effects (or processes) in turn are supposed to produce certain social problems. Theories about the effect of an absent father are particularly relevant in some controversial theories that try to account for racial differences. Theories about the dominance of the mother in the home are invoked to explain homosexuality. Sociologists analyse at the level of the individual in order to clarify certain social patterns.
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(b) The individual level of explanation (changed only slightly to accommodate large groups of people rather than a single person) is a favourite ‘‘man in the street’’approach to the‘‘true’’ explanation for many social problems. It is important for the beginner in sociology to be able to place this particular approach in its sociological context.

(c) The individual level of analysis is important in official views of what sociologists consider to be malfunctioning institutions. Usually the man in the street distrusts cultural explanations; he is even more likely to reject structural explanations; Excusing and explaining institutional malfunctions are nearly always done on individual level.
Thus the institutional failures so obvious in our society (the school dropout, the criminal who returns to prison again and again; and uncured mental patient) are usually explained by ordinary citizens in terms of individual problems: The child is not motivated to learn; the recidivist cannot learn to control himself; mental patients do not try hard enough to cure themselves. Just why this tendency to individual analysis is so strong is a special worry for sociologist who are concerned about the lack of change in institutions and is of particular importance during the last stage in the career of social problem, i.e. ‘‘institutional criticism’’

The tendency to search for individual level explanation both inside and outside institutions in included in an important new concept. A community psychologist, William Ryan, has worked out the process in detail and somewhat sarcastically describes what amounts to a victim-blaming process:

First, identify a social problem. Second, study those affected by the problem and discover in what ways they are different from the rest of usas a consequence of deprivation and injustice. Third, define the differences as the cause of the social problem itself. Finally, of course, assign a government bureaucrat to invent humanitarian action programme to correct the differences. Blaming the victim depends on a process of identification whereby the victim of social problems is identified as strange, different, in other words as a barbarian, a savage. This is how the distressed and disinherited are redefined in order to make it possible for us to look at society’s problems and to attribute their causation to the individuals affected.
In other words Ryan is really arguing for a structural analysis (which will be discussed below). He argues further that to mix levels of analysis (explaining the strains and failures of institutions in terms of the characteristics of individuals) is bad social science. Worse yet, mixing levels are convenient and satisfying to bureaucrats inside a malfunctioning institution because it legitimates the way things are and thus deters social change.

The Cultural level of Analysis of Social Problems
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A number of social scientist have tried to describe American culture as a whole; in particular these analyst are interested in recent changes in our basic values and ‘‘designs for living.’’ An overall description is, however, a difficult task because American culture changes constantly.
A great many variations of American culture appear in different, regions, classes and ethnic groups, these are ‘‘subcultures.’’The norms and values of an upper-middle class black physician in a large southern city probably encompass at least three sets of sub-cultural norms and values that differ from ‘‘basic normal American culture,’’ that is, class, racial and occupational sub-cultures. We are interested in cultural analysis because this is a popular and often useful explanation for the deviations from what seems to be the norm that are in turn factors in social problems.
As far as American core culture is concerned, there are some interesting speculations, despite all the difficulties. Some of the best are those done by Francis L. K. Hsu, a Chineseborn anthropologist, and Robin Williams, an important sociologist. Hsu identifies one critical core value in American culture. This is self-reliance. According to Hsu, all other important values spring from this single ideal. Because it is really unattainable in a societal context, it breeds hostility to persons who are dependent and worse yet, a deep sense of insecurity. This insecurity appears in American competitiveness, conformity, ‘‘social climbing,’’ and submission to what Hsu calls the ‘‘tyranny of organisation.’’Four sets of contradictory themes are linked with self-reliance:

1. Christian love and its contradiction, religious bigotry;
2. Science, progress and humanitarianism and their contradictions, parochialism, group superiority and racism;
3. Puritan ethics and its contradiction, an increasing laxity in sexual mores;
4. Ideals of equality and freedom and their contradictions, totalitarian tendencies and
‘‘witch hunting.’’
Williams’ core values of American culture are remarkably similar. He lists fifteen of them: activity and work, achievement and success, a moral orientation, humanitarianism, efficiency and practicality, secular and rationality and science, material conformity, nationalism and patriotism, individual personality, racism and group superiority. Both Hsu and Williams tried hard to select persistent themes that distinguish American culture from other cultures, even though some like nationalism, patriotism and group superiority may seem common to all cultures. It is only fair to say that other distinguished scholars have discovered different culture traits. In some areas the core culture maybe important in generating and sustaining social problems.
This is true for the nationalism and group superiority themes noticed by Williams. It is also true that contradictions noticed by Hsu and Williams are considered by some theorists as the ultimate source of social problems. A much more controversial view is that certain specific problems, notably drug dependency and violence are deeply rooted in some features of
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American culture. The basic difficulty in blaming social problems on core values should be obvious. Such argument quickly becomes a kind of sermon or circular explanation: If
Americans were better people, we should have less vice; if we were not so racist then then there should be less racism.
In this discussion, the cultural explanations will appear in two ways:
1. when there are important changes in the definitions of social categories or types of events over the years and
2. When the subculture of certain groups is directly implicated as a cause of certain problems. The changes in cultural definitions will be particularly significant. Just as our natural history or career, approach to social problems assumes a change over time.Thus the ways in which women, the aged, children, urban life, minorities and the poor are defined have changed dramatically in our own generation and even more during the past hundred (100) years. And as we develop the idea of social problems, we shall see the changing definitions are also very important. Some social problems simply did not exist in earlier ages.
Cultural explanations are also used in this discussion when subcultures are implicated as a cause of social problems. Many of the more peripheral or ‘‘outside the mainstream’’ groups in American society might be seen as a problem in themselves. These subcultures may include adolescents, the aged, the poor and minorities. If they tend to develop an antagonistic subculture, this may in turn cause problems. (According to one theorist, many groups of teenagers have their own subcultures, which cause friction with the larger society). We shall be careful about identifying such groups here because American institutions are likely to label sub-cultural groups on the basis of the real or alleged sub-cultural trait even if such traits do not exist. (White policemen, for example are extremely likely to tag black teenagers with certain sub-cultural characteristics, right or wrong).
Finally, sub-cultures evolve among the personnel of an institution. School teachers, police and public welfare employees may develop sub-cultures that allow them and their institutions to perform in a manner that aggravates the social problem that the institution is supposed to solve. (If school teachers serving black ghetto children assume that none of their pupils wants to learn, then the resultant lack of interest and bad teaching increase the educational failure of black ghetto children). Thus in order to understand institutional failures to solve certain problems, we must understand the values and norms of institutional occupational groups.

The Structural Level of Analysis of Social Problems
The approach is concerned with social relationship and the social structure inside which people must live. Sometimes structural theories are almost exclusively concerned with the larger social system. Thus the Marxist perspective (which emphasises social relations in the work place) is
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basically interested in the ownership of the means of production; for ultimately, according to
Marxist view, the capitalist mode of production greatly affects the lives of workers. Many other theorist also emphasise the large social system.
Social thinkers, both before and after Karl Marx have looked for explanation of social problems in the differing economic, political and social power of various segments of
American (and European) society. Unfortunately, the word ‘‘Marxist’’ is a label that evokes violent partisanship and in controversy it is too easy to dismiss the structural approach to analysis merely in social problems. (On the other side, some Marxists are all too ready to dismiss trivial or derivative any factors except those relating to the economy). Prejudices do not belong in a discipline sociological approach to a set of vexing social problems; to disregard such factors as class and power and the economic life chances of the individuals is to discard one of the major traditions of sociological analysis. The Marxist perspective is a thread in the tradition. In the analysis of social problems, the structural mode is useful in four ways:
1. It is useful in understanding problems based on the inability of certain types of people to gain certain resources: political power, economic advantages, and a group of pleasant benefits that increase self esteem, prestige, deference, being taken seriously. Critical in the acquisition of such resources are the social determinants of age, sex, socioeconomic status and race.
2. Structural analysis helps us to understand some of the social problems of alcohol, drug abuse, crime, juvenile delinquency as well as some less conventional behaviours generally defined as ‘‘sex problems.’’
3. Structural analysis is absolutely critical in understanding the functioning (and malfunctioning) of institutions designed to solve social problems.
4. The structural level of analysis is useful in understanding the behaviour of small groups.

It is the source of one of the most famous theories explaining certain types of deviance. In developing this theory, Robert K. Merton argues that, the source of deviance is the disparity between a person’s goals held out to him or her society, history and his or her means of achieving those goals. This neatly explains why lower class boys become delinquent. They have given up identification with the conventional means to success. It can also be used to explain the frustrating ritualism of bureaucrats and their lack of responsiveness to their clients.
The bureaucrats, Merton suggest, have given up identification with the goals of their activity.
Through goal displacement they become preoccupied with the means. (As an example, a welfare agency will be concerned more with the prompt mailing of checks for the proper amount than with the welfare of the clients. Yet the welfare of the clients is the only reason for mailing the checks in the first place). ‘‘Goal displacement’’ is Merton’s phrase for this behaviour. It is an important idea. In the real world of people and actions the levels of analysis that we have just examined are useful because they bring some sort of order into the overwhelming complexity of real life. Approaching almost any social problem, we see that individual, cultural and structural ideas are in full interaction. Biology influences personality,
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but not entirely. Thus studies of the chromosomal makeup of violent criminals (in person) indicate that, although many of them have an extra male chromosome (XYY) chromosome pattern rather than the normal XY), such a trait should be taken as a sort of disposition which might lead to criminal behaviour under certain conditions. (It also might lead to aggressive leadership in politics or to business success.
We shall never know because aggressive politicians and business leaders are usually not tested for peculiar chromosome makeup.) Similarly, we know that social structure influences the development of subcultures, but it certainly does not entirely determine the shape of a subculture. Studies of adolescents in high school suggest that they tend to be ‘‘culturally isolated.’’ This means that, they really have little to do with adult values and thus develop their own adolescent subculture, which in turn permits (but does not necessarily cause) certain kinds of deviant behaviour. The distinctions among three levels analysis do not cause one level to be truer than another, for levels of analysis are only tools of the trade and intellectual conveniences, even if essential to the discipline of sociology.

Perspectives/Theories for the Analysis of Social Problems
There are several ideas/perspectives that are so important in modern analysis of social problems that they would be referred to throughout this course.

1. The Social Disorganisation and Social Pathology
2. The Labelling Perspective
3. Conflict and Neo- Conservative Perspective
4. Intergroup Conflict Model
5. Functionalist Perspective
6. Symbolic Interactionist Perspective
7. Individualist Model
8. Parent/Family Structures Model
9. Neighbourhood Structures Model
10. Systems Deviance Model
11. Institutional Deviance Model
12. Social Cultural Premises Model

The Social Disorganisation and Social Pathology
This is an approach that grew out naturally out of the early origins of sociology itself. Social reform was the original objective of the famous English reform Economist Jeremy Bentham.
In the United States similar reformist and policy oriented social surveys began with Paul
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Kellogg’s Pittsburgh Survey (1909 to 1914). The same interest in reform motivated the famous
Chicago school of the 1910 and 1920s. The Chicago researchers worked in fast growing
American cities with immigrants, slums, crime, machine politics and other early urban problems and basically, they strove to get accurate information about social condition that they wish to improve. Sociologists were gathering data on the mentally ill, slum dwellers, youth gangs and criminals. Many of the people studied in the 1920s were either newcomers to the city from rural areas or newcomers to the United States. The move to a large city was a critical step in their lives consequently; it was easy to see their problems and those of their children as the breakup of moral values and the ‘disorganisation’ of life created by a novel and stressful environment. The resulting disorganisation theories were built on two dislocations: the move to the city and the clash of immigrants with their drifting children. But later research showed that both kinds of dislocations were historically unique. Unfortunately, few of the theories had enough historic perspective to see that a different city-country relationship and a different conter of immigration to American cities would produce different patterns. We discuss this at length in our analysis of theories of urbanism in Chapter 7.
The second difficulty with the disorganisation approach is the bias in the very word itself. It is a word that implies that there are normal state_ a counte state of organisation, or integration.
The concept of social pathology carries an even stronger bias, assuming as it does that some other part of society normal. The Sociologist C. Wright Mills stirred a great deal of anger among social-problems writers when he argued in 1942 that the social-disorganisation phraseology reflected the moralistic, small-town, Christian background of many sociologists of the time. Mills suggested that anything not resembling the small-town Christian America of the 1920s would be labelled as pathological and disorganised, and it is certainly true that the social-problems textbooks before World War two made no bones about their view of deviants as bad people. More recent criticisms of these two perspectives have indicated some of the inevitable logical traps that appear in the ideas of morality and of slowing down societal change. In general these approaches of disorganisation and pathology are so biased that, though some modern sociologists may continue to work within this tradition, we will not refer to them in this book.

Conflict and Neo- Conservative Perspective
Within the past few years a number of social scientists have abandoned the idea that it is possible to conduct ‘value-free,’ or neutral, study of social problems. Older scientists studying social pathology were strongly moralistic, as they attempted to be free of values and neutral.
The new approach suggests that, since theorising cannot possibly be free of value implications, it should have implications.

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Among the neoconservatives who make their values clear, the most proponent representative is Edward Banfield. His book of 1970, The Unheavenlycreated a storm of controversy. Two other important theorists, Nathan Gl and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (now a United State
Senator), have joined Edward Banfieldargues in the main that for the overwhelming majority of Americans this is the best time in history. Even the poor are relatively well off and have no really serious problems. Yet the lower class creates a lot of problems for the rest of the
American society: crime, drug abuse, and such. Banfield claims that they attract sufficient attention to convince themselves and the rest of society that they are blameless. He asserts that some of their difficulties are inherited or genetic; some are as a result of their radically different attitude toward life, or lack of thought for the future and intense interest in daily gratification.
The solution therefore is to leave the social system alone and to keep the trouble makers from troubling the rest of us. So these conservation theorists tend to draw on individual (biological and psychological) and cultural levels of explanation for social problems.
The so-called radical theorists are far more diverse. In fact they have only one thing in common: they are all sharply opposed to the conservation theorists. All radicals believe that the plight of the lower classes is real and that they are not themselves to be blamed.
Among the radical theorists are the conflict sociologists, who believe that conflict between classes is the most important social process associated with social problems. The
Marxist version sees the exploitation of labor, upon which capitalism depends, as the prime mover in social conflict. Because wage labor is never fully rewarded, labor and capital are always in opposition. Most efforts to control or contain problems (institutions, for example) are at the bottom efforts to contain class conflict. Thus the control mechanisms are
‘illegitimate.’
The Marxist theoereticians depreciate reform or small-scale social programs, seeing them as Band-Aids_ as just more temporary support for the status quo. But it shouldalways be remembered in reading the Marxists that conflict theory is a critique of many obviously unworkable social relationships. However, no current Marxist system is envisaged as a model for the United States. As one writer puts it, ‘We do not believe that socialism now exit in any country in the world. Socialism means ownership and control of the means of production, democratically by the people, rather than by a government bureaucracy.’

Radical theory and conservation theory seem alarmingly drastic. Banfield advocates eliminating the minimum-wage law, reducing the school-leaving age to 14, and encouraging the ‘incompetent poor’ (that is, the lower class) ‘to reside in an institution or semi-institution (for example, a closely supervised public housing project).’ Marxists call for revolution. But both the radicals and the conservatives can feel the temper of modern America. Thus Banfield admits that his ‘recommendations are acceptable,’ and the prominent Marxists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis say that ‘the preparatory

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phase of revolutionary movement involves working in, and through existing capitalist institutions. We cannot sit around and wait for a political catalysm.

Intergroup Conflict Model
The framers of the American constitution were afraid of centralising all political power in one office. Therefore, tralising all political power among three branches and, within those branches, divided government between local, regional, state and national levels. By fragmenting power over a broad spectrum of society, the framers ensured that interest groups would compete among themselves; government would play the role mediator to keep power in check, and at the same time guarantee that everyone would at least have a ‘piece of the pie’. As a result, many powerful organisations and interest groups find access to power at one or another level of government. They press for policy concessions and preferential treatment by which their interests can find a sympathetic voice. This theory of government is called interest-group liberalism. Modern industrialised society has now become so large, Ralf Dahrndorf asserts, that while interest groups continue to manipulate government for preferential treatment, many now carry out economic, political, educational and other important institutionalised activities themselves.
These socially accepted ‘megastructures’ then direct and control the activities of other organised group0s and ‘establish important power differences within and among particular organisations. Since the interests of different authority positions of the organisations in which they are embedded do not normally coincide, established societal authority relations create the bases for conflicts among groups occupying different levels within the overall hierarchy. They also create the bases for a variety of social problems, as policies enacted to further the interests of some…create effects that work against the interest of others.
When one or another of these organisations achieve power at the expense of another group ‘the powerful seize as much of societal resources for themselves as they can, and in the process, exploit the less powerful and create social problems such as poverty, discrimination, and oppression. Henslin states ‘as the exploited react to their oppression, still other problems emerge such as crime, escapist drug abuse, and various forms of violence such as riots and suicide.’ According to Henslin, ‘conflict theorists view the social policies that benefit the less privileged as concessions from the powerful… they also see them as actions designed to keep the privileged in their positions of power.’At the intergroup level, therefore, ‘social problems occur when powerful groups exploit the less powerful and as the less powerful resist, rebel, or appeal to higher values of justice.’
Macro social workers have made extensive use of the intergroup conflict model. Many community developers and community organisers, for example, see in their daily experience how communities and neighbourhoods, especially communities of the poor, lack power and are exploited or ignored by the large megastructures of society. One of the goals of these macro
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social workers is to help communities of people regain control and assert their interests. But macro social workers do not simply attempt to play the game of interest-group politics in a more assertive or shrewder way than corporate or governmental organisations.
Many macro social workers realise that game of interest-group politics is itself the probkem, and to play it better will only further polarise people and entrench power conflicts for limited stakes. A better way is to reconceptualise power and politics. Rather than engage corporate or governmental interests as enemies or competitors in the game of power grabbing, community organisers and community developers invite them as partners in building a better society. Instead of accepting the idea that power and wealth are scarce and limited commodities over which people must conflict, bargain, and strategise, macro social workers understand that political power and economic prosperity are goods that everyone can share, and that once shared they increase in various ways that can contribute to each other’s benefit. In this way not only are the social problems that arise from intergroup conflict dispelled, but various interest groups are transformed into positive assets that can cooperatively work for the good of society as a whole.
Underlying this conciliatory and more positive approach, however, is always the implied if not explicit understanding that communities of people will not let government or corporate ‘leaders’ escape their responsibility. Linthicum asserts that one of the most important tasks ‘is for people to hold the government, business, educational and social institutions responsible to do what the law requires them to do.’ By means of community organisations, macro social workers assist people not only to assert their claims for justice and fair treatment in the market place and in the court of public opinion, but in direct action if corporate or government interests fail to uphold their end of the bargain.

Functionalist Perspective
The Functionalist perspective is largely based on the works of Herbert Spencer, Emile
Durkheim, Talcott Persons, and Robert Merton. According to this perspective, society is a system of connected parts that work together in harmony to maintain a state of stability for the whole. For instance, of the social institutions contributes important functions for society The functionalists emphasize the interconnectedness of society by focusing on how each part influences and is influenced by other parts.They use the term functional and dysfunctional to describe the effects of social elements on society.Elements of society are functionalif they contributeto social stability and dysfunctional if they disrupt social stability.Some aspects of society may be both functional and dysfunctional for society.For example,crime is dysfunctional in that it is associated with physical violence,loss of property and fear.But,according toDurkeimand other functionalists,crime is also functional for society because it leads to heightened awareness of shared moral bonds and increased social cohesion.
Two dominant theories of social problems grew out of this perspective:social pathology and social disorganization.

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The social pathology model views social problems as a result of some sickness in society. Just as the human body becomes ill when our systems do not function normally, society also becomes ill when its parts no longer perform properly.Social illness also occurs whenmembers of a society are not adequately socialized to adopt its norms and values.
According to the social organization view of social problems,rapid social change disrupts the norms in a society. When norms become weak or are in conflict which each other, society is in a state of anomie or normlessness. Hence people may steal or engage in other deviant behaviour because the norms regarding these behaviours are weakor conflicting.
According to this view, the solution of social problems lies in slowing the pace of social change and strengthening social norms.
Critics of functionalism argue that they are unable to deal effectively with conflict.They stress
Symbolic Interactionist Perspective
Symbolic interactionism reflects the micro sociological perspective and was largely influenced by the work of early sociologists and philosophers such as Max Weber, George Simmel,
Charles Harton, G. H. Mead and W. I Thomas. Symbolic interactionism emphasises that human behaviour is influenced by definitions and meanings that are created and maintained through symbolic interaction with others. They emphasise the importance of definitions and meanings in social behaviour and their consequences. They suggest that humans respond to their definition (meaning) of a situation rather than to the objective (real) situation itself. Symbolic interactionist perspective have been criticised for downplaying or ignoring large scale social structure and not being sufficiently microscopic since they ignore the effects of emotions.
The Labelling Perspective
The Labelling perspective is most useful in studying deviant and specifically ill behaviour. It was observed that, once a person is labelled as a criminal, his options for behaviour are markedly reduced. In fact this person is channelled into deviant behaviour that might not have occurred if the original behaviour had not been discovered and labelled. For social problems the labelling perspective allows to examine just how a condition comes to be identified as a social problem. Thus John Kitsuse and Malcolm Spector argue that social problems are ‘the activities of groups making assertions of grievance and claims in respect to some punitive conditions. So this perspective is also important in studying the career of social problems.
Individualist Model
One of the most cherished ideals of American ideology is self-interested individualism.
Individualism is one reason for the creativity of Americans, their energy and their prosperity.
On the other hand, individualism is sometimes seen as a cause of social problems that exit in
America. Perhaps the most prevalent way of thinking about social problems begins with the idea that certain individuals fail to take advantage of the opportunities that society makes available. People who disobey the law or enter a life of dependency are said to interfere with the normal workings of society and restricts its progress.
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Some among the financially secured or politically powerful like to suggest that it is the fault of the poor that they are poor. They may assert that the poor are lazy, undisciplined, and lack personal initiative. This moral deviance or personal-blame approach assumes that the poor, the marginal and the criminal are inferior, inadequate or destructive people. Those holding to this view assert that people whose lives display social problems not only have dysfunctional behaviour but they also are fundamentally different in character from those in the middle or upper economic tiers of society.
Some people may be genetically prone to personal dysfunction. At least 4% of the population, for example are born with developmental or intellectual disabilities that restricts their ability to live independently in today’s highly technological society. There also seem to be genetic linkages to drug and alcohol abuse and mental disoders such as bipolar psychosis, depression, and schizophrenia. Some people may be genetically less able to succeed in modern society.
Judith Harris asserts that “some people are born with the characteristics that make them poor fits for most of the honest jobs available in most societies, and so far we have not learnt how to deal with them. We are at risk of becoming their victims but they are victims too- victims of the evolutionary history of our species.”
Furthermore, many people who are socialised to rely on face-to-face personal relationships may be unable to succeed in impersonal, functional, technological organisations that require individuals to perform specialised tasks in a highly competitive atmosphere. They may find themselves increasingly on the margins of a world in which opportunities for social communal relationships are reduced.
Many who are unfit or unable to adapt become the pathology of a healthy society. These people are not just incapable of contributing to the welfare of society; they become the causes of social illness. According to Soroka and Bryjak, “just as individual humans can be infected and made ill by viruses from outside their bodies, pathological humans act like viruses infecting societies and making it sick. In the same way as medical professionals are needed to treat illness to protect the body, the social pathology assumption requires social professionals to diagnose and apply remediation, education, rehabilitation, or in more serious cases, to surgically remove offending pathological elements by institutionalisation, incarceration, or even execution.
The social pathology or medical model of social deviance fits into the individualist model. The individualist paradigm tends to maintain loyalties to what people believe are important social values. Those whodeviancy exact conformity to norms they consider desirable. These social leaders assume individuals who tend to evade personal responsibility for their actions; therefore, they advocate that deviant individuals need to be singled out and held personally accountable for their action along with everyone else. They assert that professionals do a disservice not only to the individual but to the society as a whole if they offer excuses for someone who deviates from the norm.blaming society, these leaders would maintain, only begs the real question of maintaining individual responsibility. Instead of excusing deviants for their irresponsible choices, they say, the helping professions have an obligation to shape the behaviour of these defective individuals so that they conform to society’s norms.

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The solution for helping people with social problems manifested by individual behavioural difficulties does not lie in providing professional therapy to a handful of people. Except in the most serious situations, a more effective strategy is for social workers to develop the community into a therapeutic network of friends who can generate the power and resources by helping one another to change their situation. Skilled social work clinicians could use their skills to train, support and provide consultation to community members to assist one another so that they receive the support, guidance and advise they need. Instead of creating dependency on a therapist, the social worker would empower the natural social nteworks already in place to which most people turn in times of trouble and crisis. Social work will have returned to its true legacy of social service, helping people help themselves.

Parent/Family Structures Model
One of the most common taken-for-granted assumptions in psychology and social work is that a child’s personality is shaped by the child’s parents. When parents are unable to provide positive parenting, where families become dysfunctional, or in more serious cases where child neglect, physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence or alcohol and drug abuse occurs, we can expect social problems to occur. For example, it has been estimated that a child reared by an alcoholic parent has a 40% chance of becoming alcoholic. A large percentage of spousal abusers were themselves raised in a home where domestic violence occurred. Many people who end up in prison were abused as children. William Julius Wilson asserts that the causes of poverty among black families are the absence of black males who can serve not only as providers but also role models and provide stability to the family.
The parent/family blame approach is the one of the most fundamental assumptions in the field of social work. Almost every social worker is trained to think that the way to break the pernicious cycles of abuse, poverty and domestic violence is to help families become healthy by education in communication and parenting skills; providing social and financial support to families; providing family counselling when families display dysfunctional behaviours; or in extreme cases of domestic violence or child abuse, protecting children by removing them from the home and placing them in healthier family environments. Most social workers continue to accept the most prized conventional wisdom in psychology reaching back to Sigmund Freud, that parental nurture is the root of the self and the dysfunctional family systems are the causes of personal and social dysfunction.
According to developmental psychologist Judith Rich Harris, ‘Both the therapist and the patient are participants in a culture that has, as one of its cherished myths, the belief that parents have power to turn their children into happy and successful adults or to mess up their lives very badly. The belief is that if anything goes wrong, it must be the parents’ fault.’ In spite of the conventional wisdom that our personalities, character, and behaviours are moulded by our parents and families, Harris maintains that in most homes there is ‘no relationship between the goodness of the home and the goodness of the offspring. In the formation of an adult, genes matter and peers matter.’ She states, ‘the assumption that parents have permanent
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effects on children’s behaviour is wrong. The only parents who do have distinctive effects are the super bad ones who abuse their kids so severely they wind up in the hospital.’
Of course parents do matter. It is mandatory that children receive nurture, attention and love from parents for survival. These earlier relationships are essential not just for normal social development but for normal brain development. But as children, even very young children begin to interact with other children; they begin to identify with one another. This social engagement is the universal capacity and necessity of people to take on roles. Role taking is our ability to place ourselves in the position of others and to act accordingly. We imaginatively construct the attitudes of the other, and thus anticipate the behaviour of the other. The capacity of people to take on social roles is the means, by which people become social, become engaged in constructing the self and, in large measure it provides them with their ability to become human. Harris reports that the ability of every young child to assume different roles already occurs in older infants, infants of walking age, and as soon as the child meets other children, the social process of trying on different roles, identifications, attitudes, self-perceptions expands. According to Lauer and Boardman, role taking includes an increasingly wider range of a child’s behaviour, and differentiates the roles that he or she plays in various situations and contexts. Depending on the extent of role involvement with others, even a very young child generates many opinions for alterations in his or her selfhood, and this occurs ‘even when the roles are known to be temporary.’ Whenever we appropriate the attitudes of the other, we modify our ‘self’.’ Similarly when we disengage from a role, we also alter the ‘self’.
Engagement or disengagement can be easy or difficult, exciting or challenging to the individual self-conception, but the process allows the individual to continually change and modify the self. The self is never static. It is always in the process of change.
The self that a person carries around in adult life is derived, then, from genetic makeup and the person’s ability of the person to choose from a variety of self-roles to which the person is exposed, beginning with parents or family, but at a very early age expanding beyond the family. As soon as children begin to become social creatures, they no longer identify with parents; they identify with other children_ others like themselves, Harris states. According to
Harris, it is a mistake to think of children as empty vessels, passively accepting whatever the adult in their lives decides to fill them up with… children are not incompetent members of the adult’s society; they are competent members of their own society, which has its own standards and its own culture.
In fact, says Harris, ‘no matter how bad their home environment might be, children will turn into adults if the following conditions are met: They do not inherit any pathological characteristics from their parents…their brains are not damaged by neglect or abuse, and they have normal relationship with their peers. Locating the origin of social problems in the psychological health of the family and the ability of the parents to provide the child with adequate modelling is incorrect. Children do not passively and indiscriminately incorporate both healthy and dysfunctional components of parental and family systems into their psyche and are then fated to unconsciously carry those characteristics in their behaviour for the rest of
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their life. The self is a responsible self, choosing the kind of person he or she will become by means of the quality of the people in his or her social environment. A child’s parents and family are not the creator or the cause of social problems, nor are they, except in the most extreme cases, then cause of individual dysfunction.
If we try to cure social problems by focusing on the parents or changing dysfunctional family patterns, therefore, we will be looking at the wrong place. Individual and family psychotherapy are very useful in their own domain_ for improving personal relationships. Assisting marriages and families that are on the verge of breakdown is an extremely social work service, without which many people’s lives would be in disarray and children will experience psychological trauma. However, ‘to this extent, these reforms prescribe individualistic remedies for collective grievances’. They overlook the general deterioration of social life and are in keeping with
American Social denial.

Neighbourhood Structures Model
An alternate conception of the causes of social problems asserts that if otherwise good people are exposed to bad influences in their social environment, they may not be prone to adopt the norms of their peers. The ideas that bad neighbourhoods are the causes of social problems are called differential association. Differential association theory was developed by symbolic interaction sociologist Edwin Sutherland, who stressed that criminal behaviour is learned by interacting with others. If people associate with people who break the law, they are more likely to learn to break the law than those who associate with people who do not break the law. Marvin
Wolfgang in his ‘subculture theory’ concluded that supports certain behaviours will have a high chance of emulating those same behaviours. Judith Harris cites a study of over four thousand adopted children in Denmark that shows that the only increase in criminality among
Danish adoptees whose biological parents were criminals was among those who were raised in and around Copenhagen. In small towns and rural areas, an adoptee reared in a criminal home was no more likely to become a criminal than one reared by honest adoptive parents. According to Harris, it was not criminal adoptive parents who made the biological offspring of criminals into a criminal; it was the neighbourhood in which the child was reared.
Furthermore, Harris asserts, group socialisation theory makes this prediction; that children would develop into the same sort of adults if we switched all parents around, but left the children’s lives outside the home unchanged_ left them in their schools and their neighbourhoods. These conclusions are supported by Hartshorne and May, who found, for example, the normal unit for character education is the group or small community. Harris states that the group the natural environment of the child. Children identify with a group of others like themselves and take on the norms of the group, and although it may look as though parents are conveyers of the culture, Harris says they are not: the peer group is. It is the same conclusion that social worker Samuel Slavson arrived at decades ago in his book character Education in a Democracy, and it is the presumption on which social group work was established as a field.
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The implications of the work of Harris, Sutherland, Wolfgang, and Hartshorneand May are vastly important in several ways for macro and micro social workers in trying to deal with social problems. Children’s and adolescents’ peer groups in their neighbourhoods, and the social group work agencies, church youth groups and organisations such as scouts and boys and girls clubs are the most important arenas of human social maturation and character building. They provide the means by which children discover how to relate to others, incorporate norms and rules of society, and in general form themselves into mature human beings. It is the relationships that children find in their own communities and neighbourhoods by which the self is born, and by which people grow into healthy social beings.
Neighbourhoods and social groups are the essential building blocks of the human condition.
If we want to improve children’s behaviour, we should focus on improving the child’s social environment_ his or her peer group and neighbourhood. If we want to develop a child’s character, the best way to do so is by means of character building peer groups such as scouts, congregational youth groups, and group social service agencies such as YMCA. If social work is to make any real impact on social problems such as drug abuse, violence, crime, poverty, or ethnic intolerance, the place to begin is to help people work together to make their communities better places to live.
Macro social workers make extensive use of community planning by which neighbours talk about and devise ways to make communities better places to live.They assist local groups of people to develop neighbourhood social service programs such as group-work services to improve the quality of social relationships among children and teenagers. They help community members build community development corporations to improve the social and economic capacities of their neighbourhoods. They assist neighbours to join together into community organisations to create sufficient power to pressure government, business and values-creating organisations to address issues such as affordable housing, crime, drugs, toxic waste dumps, suburban sprawl, quality of education, public transportation, tax inequalities and many others.

Systems Deviance Model
One of the more popular theories that social workers use is the systems model. The systems perspective is based on a theory of society borrowed from the physical sciences in which society is assumed to be composed of a series of systems and subsystems that work together like a gigantic machine. Each of these systems structures and functions need to be congruent with one another. These systems operate on laws of physical science such as inertia, feedback, entropy, and homeostasis. Inertia means that once a system is set in motion it tends to keep going in the same direction. Entropy means that every system is prone to eventually wear out or breakdown.
Social ecology is systems theory derived from biology to describe how people interact in the social environment. In addition to been subject to the laws of physics, biological systems experience growth, adaptation and interaction with their environment. Homeostasis for
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example suggests that most living systems seek a balance to maintain and preserve the system.
Systems and ecology concepts are useful because they are intended to give us a method of conceptualising a great deal of complexity.
Social or ecological systems theorists assume that while society is generally good and healthy, it sometimes develops defects, such as when a system experiences entropy or when one component gets out of sync with other systems components and the homeostatic balance is disturbed. Systems theorists tell us that social problems are malfunctions that occur in one its part of the total system as society adjusts to growth and to the changing conditions in its environment. Social problems are to some extent inevitable, but they are also correctable. They are warning signs that tell us where we need to focus our efforts in making society work better.
Social workers want to create social systems that are functional, effective and efficient in carrying out their tasks. If system entropy occurs, macro social workers look for system dysfunction the input system, the processing system, or system outputs. Often, the feedback loops break down, or the automatically self-regulating devises in systems cannot respond quickly enough to change. For example, one of the causes of the Great Depression was the belief that it was not the function of the government to regulate the economy. When the economy went to tailspin, government had few tools at its disposal to diagnose and prevent market failure. Since then, the government had changed its philosophy. It continually monitors many economic indicators and regularly adjusts interest rates, tax rates and money supply to adjust for inflation.
As society progresses, however, it may simultaneously create the conditions of breakdown, the unintended consequences of social decisions. For example, because of improvements in technology, people’s job skills became outmoded. This puts pressure on society to continually provide the means for people to upgrade their abilities and adjust to changing job markets. If this does not happen, pools of unemployed and unemployable people will become a drain on the economy.
Systems theory, therefore, provides a helpful perspective on the origin of social problems and why social problems are so intractable. But macro social workers also may be aware that at times systems theory also may serve as a disguise for the real causes of social problems, a means to justify the system’s owners, an excuse for harmful decisions, and a way of rationalising the status quo.
The challenge for macro social workers using a system’s approach to solving social problems is to be sensitive in observing whom the system serves and protects. Is the system serving a latent function which advantages some at the expense of others? Are intentional patterns of exploitation, greed, or injustice masquerading as unintended consequences or as mere ignorance? Is there an implication that the system is its own justification and is beyond criticism? 24

Institutional Deviance Model
When health care is maldistributed, when poverty persists for millions, ‘when tax laws permit a business to write off 80% of a $100 luncheon but prohibit a truck driver from writing off a bologna sandwich, when government is run by a few for the profit of the few, when businesses supposedly in competition fix prices to gouge the consumer, then society is permitting what is called institutional deviance.’
Institutional deviance occurs when social problems become officially embedded in the major ideologies, the culture, or the structures of society and often become the foundational beliefs, the operating premises on which society is based. Ethnic intolerance in the United States was institutionalised in the social, economic, legal and governmental structures in the country.
Racism was part of the foundational principles that guided many businesses, governmental and legal decisions. Bribery, spoils, nepotism and other forms of corruptions were institutionalised in businesses and politics immediately after the Civil War, until the reforms of progressive Era social workers such as Florence Kelley, Lillian Wald, Jane Addams, and others. Conceiving of social problems as located in the institutional structures of society permit going beyond explaining social problems exclusively in terms of individuals, family or systems.
Eitzen and Beca-Zinn assert, for example that, ‘there are conditions in society (such as poverty and institutional racism) that induce material or psychic suffering for certain segment of population; there are socio-cultural phenomena that prevent a significant numbers of society’s participants from developing and using their full potential; there are discrepancies between what the United States supposed to stand for (equality of opportunity, justice, democracy) and the actual conditions in which many people live. According to Eitzen and
Beca-Zinn, social workers must keep in mind that powerful; agencies of government and business define social reality in a way that often manipulates opinion and controls behaviours that threatens the status quo and their power. Slavery on large plantations, for instance, was not a social problem, but slave revolts were. Racism was not a social problem of the Jim Crow
South, but pushy blacks were. From the stand point of U.S., public opinions disposing native
Americans of their lands was not a social problem, but the native Americans who wanted to maintain their native homelands were. When macro social workers look for objective causes of social problems, they state, ‘we must…guard against the tendency to accept the definitions of social problems provided by those in power.
Macro social workers who get involved in politics and in social policy often struggle against these forces of institutional deviance. Macro social workers understand how social institutions, even those created by well intentioned people for good purposes, may diverge from their original goals and become deviant. For example, the Second Amendment, which in 1783 permitted States to maintain armed militias to keep order, has become reinterpreted by many today as a licence for nearly anyone to own handguns and other weapons, resulting in momentous violence to children and teenagers.
In addition, many macro social workers also understand that some institutions under the guise of noble premises may intentionally serve socially immoral purposes. The defence industries
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obtain legal sanctions and subsidies from the government to sell weapons to developing countries for profit, ostensibly to promote a balance of power or protects national interests. In reality, however, selling weapons of war to poor countries steals the sweat of impoverished citizens, often to guarantee that dictators continue to oppress their own people and perpetrate violence against their neighbours, and even war against their own country.
Some businesses do not even have the guise of nobility of purpose behind which to hide their exploitative self-interests. After years of deceit and evasions, for example, the American tobacco industry have finally been deflected from marketing its products to adolescents in the
United States, has now develop the lucrative global market with full realisation that it is endangering the health of the world’s children and creating enormous health costs. Macro social workers who engage in social policy and politics often struggle with how to hold such large institutions accountable and forge social policies that are morally good and socially just.

Social Cultural Premises Model
Another assumption about social problems is that society can be best understood as a conscious, planned construct. People intentionally create societal structures, laws and governance out of common understandings about meaning and truth. People are not helpless or determined beings moulded by natural societal forces to which they are subject or over which they have little control, as systems or social ecology theorists say. Rather, as the social pragmatists argue, although a person’s situation confronts him with limitations and problems, he is the one who struggles to understand his situation, to master it, and to utilise it for the realisation of his interest. Human behaviour involve the interpretation of events or phenomena and the sharing of those interpretations with others, and human society rests upon a basis of consensus, i.e., the sharing of meanings in the form of common understanding and expectation. Society reflects the key ideologies the ways of thinking that were built into it in the first place, and those premises become interpreted and reinterpreted by succeeding generations
The cultural perspective assumes that human behaviour is guided by patterns of basic assumptions, expectations, and customs that develop over time and slowly drop out of people conscious awareness, Holland states. These patterns become habit that continue to influence people even when the social environment changes. To fully understand why social problems seem impervious to permanent resolution, therefore, macro social workers must develop an understanding of these patterns. Frank Coleman asserts, for example, that the social failures of
American political institutions are ‘a permanent blindness fixed in the nature of the institutions and the social philosophies used to design them. The social philosophy which Coleman refers is contained in the heritage of ideas and cherished social ideologies that have shaped ‘the consciousness of a whole people through their national inheritance and manifest themselves in characteristic and unvarying ways rewlated to the American constitutional philosophy.’
Coleman believes that the powerful legacy of individualism and self interest and the eradication of the idea of a higher public good in American society formed a ‘total idealogy which could not be challenged or even questioned. Richard Hofstadter adds this observation: however much
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as odds on specific issues, the major political traditions have shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition…and the natural evolution of self-interest and self-assertion [as] staple tenets of the central faith in American political ideologies.

Rational Problem Solving

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