SOC 308: MID-TERM EXAMINATION
Select any five questions and discuss them with enough details or documentation as may be necessary. The total number of pages should not exceed 10 for all your answers. Turn in your work (typescript, not email attachments) by August 13, 2004.
- Explain social problem from a social science point of view. Which one do you think is the best approach to looking at and analyzing social problems: the objective nature of problems, or the social constructionist view? Why?
- Compare and contrast conflict theory, structural functionalism and interactionism in the way they view social problems. Which one is more credible, and why? Is there some other theory which better explains the nature of social problems? Discuss if you think there is another one.
- Discuss the nature of health as a social problem. Why does health come to be a critical social problem in countries like the United States and other developed societies? Explain your answers.
- Growing big and fat (i.e., overweight and obesity) are two among the serious health problems in America, according to some analysts. What is the state-of- the-art (e.g., statistical data) in the United States and what policy suggestions, if any, have been made (or you would like to make) to reverse this alarming trend? Do you think the state has right to intrude into the privacy or rights of citizens about what to eat?
- Race and racism have been around as part of mankind’s social nature. Has there been any significant improvement in the reduction of racism as an aftermath of the civil rights movement of the 1960s? Have education and the workplace become more democratic and desegregated as we want them to be? Why or why not? Explain with some details.
- Explain the Brown vs. Bureau of Education of Topeka as a classic example of outlawing racial discrimination. Is there a clear pattern nowadays that segregation in American schools has been eliminated or significantly reduced as a consequence of this case? Cite examples or data whenever you can. (The internet is one source of info on this historic case).
- Crime and violence are unwanted or undesirable aspects of urban living everywhere, particularly in many U.S. cities. What factor or combination of factors accounts for this rising phenomenon? How can society resolve this social problem? Should laws be more punitive or preventive? Justify your answer.
- Explain the relation between aging and industrialization. Why has aging become a social problem in a country like the U.S. but not in another like China? Explain.
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