Help me with sociology

[Psion]

According to my teacher, I have about 21 days to type up a 6+ page paper on a social problem.

 

To tell you the truth, I don't give a **** about society a good amount of the time.

 

However, in this case I have to type up a paper with sources on a social problem.

 

I don't want to spend forever on the paper because I have about 20 days and about 4 hours a day to spend on it, giving me 80 hours.

 

So what do you think would be a good social problem to write about?

I could simply go for the obvious which is marriage, divorce, suicide, pregnancy, government..

 

But some of those are too broad. Even more education since I'm not in public schools anymore.

 

I figure doing a paper or marriage kind of contradicts who I am because I think marriage is just a legal term and is some B.S. made up for cultural reasons. However, I do want to hook up with this one girl I know.

 

However the case, being a social scientist, one isn't suppose to have biases and just show the numbers and reasons why you think something is happening and not what your opinion is on it to support it or discriminate it, however you recognize it as a problem.

Thus recognizing it as a problem you take a side on it saying that you think it's a negative thing.

 

What I can't do is recognize things as a problem unless they effect me. To tell you the truth, I'm somewhat of a sociopath without care for society and if hell were to break lose I think I'd do just fine and be a bit happier. I know that some things like Americans being idiots effect me or people being wasteful effects my way of life. Gas prices don't effect me. The bus prices have been a dollar for about 10 years now for a ride.

 

Besides being that way, I'm trying to figure out what a good social problem to write about it. I'm in America so I figure doing a social paper on something out of the U.S. wouldn't be too wise unless I knew a lot about it.

 

I only have about 20 days to do all of this so I don't want to screw around for five days figuring out all the mysteries of Japanese Marriage versus American marriage and the divorce rates and what makes people divorce or stay together.

 

However an interesting topic that would be. I think it may take a bit more than 20 days of research.

 

I really don't want to do research on something where material is not readily available or takes a long time to track down.

 

Something as interesting as older men dating younger women depletes the age of women younger men can date leading to higher suicidal rates among teenage men, would be a nice topic to write about, but yet impossible and would take tooo long.

 

What bothers me more is when people are defining something as a problem. What may be a problem to one person, may be something someone else supports. By me saying it is a problem is being biased which makes all of it very confusing.

 

One could simply say that suicide is a problem, which it is and is a very interesting one since all human life could be put to use to be drone to enhance scientific development for the scientific community. However that's biased because when people are living, you usually get something out of it: money, help, etc.. But when they die, it's one less mouth to feed.

 

As evil as that sounds, it's somewhat true.

 

To even say that marriage is a social problem would be that I have become biased into thinking that when people aren't getting married, that's a problem.

 

In my vision of the world, I'd like to think that nothing is a problem. Education is always a problem, but despite that, I don't think I have enough time to bust out a super paper on such things and tally up the money spent on people and the dropouts and the effect it has had on people.

 

I'm sure highschool students dropping out has had an effect where their children probably won't have as much guidance, but that's just guesswork. Where could I find such a source as to tell me such a thing exists? What book would agree with this point of view which could most interestingly be true?

 

Common sense is not so common which is why I hate writing up reports.

 

So, what should I write about?

 

I guess who I am is conflicting with everything in my sociology class and I figured that being the philosopher I am, I have just become the social scientists arch nemesis.

 

Philosophers and sociologists don't mix very well.

 

I guess I could do something simple on marriage.

Perhaps something like suicide which has been done tons of times already.

 

I'm figuring having something hooked up like a coorelation between pregnant mothers and divorces... or that a coorelation of suicidals will be highschool dropouts and the reason for it...

 

what do you think I should do?

[Commie_Pinko]

I would suggest doing a report on some issue dealing with Dramaturgical Analysis. People acting to fufill roles in society. Emo kids are like this. It;s a really big problem, as people are acting to fill the roles other people put before them. People are becomming herd-like sheep.

 

Look on myspace. Everyone's a damn emoclone.

[Psion]

Lol. that's funny. You're funny.

 

I'm looking for a more elaborate and serious response though.

I'll take yours into consideration, but it's biased....kinda...

 

envinger... i can't remember his name... i read that artcile about him using the analogy of society roles relating to drama.

[j_p]

This is an interesting point: simply defining something as a social problem indicates bias, and science is ideally NOT biased.

 

So, we could work with that. The effect of bias on scientific research.

 

Is this a research project, with actual measurements and tests, or just a paper? If it is just a paper, you're all set; start with reading S.J. Goulds' "The Mismeasure of Man".

 

Then find an instructor in Women's Studies with a scientific background, or any female graduate student in a hard science [biology would be your best bet; there are still socio-biologists out there], and ask for other references. Then go to an African-American studies instructor and an African-American graduate student; I think Economics could be an interesting field there. Then, compare and contrast the bias exhibited.

 

Your only problem will be keeping the paper short enough. [Of course any non-SMW groups will do, but I think you would find the most references for women and African-Americans.]

 

If you need to do actual research, I think I could come up with a project based on your illusions of sociopathy.

 

Let us know.

[Psion]

It has to do with quantitive data.

I'm suppose to build up a paper with data and numbers and then propose a way to research it more.

 

Like for instance I would make a report on income of single mothers and give details and ideas to why researches think they are broke. I also throw in some sociological theories and attach those to numbers such as 5% people in america control "this much wealth", this effects them by _____.

 

Then write a proposal on how I could go further to analyze it or even create a new research proposal as to how I could collect numbers on it.

 

Something like that. I somewhat don't understand it myself. I'm grabbing a tutor tomorrow.

[j_p]

This sounds like a great assignment. But bias in science might not be the best topic; compiling quantitative data would be time-consuming.

 

Voting v. age? What percent of each age groups actually votes? What effect this has on allocation of resources and social policy? Then the next step could be to study why certain age groups do not vote?

 

Accretion of wealth? Wealth has not be increasing a quickly as income among non-WMs in the past decades; there will be lots of data on that and theories about why.

 

I can feel you yawn. Something in life must really piss you off; design a study about that.

[Psion]

I like the voting idea. It's something I can work off.

 

I've decided I wanted to narrow it down since the paper has to be at least 6 pages.

 

So I decided to do 18-23 year olds and voting.

Or perhaps younger, I dunno.

 

I figure that if bush wasn't in office and kerry was, people would have moved real quick to get stuff done if they wanted to be re-elected for a second term.

 

Hmm.. So i'm going to shoot for the idea that I can use sociological theories in this. I want to use at least three. Conflict theory, functionalist, and interactionist.

 

Conflict would probably be...

By people being told not to vote, they are being oppressed by "mystery person" and that may help the person vote. By not teaching kids more about politics and voting in school, the chances for certain people to be voted into office could be more possible because of the lack of knowledge of politics and government within the voters.

 

So they are being oppressed by the people who fund education and teaching in governement. Since this is happening, the mystery person has a better chance to get voted in.

 

How's that sound to you?

 

Interactionist...

 

uhhh... hmm.. don't know.. i'll work on it.. any ideas thrown out by y'all would be appreciated.

 

Functionalist...

 

By not voting for a specific person you aren't given a tax cut. "i think that's part of taxes..." By not voting, you allow the person who may get into power to obtain more money.. which somehow relates to social-conflict theory.. arg... maybe someone can help me on that...

 

well i think that's an interesting topic that I will choose.

thanks j_p