This week during lecture we focused on C. Wright Mills’ “The Sociological Imagination,” Blumer’s “Social Problems as Collective Behavior,” and Hilgartner and Bosk’s “The Rise and Fall of Social Problems.” Based on the ideas of these readings and material covered during lecture, here are three sets of questions for you to write about:
Essay question :
In “Social Problems as Collective Behavior,” Herbert Blumer argues that social problems are products of a process of collective definition instead of existing independently as a set of objective social arrangements with an intrinsic makeup. Why is this distinction important? What do we gain by studying social problems as a process of collective behavior?
between 500-600 words.
