Each of you who posted a comment on the "First Individual Exercise" will earn 5 activity points for your effort, however, I have decided NOT to have a contest for the most significant submission. Rather, what I plan to do is use ONE of your examples as the basis for a midterm exam question. For that question I will give a brief overview of one example and then ask you how it relates to my argument about how to define or recognize social problems. Basically, what I argued is that we should not accept what is normal or widely accepted as ok. What is normal may indeed qualify as a social problem, that is, may be harmful to individuals and society. Our basis is NOT society as it is, but what society is capable of becoming or what a healthy or well-ordered society would be like.
Regarding the various examples you discussed, note how in each case what you were doing in analyzing some normal practice in our society as a social problem was based upon certain assumptions about what constitutes a healthy society. For example, no matter how accepted they may be, help us relieve stress, keep us skinny, or even make money, cigarettes are a social problem because they are destructive of our health and costly and disruptive to our society.
See you tomorrow when we get into the book, Affluenza.
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