Field Of Social Problems Research Articles

Relasi Sufisme dan Politik pada Masyarakat Mataraman di Kediri

Since the thirteenth century AD, the presence of a new model of Sufism, neo-Sufism, has impacted the infiltration of political identity in the spiritual flow of the tarekat practicing society. The spiritual world of Sufism has experienced a paradigm shift in thinking, from what was originally a movement that balances the hereafter and the worldly things, but in the end this movement is also considered very pragmatic-contextual that enters the socio-political dimension. This article wants to provide a new understanding of how the balanced relationship between Sufism and politics occurs in the Mataraman community, Kediri, East Java. By using the non-participant observer technique, this article produces two things: first, the political culture formed in the Kediri Mataraman society has a centralized pattern, where both tarekat congregations and ordinary people devote themselves to any field of social problems to a kiai. Sufi kiai becomes the main role models because they are considered pious people for the Mataraman community. This recognition of the Sufi kiai figure forms a group of socio-political systems. Second, the political pyramid that developed in the people of Kediri City follows a hierarchical-centralized pyramid pattern, where the kiai/murshid tarekat are ordained as the movers and creators of the foremost political culture after the Kediri city government and business bureaucrats. This pattern of social structure becomes the link so that leadership can be achieved and become the material for formulating political strategies.

The Policy Perspective: Social Problems as Investment Opportunities

It is paradoxical that the methodology of social policy analysis has come into its own during the very period in which a subjectivist approach to social problems has achieved theoretical ascendancy. It is problematic as well because sociological studies of social policy and the field of social problems will both continue to suffer in the absence of mutually beneficial ties. While functionalism might appear to be compatible with social policy analysis, it fares no better than the value-conflict approach in providing grounding for policy analysis. In Gary Becker's social economics, however, we find an orientation which, allowing us to speak of the dollar value of nonmarket social phenomena, leads directly to a policy-oriented conceptualization of social problems as investment opportunities. The central portion of the paper describes this new policy perspective. A major restructuring of the traditional research questions in the field of social problems, implied by the approach, is then outlined. Solution of two major difficulties plaguing policy analysts is made possible by it.

Comments on Mel Kohn's Paper

When I was a student struggling to become sophisticated in sociology, one of the continual I had in reading theory was that I agreed with practically everybody I read. I read Tocqueville and found him persuasive; I read Edmund Burke, found him persuasive; read Marx, found him persuasive too. Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, Weber-all full of illuminations for me. But gradually, one became aware of schools and traditions, of hidden implications and strategic omissions. Burke and Tocqueville were Conservatives; Marx was a revolutionary. Durkheim was a functionalist, Weber a nominalist. One simply couldn't agree with all of them. The graduate student subculture fixed that. One of the things a good graduate student subculture does is give students vested interests in taking positions and defending them; by making these names household words, it sensitizes students to crucial differences between thinkers, and therefore enables them eventually to confront a text with some semblance of critical perspective (background, it's more often called), so that each writerthinker doesn't have to be taken naively, in his own terms. Reading Mel Kohn, I find myself agreeing with everything he says. Maybe it's my lack of background in problems; but surely such agreement is not permissible, particularly under conditions which constrain me to perform in the role of Discussant. Still, it's difficult not to agree with his appraisal of progress in the field of research, and his consideration of missed opportunities and future possibilities. I think he's right that the past 25 years have seen a dramatic enlargement of research perspectives, and I think his illustration of these changes in research on sex roles, race relations, poverty, and crime are fairly drawn. I think too that the conceptual convergences he points to across the different areas of research (from descriptive to analytic designs, from concern with individuals to concern with institutional contexts and other structures, a sense of the interconnectedness of problems) and his ambitious hopes for future directions in research promise an increase in the rigor of research sufficient to bring such research up to methodological par for the rest of the sociology course. Well and good. It seems likely that we are more sophisticated, more knowledgeable today than 25 years ago about the conditions and consequences of sex role behavior, race relations, poverty, crime, and other features of the landscape. But (here come the buts ) I kept asking myself while reading Kohn's paper: What has all this got to do with the very conception of social problems? Like any other field of scientific enterprise, the more thinking and the more research we do, the more dialogue and mutual attention to and criticism of each others' work, the greater the illumination that's likely to be cast on the questions about crime, race, poverty, and sex that puzzle us. But what have more or better research on these matters got to do with the field of social problems? Crime, race, sex, and class are all more or less well established realms of sociological research, and, by invoking the traditional distinction between facts and values, it is possible for us to go on becoming wiser and more learned about them without ever talking about social problems or conceiving ourselves as experts in problems. To concern oneself explicitly with social problems (as distinguished from race, crime, or poverty) is to concern oneself with their solution or amelioration (and therefore with the relation to policy or reform). It is also to raise the question of how it is (to use Mel Kohn's brief definition) that some social phenomena that have a seriously negative impact on the lives of a sizable segment of the population are commonly regarded as social problems, while others (for example loneliness and Sunday afternoon football widowhood) are not. I

Towards a Radical Critique of Social Work and Welfare Ideology

A radical critique of social work and social welfare is proposed, and an outline is given of the process of mystification that occurs when the field of social problems is dominated by a welfare or consensual approach rather than by a conflictual model. With this analytical framework, the role of the social work profession as an agency of social control is examined in terms of its contribution to the persistence of the existing socio‐political order. Finally, the response of the profession is considered in relation to various minority and client groups organizing themselves for social action with a view to securing their civil and political rights.

Delinquency Research: An Appraisal of Analytic Methods

This remarkable guide to delinquency studies was co-winner of the 1968 C. Wright Mills Award for the best book in the field of social problems. The work is in effect three books in one: a forthright account of how to analyze survey data, a penetrating critique of delinquency research, and a set of original essays on methodology. It is a landmark work that continues to serve as an essential tool for those who both study and want to learn about deviance. In the new introduction, Travis Hirschi describes the setting in which Delinquency Research was written, noting that it exudes a confident optimism that well-conducted research and analysis will quickly lead to important advances in the field. Hirschi maintains that twenty-eight years after Delinquency Research was first published the validity of its optimistic view has been confirmed by the fact that the field of criminology is among the leading producers of high quality research. As a result, we know more about crime and delinquency than ever before. Delinquency Research forms the basis for present and future studies of criminology and is a necessary addition to the libraries of sociologists, criminologists, scholars in the area of delinquency, and students interested in research methods.

American Social Problems in a World Setting: The Role of U. S. Government Spending

My interest in international problems has convinced me that it is pertinent to analyze possible provincialism and ethnocentrism found among American social scientists. This has a bearing on social problems as defined in terms of the value-assumptions of our society. Let us look at two factors that both bound and restrict the field of social problems as dealt with by most American sociologists.

The Self and the Other: An Emerging Field of Social Problems

The Self and the Other: An Emerging Field of Social Problems

The Self and the Other: An Emerging Field of Social Problems

This paper will explore some of the further implications of a shift in social problems resulting from recent changes in the social climate. An earlier paper examined some of the general relationships between social character and social problems and suggested that many traditional problems are on the way to amelioration and eventual solution. (18) Among these problems are illiteracy, poverty, child labor, unemployment, undernourishment, old-age insecurity, infant mortality, endemic disease, and similar difficulties which have recently come within the purview of democratic government. These situations are by no means completely eliminated in the United States, much less in the underdeveloped parts of the world. But the technical knowledge and productive capacity to deal constructively with them are part of the heritage of modern democratic societies.

Public Affairs Forums in the United States

ADULT civic education through “public affairs forums” is now being energetically pushed by the United States Federal Office of Education, the present head of which, Dr. Studebaker, played a principal part in the launching, several years ago, of the pioneer forums in Des Moines. The latest official publication on the subject, a pamphlet entitled “A Step Forward” (Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C. 10 cents), includes an account of ten forum demonstration centres in as many different States, managed by local educational authorities. A foreword by the Commissioner strongly emphasizes the principle of local responsibility and control, but the enterprise has been financed largely out of the Federal Emergency Relief Appropriation, and several hundred relief workers have taken part as assistant librarians, research assistants, artists, writers, accountants, typists, etc. The Secretary of the Interior, in commending the Commissioner's scheme, observes that it has brought about an essential and practical contact between “those few of our citizens who are concentrating their time and effort on the pursuit of truth in the field of social problems” and the average citizen who cannot devote much time to a specialized study of these complex questions. The success of the scheme hinges on finding competent leaders for the forums, for they have the difficult task of first presenting a topic in simple language in a way calculated to sustain interest, giving a fairly comprehensive and impartial outline of the problem and the alternative solutions, and then stimulating, leading and organizing a free discussion for forty or fifty minutes. Most of them have been obtained on leaves of absence from colleges and universities. The improvement of social intelligence for the democratic control of our material resources is, says the Commissioner, the challenge of our day.