Seeing Social Problems

Seeing Social Problems shows students how to think about social problems in a new way, by carefully analyzing headline-making issues they are already familiar with. Each chapter focuses on a specific case study that represents a more general social problem. The chapters always start with the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and personal experiences that students bring to the case-what the author refers to as the conventional wisdom-and effectively demonstrates to them the first wisdom" of sociology: "things are not what they seem." In each instance, the author shows how sociologists ask questions, gather empirical data, use multiple perspectives, and consider larger social forces to discover the "hidden stories" behind individual behavior"--