Social Problems: A Critical Approach

This critical approach to the analysis of social problems facing the world today examines both the causes of those problems and their human implications. The fifth edition has been reorganized into four types of social problems: Four chapters look at large societal problems involving arrangements of social structures that have a vast impact how societies operate, and the effect of this on the life chances of millions of people; five chapters focus on group problems created by social arrangements and relations; four chapters focus on institutional problems that derive from the way that social institutions are arranged to address the basic needs of social survival that often benefit some members of society more than others; and the final three chapters focus on individual problems such as criminal behavior, mental illness, and substance abuse.

This critical approach to the analysis of social problems facing the world today examines both the causes of those problems and their human implications. The fifth edition has been reorganized into four types of social problems: Four chapters look at large societal problems involving arrangements of social structures that have a vast impact how societies operate, and the effect of this on the life chances of millions of people; five chapters focus on group problems created by social arrangements and relations; four chapters focus on institutional problems that derive from the way that social institutions are arranged to address the basic needs of social survival that often benefit some members of society more than others; and the final three chapters focus on individual problems such as criminal behavior, mental illness, and substance abuse.

Kenneth J. Neubeck is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. His articles have appeared in such journals as Social Problems, Social Policy, and Teaching Sociology, as well as several anthologies. Much of his work has focused upon issues of social and economic justice, covering such topics as the politics surrounding income maintenance programs, cultural values supporting economic inequality, and the relationship between central city downtown developmental and local neighborhood decline. The author of Corporate Response to Urban Crisis (Lexington Books) and Social Problems: A Critical Approach (McGraw-Hill), he is currently conducting research on the impact of racism on U.S. welfare policy.

Davita Silfen Glasberg is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. She has published extensively on issues of bank hegemony, the state in finance capitalism, and political economy, including The Power of Collective Purse Strings: The Effects of Bank Hegemony on Corporations and the State (University of California Press). She is currently working on an examination of corporate welfare and the welfare state in a study of bank deregulation and the savings and loan bailout, a study of the effect of bank political action committees (PACs) on bank deregulation and the bailout, and a collaborative study (with Kathryn Ward) on the effects of global debt on development and on the status of women in the world system.