Some Aspects of a Theory of Social Problems
Some Aspects of a Theory of Social Problems
复制标题
社会问题理论的某些方面
DOI：
10.2307/2086338
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发表时间：
1941
影响因子：
9.1
通讯作者：
Richard R. Myers
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. C. Fuller;Richard R. Myers
社会问题课程常常声名狼藉，因为社会学家对产生问题的社会现象的本质没有清晰的认识。由于缺乏了解，课程具有“信息性”的特点，教学不平衡和不完整，教科书主要是对不相关事实的概述。“社会问题”是一个方便的标题，在它下面汇集了大量有关犯罪、离婚、移民、精神错乱等方面的资料，以一种不系统、不消化的形式呈现给学生。在这一大堆问题中，社会学家的贡献是微不足道的。他借鉴了历史、经济学、医学、精神病学、刑学和社会工作等领域的知识，并将这些不同学科的发现浓缩成一系列独立的课程，但在整体上却很少添加明显的社会学分析。有什么理由在社会学课程中保留一门调查不同和离散问题的课程，没有统一和系统的社会学解释？也许在大学课程中应该有一门调查课程，它从不同的角度——生物的、医学的、经济的、政治的——考虑各种社会问题，但这种类型的课程应该由许多不同的专家合作讲授。社会学家没有理由要有什么特殊能力来处理这么多不同种类的数据和这么多不同的科学分析。有些人可能会反对，社会问题没有足够的共同点，不能用社会学理论的一个中心线索来处理。如果是这样的话，那么每个单独的问题都必须用一套不同的社会学概念来解释，而把许多问题放在一起考虑的唯一借口将是实用的权宜之计——以满足那些由于没有时间或兴趣进行更专业的学习而渴望学习概览课程的学生。因此，似乎值得探讨的是，社会学能否为把各种社会问题作为“社会学现象”来处理制定出一个共同的方向，以及这个分析的中心线索能否在整个课程或教科书中始终如一地保持下去。某些教科书编写者曾试图达到这种共同的方向。最流行的理论风气是应用主义
OCIAL problems courses have too often fallen into disrepute because sociologists have had no clear understanding of the nature of the social phenomena out of which problems arise. Because of this lack of understanding, courses have been "informational" in character, the teaching lopsided and incomplete, and the textbooks primarily compendia of unrelated facts. "Social Problems" has been a convenient heading under which a mass of data pertaining to crime, divorce, immigration, insanity, and the like, has been assembled and presented to the student in unsystematic and undigested form. In this lumping together, the contribution of the sociologist as such has been negligible. He has borrowed from the fields of history, economics, medicine, psychiatry, penology, and social work and has condensed findings from these various disciplines into a series of separate courses in miniature, but has added to the totality very little distinctly sociological analysis. What justification is there for preserving in the sociology curriculum a course which surveys differentiated and discrete problems, catch-as-catch can, without a unifying and systematic sociological interpretation? It may be that there is some place in the college curriculum for a survey course which considers a variety of social problems from a variety of viewpointsbiological, medical, economic, political-but a course of that type should be presented in collaboration by a number of different specialists. There is no reason why a sociologist should have any special competence to handle so many varied kinds of data with so many different scientific analyses. Some may object that social problems do not have enough in common to be dealt with by one central thread of sociological theory. If such be the case, then each separate problem must be interpreted with a different set of sociological concepts and the only excuse for considering a number of problems together would be that of practical expediency-to satisfy students who desire a survey course because they have not the time or interest for more specialized study. It seems worthwhile, therefore, to inquire whether sociology can work out a common orientation for the treatment of diverse social problems as "sociological phenomena," and whether this central thread of analysis can be maintained consistently throughout a course or textbook. Attempts to achieve such common orientation have been made by certain textbook writers. The most popular climate of theory has been the applica-