Different Societies Experience Social Problems in the UK (Essay Sample)

SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN THE UK
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Over the decades, different societies experience many problems usually referred to as social problems. Individuals in these societies face one or more social problems. For instance, problems like unemployment, racism, poverty, drugs, poor health and family misunderstandings are all said to be social problems. Sadly, most of these times in our societies are the times when we assume that the people experiencing these problems should be the ones’ responsible for such and should be the ones who solve them. But the truth is most of these problems, are problems originating from the society itself. This paper will therefore discuss social problems issue in the UK.
Studies and literatures have tried to define social problems based on different situations and it has been a difficult task. However, as much research is being conducted, social problems can be looked at as a situation and behavior in the society that brings negative impacts to the society as a whole or to a significant number of people in the society and that the society believes with human intervention the issue can come to an end. As a result, then for a social problem to be considered a social problem it has to have negative impacts on the society, but the question remains how are these impacts considered negative. The UK is being faced by a number of social problems today, which from research is as a result of the failure of the state in handling the many needs of its citizens. The UK had come up with a welfare that was meant to look into social issues and the needs of the citizens which instead turned to be a self-focused initiative making the society become a man eat man society.
Evidently, a number of these issues being referred to as social problems, have not been there before, but have suddenly gushed into our societies. This has been as a result of globalization as and changes in generations which has resulted to many changes in the society some of which, have been positive but others negative and negative in a big way resulting to significant negative changes in the society. These negative impacts have gone deep into societies, I mean changing our culture and tradition practices, the two major things that uphold any given society. For instance, social issues such as rape and early teenage pregnancies are as a result of crushed culture and traditions and it is until people refuse these negative impacts and start upholding their culture that the society could be better (Issacs, 2014).
Furthermore, the state is seen to interplay in causing these contemporary issues. This is in that when the state observes these changes being caused by globalization, what actions is the state taking, are there set up rules for governing the society or even globalization itself. This comes with a number of other unaddressed issues by the state resulting not only to a collapsed society but a collapsed economy as well. For instance one of the most important and major issue that the state has failed to address is inequality in the society.
Moreover, inequality in the society has been evidenced from the levels of income of citizens to their ability to access government services. Some citizens have fair levels or even high levels of income and comfortably access government services form all institutions while for some, they do not even get an in some and are not able to access any government facilities offered. The question remains why? And what is the government doing about this? Resultantly, we can say that inequality has contributed to these identified social problems as well, in fact not only to social problems but to other problems closely associated with some of these social problems. For instance, economic inequality in the country, leads to high unemployment rates, which then lead to high crime rates since these unemployed people are looking for ways to survive and considering that the society’s culture and traditions fail to be recognized these individuals turn to committing crime so as to sort their needs.
On the other hand, not all problems are considered social problems. This means that social problems have their characteristics types and causes and so do other problems such as individual problems, but we can also say social problems are closely related to other kind of problems. For one to understand social problems, then it is important to look into the types of social problems the characteristics, and the causes. Firstly, Social problems have the following characteristics. First, social problems are phenomena that have negative impacts to the society. Secondly, they are interconnected and have common source of origin could be social or political origin. Further, they are said to occur in all societies that is all societies at one point are able to experience social problems. Lastly, social problems are said to diverge from the considered epitome situation in the society.
Additionally social problems are classified into norm violations and social violations. Norm violations focuses on social problems that result from the failure of the society, for instance, the social issue of young individuals dropping out of school. Whereas, social violations on the other hand, look into the categories that exist in a society and how the society operates as well as how the resources are distributed in the society. This approach looks at who benefits from the society and who does not. Furthermore, social problems are caused by the individuals in the society, the culture of these societies and the structure in which the society is formed. All the above factors can be used to distinguish between social problems and other problems.
Discuss how social construction differs from a 'common sense approach
Most of the decisions we make in our lives usually are influenced by our way of thinking either by use of common sense or by use of ideas that are socially constructed in our minds. There exists differences of social constructed ways of thinking and use common sense and it’s all reflected by our own lives. Firstly, common sense is a combination of all observed knowledge based on personal experiences usually formed from childhood while social construction tends to encourage ideas that are beyond the individuals’ experiences and grows this idea to the society as a whole.
Secondly, social construction focuses on investigating and thinking and finding out more on the social facts that exist in the society while commonsense usually consists of already labeled meaning and responses to the same social facts that are seen to exist in the society. Further...