Rise in Obesity Rates and Health Insurance

Rise in Obesity Rates and Health Insurance assignment help

Rise in Obesity Rates and Health Insurance assignment help

Sociology, Sociological Imagination, Structure, Agency, Social status, Social role, Ascribed status, Achieved status, Life chances, Socialization, Looking glass self, C. Wright Mills, “Companiate Marriages”, Collective Phenomena, “Soulmate Marriages”, “Emerging Adulthood”, Social class, Stratification, Income, Wealth, Capitalists, Upper-middle class, Middle class, Working class, Working poor, Underclass, Social mobility, Upward mobility, Downward mobility, Racial wealth gap, Meritocracy, GINI Index, “social problems marketplace,” Grounds, Warrants, Conclusions, Audit study, Method, Confirmation bias, Human subject, Nuremberg Code, Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Informed consent, Quantitative data, Qualitative data, Experiment, Survey, Participant observation, Historical analysis, Content analysis, Research question, Institutional Review Board, Cumulative advantages, Absolute poverty, Relative poverty, Poverty threshold, High-poverty neighborhoods, Homeless, Point-in-time counts, Chronically homeless individual, Sheltered homeless, Unsheltered homeless.

Basic questions you should be able to answer:

What is structure and agency? How are they related to each other?

What did C. Wright Mills mean by “the sociological imagination?”

What does Mills mean when he argues that people ought to escape the “private orbits in which they live?”

What is the difference between a personal trouble and a social problem?

-What is a social constructionist definition of a social problem?

-How are social constructions real? How are they not real?

-When might an achieved status become an ascribed status?

-What does Aziz Ansari mean when he talks about the transition from companiate marriages to soulmate marriages?

-What does the formation of “emerging adulthood” mean?

-How is suicide a collective phenomena?

-What structural issues might explain rising rates of obesity in the US?

 

What is a social problem?

-What are the advantages of a subjectivist perspective?

-If social problems are just things that are wrong in the world, then why would we want to understand rhetoric?

-What is the role of rhetoric in the construction of social problems?

-Why are resources crucial to the making of a social problem?

 

Claims

-Claims follow a “rhetorical structure” – be fluent in the components of this structure:

• Grounds – “typifying examples”; naming a condition; statistics; “domain expansion”; claims that the problem is getting progressively worse; claims that many different kinds of people are hurt by the troubling condition
• Warrants – know that warrants state why we should be concerned about the troubling condition and help focus audience on why we should care.  Warrants use values, like “freedom; social justice; economic redistribution; public safety; economic growth”
• Conclusions: What should be done; the solution.

 

-Know about claims and audiences – claimsmakers must try to create claims that others will find persuasive:

-What is a valence issue?  What is a position issue?

-What are counterclaims?

-What does it mean to say that social problems compete in a marketplace?

-What are cultural resources and how do they help make a social problem more competitive in a marketplace?

-What is rhetoric and why is it such an important part of the claimsmaking process?

-What evidence does she offer to make this counterclaim?

-How is poverty socially-patterned?  i.e., “who” is most likely to be poor and why?

-What are some structural reasons that keep people from moving out of poverty?

-What is social class?

-How is social class measured? Why is it so difficult to measure social class?

-What is the difference between income and wealth?

-What is the social class structure of the United States?

-Are we assigned a social class at birth or is it something we accomplish?

Teenage Pregnancy:

1. Understanding Data Trends: Examine the trends in teenage pregnancy rates from the 1940s to 2009, as provided in Mollburn’s reading called Children Having Children. When did policymakers begin identifying teenage pregnancy as a social problem? Use the provided data to justify your answer.
2. Historical Context: In the 1950s and early 1960s, how were women’s career aspirations different than in later decades?
3. Contraception and Reproduction: Discuss the significance of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 in relation to women’s control over their reproduction. How did this control influence their life decisions, especially concerning higher education and careers?
4. Teenage Behavior Then vs. Now: Compare and contrast the behavior and societal expectations of teenagers in the 1950s who got pregnant versus the expectations for pregnant teenagers starting in the 1970s. How do shifts in societal structures, such as increased access to higher education and contraception, inadvertently create new social problems, using teenage pregnancy as an example?

Explain why there is a discrepancy between the actual rates of teenage pregnancies and the perception of it being a growing epidemic, especially in media.

5. Explore the idea of “emerging adulthood.” How might this phase of life have implications for the perception and challenges of teenage pregnancy?

6. Based on my discussion with Dr. Lindsay Stevens:

US reproductive policy has not been successful in its stated goal of reducing the number of unintended pregnancies. According to Dr. Stevens, why might the U.S.’s decision to emphasize planned pregnancy be part of the problem?