SN- Lecture 2

Block 1

Social Problemsin Social Sciences

Aim of Block 1

Aim of Block 1

To discuss what are the main difficulties in addressing social problems (Lecture 1)

Aim of Block 1

To discuss what are the main difficulties in addressing social problems (Lecture 1)

To cover the approach used in this course: micro-macro-micro link (Lecture 2)

Lecture 2

understanding & explaining them?

Social Problems

The tricks of common sense

Aim Lecture 2

Aim Lecture 2

To discuss why social problems appear unscientific

Aim Lecture 2

To discuss why social problems appear unscientific

To describe how common sense misleads us in our interpretation of the world

Simplicity of social problems

Simplicity of social problemsIn 1998, John Gribbin’s critique to this book stated that “all of social sciences is an oxymoron, and any physicist threatened by cuts in funding ought to consider a career in the social sciences, where it ought to be possible to solve the problems that social scientists are worked up about in a trice”

Simplicity of social problems

Social problems are trivial and should not be hard to solve?

In 1998, John Gribbin’s critique to this book stated that “all of social sciences is an oxymoron, and any physicist threatened by cuts in funding ought to consider a career in the social sciences, where it ought to be possible to solve the problems that social scientists are worked up about in a trice”

Budget CutsSenator Kay Bailey Hutchison


Proposed doubling the funds for medical sciences (2005)



Proposed to cut the entire social and behavioral science budget of the National Science Foundation



Proposed to cut the entire social and behavioral science budget of the National Science Foundation

What was she thinking?

Scientific ProblemsPresumably she doesn’t think that

social problems are unimportant



immigration



immigration economic development



inequalityimmigration economic development



She doesn’t consider social problems to be scientific problems, worthy of the prolonged attention of serious scientists.

It appears...




She doesn’t consider social problems to be scientific problems, worthy of the prolonged attention of serious scientists.

It appears...


skepticism about what social science has to offer...

Question

What does sociology has to say about the world that an

intelligent person couldn’t have figured out on her own?

Question

What does sociology has to say about the world that an

intelligent person couldn’t have figured out on her own?

Valid but... there is a misconception?

Question

Paul Lazarsfeld

Example

Paul Lazarsfeld

Example 600,000 service men study

Paul Lazarsfeld

Example 600,000 service men study

After WWII

Paul Lazarsfeld

Example

Findings...

“Men from rural backgrounds were usually in better spirits during the Army life than soldiers from city backgrounds”

600,000 service men study

After WWII

Aha! That makes perfect sense. Rural men in the 1940s were accustomed to harsher living standards and more physical labor than city men, so naturally they had an easier time adjusting.

Question

Why did we need such a vast and expensive study to tell me what I

could have figured out on my own?

Question

Example

Example

All findings were in fact the exact opposite of what the study actually found.

Example

All findings were in fact the exact opposite of what the study actually found.

“City men, not rural men, were happier during their Army life”

Of course, city men are more used to working in crowded conditions and in corporations, with chains of command, strict standards of clothing and social etiquette. That’s obvious!

Exactly!!!

Exactly!!!

When every answer and its opposite appear equally obvious, then, something is wrong with the entire argument of obviousness

Once we know the answer

Once we know the answer

the explanation seems natural to us

Social PhenomenaProblems in social sciences are activities that involve understanding, predicting, changing, or responding to the behavior of people


Politicians trying to decide how to deal with urban poverty



people in these positions feel that the problems they are contemplating are mostly within their ability to solve



people in these positions feel that the problems they are contemplating are mostly within their ability to solve

It’s not Rocket Science...

We are much better at planning the flight path of an interplanetary rocket

than...


managing the economythan...



merging two corporations



merging two corporationspredicting how many copies of a

book will sell




book will sell

why?


Rocket Science seems hard & problems having to do with people seem like they ought to be just a matter of common sense?



book will sell

why?

Common Sense

Common SenseThe paradox of common sense is that even as it helps us make sense of the world, it can actively undermine our ability to understand it

“Rules” of Behavior

“Rules” of BehaviorNew York Subway - Rush hour - milgram experiment: ask for a seat


R1. Crowded train & squeezing: spreading


R1. Crowded train & squeezing: spreading

R2. Elevator & facing direction: unfacing

Rules

No matter where we live, our lives are guided and shaped by unwritten rules

Rules

No matter where we live, our lives are guided and shaped by unwritten rules

We expect reasonable people to know them all

Life at the ArmyAfter high school I did my military service


intense place


intense place barking instructors


intense place barking instructorscleaning and running before sunrise



lots and lots of rules




it seemed a complicated & confusing new life





Punishments





howeverLife in the army was more like a game than real life sometimes you won, sometimes you lost

Punishments





howeverLife in the army was more like a game than real life sometimes you won, sometimes you lostNever take it personally

Punishments





howeverLife in the army was more like a game than real life sometimes you won, sometimes you lostNever take it personally

After 6 months, what would have terrified us on our arrival seemed entirely natural - now the rest of the world seemed strange

Punishments

When rules become familiar

We all have experienced something like this:


New environments that at first seem strange and intimidating and filled with rules that we don’t understand





Learning to fit in at a new school




Learning to fit in at a new school Learning to live in a foreign country




Learning to fit in at a new schoolLearning the procedures of a new job

Learning to live in a foreign country




but...

eventually become familiar

Learning to fit in at a new schoolLearning the procedures of a new job

Learning to live in a foreign country

Games of life

Games of lifewhen you think about how complex these games can be, it seems kind of amazing that we’re capable of playing them at all


yet...

In the same way that young children learn a new language seemingly by osmosis


yet...

In the same way that young children learn a new language seemingly by osmosis

We learn to navigate even the most novel social environments, more or less without even knowing that we’re doing it

Common Sensemiraculous piece of human intelligence

it enables us to solve these problems



What to wear when we go to work in the morning




How to behave in the street or the subway

it tells us





it tells usWhen to obey the rules






When to quietly ignore them






When to quietly ignore them

When to stand up and challenge them

Two features

Carl TaylorPresident American Sociological Association

Annual meeting 1946

Two features

By common sense I mean the knowledge possessed by those who live in midst and are a part of the social situations and processes which sociologists seek to understand. The term thus used may be synonymous with folk knowledge, or it may be the knowledge possessed by engineers, by the practical politicians, by those who gather and publish news, or by others who handle or work with and must interpret and predict the behavior of persons and groups

Carl TaylorPresident American Sociological Association

Annual meeting 1946

1. PracticalUnlike formal systems of knowledge: science or mathematics


From common sense perspectiveIt is good enough to know that something is true, or that it is the way of things



No need to know why in order to benefit from the knowledge



No need to know why in order to benefit from the knowledge

In contrast with theoretical knowledgeIt does not reflect on the world, but instead attempts to deal with it simple as it is

2. FocalizedFormal knowledge:Able to organize specific findings into logical categories decribed by general principles


but,Common senseAble to deal with every concrete situation on its own terms



Example:Behavior in front of our boss (what we say or wear) differs from how we behave in front of our friends or parents



Example:Behavior in front of our boss (what we say or wear) differs from how we behave in front of our friends or parentsit just knows what the appropriate thing to do is in any particular situation

Practical 1

Experiment

Not Common At Allit varies over time and across cultures

In industrialized western countries, senders offer a fifty-fifty split, and receivers typically reject offers below 30%

For economists, it is puzzlingOne is better than nothing “rule”

Why this behavior?

Fairness - It doesn’t seem fair to exploit a situation just because you can

Common Sense: People care about fairness as well as money

15 small-scale societies5 continents

What is fair?

Offered about a quarter of the total

Machiguenga Tribe - Peru

Virtually no offers were refused

Sender

Receiver

Better than fifty-fifty

Rejection of hyper-fair as much as unfair offers

Sender

Receiver

Au & Gnau Tribes - Papua

So...

What explains the differences?

Gift exchange tradition

Receiving a gift obligates the receiver to reciprocate at some point in the future

What might have seemed like free money to a Western participant looked to the Au or Gnau very much like an unwanted obligation

Bonds only with immediate family

They saw little obligation to make fair offers to strangers, and experienced very little of the resentment of Westerns with unequal splits - even low offers seemed a good deal

Common SenseOnce you understand the features of the Au, Gnau or Machiguenga, their puzzling behavior starts to

seem entirely reasonable

Once accepting their understanding of the world, their common sense logic works exactly as ours does

It is simply what any reasonable person would do if they had grown up in that culture

Not Common At Allit is common only to the extent that two people share sufficiently similar social and cultural experiences

It is encoded in the social norms, customs and practices of the world

What seems reasonable to one human, might seem curious, bizarre, or even repugnant to another

Slavery, sacrifice, cannibalism, female genital mutilationdespised by most contemporary cultures

considered entirely legitimate in different times and places

Reservations

That what is self-evident to one person can be seen as silly by

another should give us pause about the reliability of common sense as a basis for understanding the world

The misuse of Common Sense

it’s useful in our daily lives

everyday life is effectively broken up into small problems

we can solve them almost independently

it’s problematic in social problems

take the problem of urban poverty in the US

planners have set out to solve it and repeatedly fail

Urban Poverty

“There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend- the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars- we could wipe out all our slums in ten years... But look what we have built with the first several billions: Low-income projects that have become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.”

Jane Jacobs - Urban ActivistThe life and death of great American cities (1961)

IronicAround the same time J.J. reached this conclusion, work began on the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, the largest public housing project ever built.

No need for science?In the daily world our intuition works

wellWe rarely feel the need to use the scientific method

Why are most social groups so homogeneous in terms of race, education level, and even gender?

Why do somethings become popular and not others?

Is more choice better or worse?For many of us we feel we could come up with perfectly satisfactory

explanations ourselves

Understanding the social world

It is wonderful at making sense of the world, but not necessarily at understanding it

It gives us an illusion of understanding

Undercuts our motivation of treating social problems as we do in medicine, engineering, & science.

Consequence, it actually inhibits our understanding of the world

Check List Social problems appear to be non-

scientific problems

Common sense make answers to social problems come natural to us

it varies over time and across culture

It helps us make sense of the world but not really understand it

Comments?

SN- Lecture 2

Technology

Transcript of SN- Lecture 2