Preface:

This book has been written in attempt to bring various sociological concepts up to date.
There are references to the old ideology in the first part and a move towards explaining
current issues in the second. Care was taken to quote sources that were as close to the
original thought as was possible rather than consult translations or interpretations of
original texts.

To understand how the many sociological problems found here came into being it helps
to have a perspective on how sociology has been defined and what can be measured
through an analysis of the information that a researcher in the field might gather. The
author has been careful to site references that back up assumptions and opinions on the
elaborated information. He has also been careful to get as close to the original
information as possible having had to resort to some interpretations along the way
because the original texts could not be found or because reading the original text would
have proven too difficult for scope of this project.

The book begins with a short introduction about the field of sociology and then takes a
vague timeline from its beginnings to present day analysis of current issues. The author
thought it opportune to combine various sociological fields in one compact text as it
makes for easier reading rather than concentrate on one specific sociological field like the
use of empathy. Unfortunately small texts that summarize sociological events from
historical, philosophical, psychological and other scientific processes are lacking.

Recent trends have moved away from an ideological basis and broken sociology into
branches, which discusses issues inherent to a specific social problem. Referring to
earlier ideological thought and the sciences that contributed to sociology helps bring the
science into perspective so that the contemporary student can understand how sociology
came to be and where it is headed.

i
Approaches to Understanding Sociology:

Sociology as the study of society is not just to be taken as the study of groups of men in
different social surroundings. Society can be studied from its components or individuals
who act ether alone or with others to form social groups or gatherings; it can be
understood from a small microcosmic level to a macro level where social systems are in
place and individual acts with them in a certain manner, ideally to obtain some benefit.

One way to study society, people and related phenomena is to investigate what has
caused today’s social world (Gisbert, 2004). It is to approach the field by studying what
effects have been transforming society along the way and how one may predict the future
should those trends continue. So one approach may be to use empirical methods and
observe those changing details over time, see what the results are and then compare them
with data accumulated over a similar period when the causes that induced those changes
were absent.

Traditionally society was studied in terms of classes, which is a term that connotes
socialism and political movements that had their heyday for the most part, until the
collapse of the iron curtain. This does not mean there will not be an upsurge of socialistic
thought in the future. There have also been studies on how society has become
secularized and how other societies have chosen religious paths. The creation of
socialized institutions and social structures such as the armed forces which appeals to
many young as an opportunity for employment or to serve their country has also been
studied. Education has evolved over the years to give students more hands on experience
when it comes to learning a potential trade for example and that has had ramifications in
society as competition has increased for fewer job positions during lean times.

Sociology can then be broken down to its different elements and studied separately:
socio-political contributions, alternatives to traditional life, how society deals with
unemployment and increasing crime statistics when constructive dialogs break down
between the justice systems and the potential offender. The field of social studies can also
relate these elements because they often interact: such as learning about specific women
issues effected by the media might be clearer if one is up-to-date on how women are
represented in the media or aware of how of how the media involves women.

Since media and women studies have become sociological interests in recent times they
could be studied specifically. However, for the student to get the larger picture on how
those specific fields deal with their own concerns, it would help knowing media’s place
in the post-modern industrial world and the relationship of women in society.

1
What A Sociologist Needs:

A sociologist needs to have a good grasp of social phenomena, and be able to study the
relationships of groups within society, this information being vital for the government
and political groups to know what the current social happenings are. Sociologists also
study how cultural changes occur and it takes a special ability for the researcher to be
open and unbiased to the information he may be collecting for a governmental agency or
a private organization.

Sociologists have to be able to analyse data constructively over time especially if there
are some ongoing trends that are a function of time. So a mathematical background in
statistics is especially valuable when graphs and tables showing changing variables
measured against a constant value are plotted. The form of the graph is not as important
as the accuracy of the information however the researcher will see that a pie graph may
be more suitable for demographic comparisons and a histogram is preferable when
plotting male and female reactions to the same constants as can be done when analysing
their response in specific social situations as a percentage.

Whether the person believes in the evolutionary person or not is likely to influence his
work. The fact that that someone has a spiritual should not interfere with a good grasp of
genetics not he is going to analyse genetically influenced data, otherwise why bother
taking a scientific approach altogether? The same can be said for other branches of
science that could conflict with someone’s view of the spiritual world.

Recent Problems Found In Western Society:

Some recent issues occurring in North America are elaborated on

As all cultures have problems, sociologists have been interested in digging beneath the
surface to find out why certain cultures have the problems they do and how participants
can alleviate the stress of coping with a problem providing they can adjust to the
pressures exerted on them, adapt positively, move away or reinvent themselves. It is not
all about succumbing to the power of the dominant social element as alternatively living
people can attest to; it is about being culturally versatile and learning how to live in
different environments.

The US. has recently elected presidents that have been prompting violence in the name of
national security when being able to cross the border between Canada and the US. is still
relatively easy. Creating security mechanism like state of the art of digital passport
identifiers and such has not reduced any terrorist threat and the greatest threat is what
America has done to itself by exporting violence through arm shipments, extending open-
ended nonsensical wars that were generated in the name of oil glut and by consequently
ignoring the health and educational problems at home not to mention abandoning Katrina
victims in 2005 and not responding promptly to the oil spill that took months to cover in
the Gulf of Mexico.

2
Critics ask whether the oil gush there has actually been covered, it is too deep for the
average diver to go down and see! Dependency on oil, fear of terrorist groups more so
than terror itself with complicit American involvement in trading arms for foreign
government turnovers have generated a cultural problem for the established electorate.
More and more people want alternative party voices calling for real change instead of
constant promises that make the Democrats behave very much like the Republicans by
extending the war in Afghanistan.

The late philosopher Popper referred to violence begetting more violence when he talked
about how American worship violence on TV and in film. People have reacted against
the possession of arms there as in Canada and that has become a social issue with hard
liners citing their right to bear arms against what threats there are both real and imagined.
Until Bush brought his hate of other cultures to the forefront there was little threat outside
those few Nazi training camps and hate groups shouting for a violent counter reaction.
Increased violence has then been a large cultural problem for the American way of life if
one wants to dream of apple pies and the land of abundant opportunity scenarios.

The prison population has become a cultural problem in the US as the government has
not gotten rid of Guantanamo and jails many more people percentage wise than its
European counterparts. It shows that there is little interest in getting those people to be
reintroduced back into society in one way or other through supervised work projects that
would cost less than operating those super prisons.

Religious intolerance is another cultural problem with people calling for the burning of
the Koran, calling Islam a violent religion in the Vatican, when the Christian bible is also
dotted with violent passages. Naturally books may be burnt but how will that reduce the
spirit of those who firmly believe in an alternative to Christianity? The burning has been
linked to the building of a mosque at ground zero. All this points out to a cultural
problem of intolerance to whatever is not an American value, but American values are
diverse as immigrants settled there over the past few centuries. All this is said when the
political establishment was allies with Saddam and the Bin Laden family before the war
started in the name of big profits. Corporate greed has also become a cultural problem
with people questioning the use of their investment funds abroad and poppy plants are
still thriving in Afghanistan in spite of a call to get the local farmers to convert to other
cash crops.

So life has become harder for opportunity seekers and profit makers worldwide and one
wonders if all that will go bust and how long Americans, Europeans and other “have”
peoples can make a claim about providing inventions and scientific opportunities that
have become part of everyman’s hope for positive change in their environment. Since
cultural problems vary from nation to nation having a particular culture, further
information on those difficulties can be seen in articles dealing with those regions.

3
Interestingly Canada shares some of the cultural problems that its cousins have like
obesity, unemployment and a rising prison population but at least money is being spent
on educational advancement and decent health coverage. Canada has it’s distinctive
French English divide with Quebec separatists still calling for an independent province
when it is already de facto independent abroad as there are Quebec Houses and the
province promotes its own trade abroad. Besides this point, those who originally
supported the separatist cause are also aware of current governmental needs to pocket
increasing amounts of money for bureaucratic purposes.

The Social Contract in Europe:

When people decide there is a need to be governed, then there is a push towards
statehood and the setting up of a political regime that maintains political control and the
application of the rule of law. This is what lays as the basis for the theory of social
contracts and the works of Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke as they put forth their ideas on
what would be the best form of political control. It all occurred at the time of French
Revolution when Europe made a switch over from autocracy to a representative
government. But credit can also be given to other monarchies that catalyzed the change
from a one-person rule to legislatures.

Monarchs like Catherine the Great of Russia, Joseph III of Austria were liberal enough in
their rules to have made changes towards representation. If nobility was not abolished,
then the monarch wanted to hear the voice of her constituents as Catherine did.

Hobbes was known to have preferred authoritarian monarchy, which sounds like
oligarchy, or the application of rule by a sovereign, self-appointed or hereditary
individual that rules without having any power checked or rules without a democratic
process where decisions could be debated on, before being applied as law. The person
accedes to the throne usually without any opposition, through his place in line to power
much the way that one expects Prince Charles to be the next King of Great Britain. This
has been the practice for the constitutional monarchy, whose power has been checked
over the centuries since the Magna Carta when King John’s power was checked by his
nobles.

Locke preferred a more representative form of government, which would step away from
the monarchy and rule its domain as a republic. That would obviously entail a
constitution and a system of checks and balances without an elected governmental
system. Rousseau envisioned a type of social contract where the monarchy would have
limited powers, as do constitutional ones.

4
Socialism in Europe:

The advent of socialism since its foundation in Europe has shown that there has been
some increased awareness about other modes of living chiefly one that is not extravagant.
The way that politics is moving today, one can see that the idea of being true to some
philosophical meaning behind this social-political phenomenon is an ideal; socialism as
we know it with politicians involved in corrupt at political manoeuvres has tainted both
socialist and non-socialist parties in recent times.

There are also stereotypes that left-wingers are dressed in rags and bent on bringing
down the affluent and rich at their expense. Critics of socialist politics equate present day
politics exemplary of what Marx had intended when there have various forms of
socialism throughout Europe since Marx as each one tries to see itself as a legitimate
successor of what was intended in the eighteen hundreds. Critics of socialized medicine
do not think of the benefits of socialized medicine and that medicine that would be
available to millions of Americans that cannot afford prescription drugs, they think of
having to be forced into a system where they would have to forfeit contributions for the
greater good of the poorer population.

There are stigmas associated to being socialist such as not being productive, being a
parasite to the state and being dressed in rags. This might come out of the mouth of a
Texan oil magnate or out of any narrow minded individual who does not believe in the
distribution of wealth between classes or who thinks that going on welfare is something
that could be avoided for people who have become incapacitated and unable to be as
productive as their healthier employed colleagues.

Socialists wear any kind of clothing and clothing never makes the person just as plenty of
rich people dress simply. The issue for socialists today is how to carry party platforms
that appeal to the older populations and to the youth, which will eventually become older.
In conservative democracies there is what can be considered as socialistic characteristics,
unwillingness to promote free trade for products coming into their country and so certain
protectionism arises.

Protectionism had its roots when the northern union states sought to protect their
manufactured goods from competing prices of British goods. It also occurred in the US.
for fear that foreign goods would fill their market and cause rampant unemployment.
Oddly the markets that eventually produced goods that found their routes to the US were
founded largely by American dollars invested abroad. The establishment of those markets
were and are a practice among modern capitalists and to a lesser degree socialist societies
that concentrated more on their domestic product.

5
The bureaucracy, which came to be associated to socialist governments, tended to be
heavy and unproductive, for countries such as the late Soviet Union where there were

tiers of bureaucrats each being responsible to the next. The cost of operating such a
socialist regime was too high (Malia, 1995). This is an argument used when discussing
the disadvantages of supporting a socialist regime of the type that dominated Eastern
Europe not to mention the ineffectiveness in promoting material change; communist lead
governments were associated with drab coloured cities, food lines and a poorer
inventiveness compared to the liveliness, abundance of wares and creativity of the
western half of Europe under non-socialist regimes.

Some consider communism as a form of socialism but it can also be considered as an

extreme left form of socialism: for original Marxists, the term socialism referred to a
transitional state between being capitalistic and therefore exploitive of the working
masses and having a classless society where everything is shared. That sharing meant that
people in communist countries would have their individual opinions discounted for the
good of the masses. Unions were unheard of until Poland began to experiment with their
first union after years of repressive government controls.

Recent Trends In Marketing and Sales:

If I had to choose a new career it would be working in a government affiliated company

helping to find clients for certain businesses or helping businesses target their markets
better. Today it seems that this would be in the interest of provincial and even federal
programs that businesses would be encouraged. One sure way would be in making sure
that businesses would not fail because they did not find the right niche. Here is how I
would go about finding that job.

New marketing graduates ought to go directly to the governmental agencies to see if there
was a need for marketing personnel of the type I described. I would speak to the human
resources person to see how realistic it is for them to acquire someone who helps
generate business in the province. They might suggest that encouraged foreign invested
businesses have to do with an optimum business flow and a low overhead. If the market
is large enough there would be a greater need and a smaller market would mean that
marketing requirements are smaller.

Today we allow diverse businesses to spring up, but perhaps there are going to be more
government controls in the future or affiliated agencies that will police new
entrepreneurs. The security business line would be lucrative since that still seems to be a
buzz word even tough someone can still find his way into the cockpit of an airline by
observing what combination codes are used by airline personnel.

6
 Buying and installing security cameras and stations is also a business in itself, so city
officials will probably weigh the fact of whether or not to install street cameras in certain
shopping areas or not. I see an increased incorporation of security measures not because
security is a real issue today; it has always been an issue at least since the cold war days.

I would not be in favour of disallowing someone to open up a business because he did not
pay a security tax when he does not need the surveillance. I see that more jobs are going
to be home based as more shopping will be done on-line but this is not going to replace
going to the store for many people who still like to touch the real product. There may be
more companies like ebay which will list merchandise and allow entrepreneurs to
showcase their work with a relatively low overhead since they would not have to
responsible for store rentals, stockroom spaces or having to deal with the security
measures needed for a real location. If anything the storeowners could start out as
minimally sized shops that would advertise the essential and then refer people to their
websites for the bulk of their merchandise.