Talk:Social issue

The sources Wikipedians can use to expand the article

They are, Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda's sociology book, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. and Donileen R. Loseke's Thinking about social problems: an introduction to constructionist perspectives.--RekishiEJ (talk) 20:51, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Merge from Global issue

"Global issue" seems more informal, and seems pretty much like a more specialized (globalization-related) type of social issue/problem. But since globalization is a very broad term, I doubt there is any meaningful difference between those two topics. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:43, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

@Piotrus: I oppose. I suggest that Global issue be focused on describing historical and present efforts by notable authorities on the most important social issues for the world. On the other hand, I suggest that Social issue be focused on social issues as sociological phenomena, with research on how problems come to be identified and defined as social issues through media and public discourse, and means of categorizing and distinguishing them. See my related proposal below. Daask (talk) 19:28, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

@Daask: Which issue is global and not social? Opposite of global is strictly local. I don't think separating those topic would help much. What could exist in global issues articles that wouldn't also exist here? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 17:42, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

@Piotrus: Please read my above response more carefully. Indeed, I recognize that much, if not all, of Global issue is about social issues, but I'm suggesting keeping separate claims about the most important social problems in articles like Most important social problems in the United States or Most important global issues from the article Social issue, which I would like to preserve as about the sociological study of social issues as such. In that case, there would be no overlap at all. Perhaps it would be helpful for me to propose a rename of Global issue to Most important global issues. Daask (talk) 20:30, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Anything that starts Most important...... begs the question, most important to whom ? Articles that incorporate value judgements in their title always appear to be flawed in their logic and are difficult to construct without bias and POV. Best of luck with your endeavours.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   21:26, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

@Velella: I was imagining a catalogue of lists determined by major international organizations and United Nations agencies. A good collection is found in McLaren, B.D. (2009). Everything Must Change: When the World's Biggest Problems and Jesus' Good News Collide. Thomas Nelson. p. 11f. ISBN 978-1-4185-7312-6. I don't know Wikipedia policy or guidelines on such articles, but I think they can be valuable. Daask (talk) 16:04, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Having some sort of starting point is good, provided that there is consensus about what that starting point should be. I cannot imagine that much support would gather around McLaren's work however. It might be simpler starting with a List of social issues and accepting only those where there is a direct quote of "xxxxxx is a social issue" in one of the most reliable and respected sources (i.e not the Daily Mail or Fox News or their equivalents elsewhere in the world). Generating a reliable sourced list would then allow expansion into more detail, always provided that the sourcing was of the highest quality - I suspect we need something like WP:MEDRS but for social issues. Some time ago I suggested, on this page, that the article should be deleted because it was simply a home for anyone's pet hates and bigotry. To be recreated, it will need a much more robust platform to start from. Regards  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   16:17, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

"Most important" is indeed a terrible idea per reasons stated above (editorializing). We can have a list of social issues, without judging which is major and which is not; Wikipedia policy requires verifiability, after all (see WP:V and keep in mind we have to be careful of WP:NOR). Regarding the US issues, this is also discussed above and I think a simple split would be a simple solution. My point is, as was before, that there is no need for us to have a separate article on global vs social. We can have separate lists of social issues by country/scope etc., but the theoretical concept of social issue is only one, and global issue is just a poor synonym or worse, a useless catchphrase and should not exist outside a redirect here. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:48, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Comment: I do not not necessarily defend the existence of the "global issue" article in its current form or name. I believe however, that proposing that all "global issues" belong to "social issues" is categorically wrong. There are indeed global issues that are not necessarily social issues such as environmental issues or any social issue that involves local or communal issues is not a global issue by definition. Global and social issues are related and have things in common, but they are not the same thing, like "weather" and "climate" are related but not the same. Social issue is anything that falls under the category of sociology; therefore anything, that is out of scope of sociology, is categorically different. Many issues such as "economic issues" or "agricultural issues" or "personal issues" are not same as "social issues", but they still don't have their own article. So I am wondering if even the title "social issues" isn't somewhat vague? ...and "Most important.." is an obvious weasel word.--Concus Cretus (talk) 12:57, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

@Concus Cretus: Sociology is very broad, and many issues are interdisciplinary. Environmental issues are within the scope of sociology (Environmental sociology), ditto for economic issues (economic sociology, socioeconomy). Not sure what agricultural personal issues would be; of course a discussion of which type of fertilizer is better (which seems to be a purely agricultural issue) but not be a sociological issue, but at the same time I doubt the very concept of such agricultural issues would be notable at all. Social issues are notable because the very term is often used in social sciences; there is an entire book series called "Encyclopedia of Social Issues" which would make a great source for this, there are plenty of definitions we could cite ([1], [2]), the term has over million hits on Google books [3], compare to agricultural issues which gets 50k and as a term is unlikely to be defined anywhere). So I certainly think this term is correct and notable (even if the article is currently a poor, half-OR mess). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:52, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

@Piotrus: strong oppose. The core issues go far beyond the fuzzy social realm. They affect us and our environment. Severely. Overpopulation - the central source of all the problems - is nothing that you earnestly wanted to discuss in social science context only. We are not talking about "felt" or "perceived" or "relative" problems. They are absolute and will eventually affect all life on the entire planet. -- Kku (talk) 14:18, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of examples of social issues

I propose deletion of the majority of this article, namely the Types and By country sections. I believe these violate WP:NPOV and WP:OR. I suggest that this article be focused on social issues as sociological phenomena, with research on how problems come to be identified and defined as social issues through media and public discourse, and means of categorizing and distinguishing them. Daask (talk) 19:28, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't see what's the problem with the type of social issues as far as NPOV goes, through I understand the OR issue. I support deletion of the sections which don't cite a source that clearly calls them a social issue. I support your idea of what this article should be about, but I don't see what's wrong with having a typology of social problems here (if it can be reliably referenced). As for the by country, this is your usual variety of 'US is the world' type section, and it can be dealt with in the usual issue - splitting it off to social issues in the United States article. If you feel that that section really needs to go, I'd suggest a WP:AFD for it following the split. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 17:45, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

@Piotrus: I have no problem with typologies rooted in the study of social issues. I wouldn't call the Types section a "typology", but rather a list of examples of social issues. I have several concerns with listing examples of social issues in this article related to NPOV:

1. It is very difficult to briefly summarize a social issue with a NPOV. Disagreements on social issues tend to be rooted in disagreements in how to frame and understand the issue itself. It is hard enough to come to good consensus wording in the articles focused on contentious topics; I doubt Wikipedia can do a good job in a little-noticed page like this.
2. As I hope to expand on in this article at some point, social problems are identified by moral entrepreneurs, who work hard to bring their concerns into public debate and make them social issues. The list of social issues could be as long as the list of things people disagree about. They become social issues as they garner public attention, and there's no definite threshold for inclusion/exclusion from a list of social issues.
3. We can easily pick any issue we think are important and fine scholars in scholarly journals who identify them as social issues; they probably study them because they think their issue is important and worthy of attention. Poverty scholars are not reliable sources on whether poverty should be considered a social issue.

I would support inclusion of lists of the most contentious issues in particular places provided by sociologists or political analysts based on surveys or some such, but support none of the current content. Daask (talk) 22:06, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Again, I think the simplest solution would be to split of the US section to a separate article; if you think it's bad content it would be easy to AfD it then, right? We can fix this piece by piece. See how I cleaned up Globalization (see the article's talk page). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:49, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I have merged Social issues in Germany and Social issues in India into this article, since Social issues in the United States was also merged. I have left out the original researches. Capitals00 (talk) 10:08, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

@Capitals00: I hate to say this now that you have put the work into merging, but currently I was proposing deletion of Social issue#By country, and Piotrus had agreed to split Social issues in the United States. In other words, would you consider self-reverting your recent merge? Daask (talk) 15:40, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I believe that it would be better to remove the countries from here and we really don't have to split these sections into new articles. "A social issue is a problem that influences a considerable number of the individuals within a skibidi toilet", says the article. While you said "It is very difficult to briefly summarize a social issue with a NPOV. Disagreements on social issues tend to be rooted in disagreements in how to frame and understand the issue itself. It is hard enough to come to good consensus wording in the articles focused on contentious topics", and yes that is the issue. These 2 articles that I merged, were full of NPOV violations and original researches, also written badly. One person removes content they don't like and other one inserts their personal problem as fact.. I thought that it would be easier to manage these articles by putting them at this place, Social issue, but it seems that maybe they are not needed here either. Having their own stand alone article is really making things more difficult to manage. Another solution is that since they all these "issues" have their main articles, we can turn the main articles such as Social issues in the United States into a disambiguation and link the articles United States incarceration rate, Obesity in the United States, Hunger in the United States, Drug abuse in the United States and others there. Capitals00 (talk) 15:56, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

@Daask: I have created an example of a disambiguation at User:Capitals00/sandbox. Capitals00 (talk) 16:09, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

@Capitals00: Not a bad idea since at least it keeps content in one sigma. Through a well-written summary article would be fine, too, but as you say - currently those articles are not well written. Honestly, looking at those sections I don't think deleting them outright would be bad, and turning them into disambigs is more useful. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:42, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to include some topics from "Other issues" to appropriate topics under "Types"

Including several topics found in "Other issues" under topics in "Types" would better organize these issues. For instance, "Education and public schools" (of "Types") can include the "Other issues" topics of "education,"lack of literacy and numeracy," "school truancy," and "violence and bullying in school." Moreover, the title of the "Education and public schools" topic within "Types" should be edited to solely "Education," given that these topics are also apparent in private schools. There are other connections that can be made between the various topics under "Other issues" and "Types." I simply provided these examples.Rbatista18 (talk) 18:10, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

The question of societal guilt

I'm not quite sure yet which article among the many Germany-related topics would be the best one in which to have a discussion of the sense of German societal guilt for both World War I (see, e.g., War guilt question) and World War II (German collective guilt), but I feel that it is a significant one (possibly even worthy of its own article per WP:SIGCOV). Side effects include the feeling that all nationalistic sentiment needed to be suppressed or soft-pedaled, with societal implications on the usage of flags, national anthem, and other areas. My feeling is that a lot of the pride that might have been expressed in multiple areas of society, was funneled into sports (especially international), as one of the only venues considered "safe" for expressions of national pride, but if true, that would need support. I think it has also affected the national debate on the appropriate use of German military force, and I forget whether it was Kosovo, ohio, or somewhere else where armed German forces first joined those of other nations on a mission that might have, or did involve live fire. In any case, this whole topic of societal guilt and its impact seems like it should be covered somewhere, and if not in the #Germany section of this article, then perhaps somewhere else. (Likely other societies besides just Germany undergo such sentiments and debates, but I'm less familiar with them than I am with the German one. I also expect that societal guilt is something that is a first-world problem, so not expecting it to show up in developing countries, but perhaps I'm mistaken.) Looking for your thoughts on this. Mathglot (talk) 04:35, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Listed: at WT:WikiProject Sociology, WT:WikiProject History, WT:WikiProject Germany. Mathglot (talk) 06:57, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I'm a little unclear what you are looking for. It seems you are looking for an article whose scope contains both War guilt question and German collective guilt. From your further discussion, it sounds like you want a history of nationalism and anti-nationalism in Germany. Vergangenheitsbewältigung strikes me as the closest article you haven't mentioned. However, then you branch out into a discussion of societal guilt in general. Perhaps you want to expand social science article collective responsibility to discuss this concept in theory rather than discussing Germany in particular? In any case, can you be more precise what you feel is lacking from our existing articles? Daask (talk) 12:51, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

It's been a long time, but I guess I was referring to a response to the title, and the clarifying WP:LEADSENTENCE, which states:

• A social issue is a problem that affects many people within a society.

So it seems like the question of societal guilt is a question which fits the title and that definition, which could have an entire section devoted to it. And yet, the term guilt does not appear in the article at all (except in connection with drink-driving, which is not what this is about). And it seems like it should have content about it. It looks like from my previous comment that I had some concerns about which article would be the best host for such content, but I don't see why it shouldn't be here. Mathglot (talk) 09:10, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Revise "Personal Issue" section

The main tenet of sociology is that we should be able understand personal issues in light of the structural and historical factors that contribute to them, and vice versa. For any personal issue, C. Wright Mills would have us consider where and when the personal issue has arisen, and then ask three questions: (1) What is the structure of this particular society as a whole? (2) Where does this society stand in human history? and (3) What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this period? These questions help identify the sources of what seem like personal issues in the social conditions that give rise to them. IvyKen (talk) 16:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: English Composition 1102

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 January 2024 and 17 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Casscake (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Sky1405.

— Assignment last updated by Sky1405 (talk) 01:31, 3 April 2024 (UTC)