Social Structure as the Basic Unit of Analysis

The Person-Blame Approach

People generally understand social problems as some sort of pathology experienced by individuals. This approach to understanding social problems is what Eitzen calls the person-blame approach.

This approach tends to assume that universal norms exist.  Behavior is deviant depending on how much it strays from these norms.

Most people define a social problem as behavior that deviates from the norms and standards of society.

The system is not only taken for granted; it has, for most people, an aura of sacredness because of traditions and customs they associate with the system.

From the person-blame approach, those who deviate are seen as the source of trouble. The obvious question observers ask is, why do these people deviate from norms? Because most people view themselves as law abiding, they feel those who deviate do so because of some kind of unusual circumstances: accidents, illness, personal defect, character flaw, or maladjustment. For example, a person-blamer might argue that a poor person is poor because he or she is not bright enough to succeed.  In other words, the deviant is the cause of his or her own problem.

The following are examples of perspectives that  replay on person-blame approaches.

Cultural Deprivation

Eitzen et al. (2009:16) contends that people who blame the victim often cite cultural deprivation as the "cause" of social problems.  Culture is seen as the "cause" of the problem.  In other words, people who blame the victims see the culture of the group with the problem as inferior and deficient when compared to the culture of the dominant group in society.

For example, kids who don't do well is school have parents who don't speak proper English or who are uneducated. 

Recidivism

How successful are Prisons in rehabilitating criminals? Not VERY! Three-fourths of the released criminals are re-arrested within four years.  Recidivism refers to ex-offenders who are arrested for another criminal offense once they have been released from jail.

Why are recidivism rates so high?  The person-blame approach might argue that the fault lies in the characteristics of the individual.  Maybe they are greedy.  Perhaps they have higher than usual levels of aggression.  Person-blamers may also point out the ex-criminals lack of social controls (in Eitzen et al. 2009:16).

Social Darwinism

The discoveries of Charles Darwin had a profound impact on other branches of scientific inquiry. Charles Darwin, of course, is famous for his Theory of Evolution. In the world of biology the species most fit survived while those less fit eventually became extinct.

Social Darwinism is a distorted view of Darwin's theory.   Many social scientists, most notably Herbert Spencer, attempted to apply the logic of Charles Darwin to the social world. The essence of the social Darwinist perspective is that races or cultures, who occupied a "superior position" in the social world, deserved that position because they were the most socially fit (Eitzen et al. 2009:18).

According to Spencer "the poor are poor because they are unfit." The poor are poor because they do not have the intellectual ability to be wealthy. 

Spencer argued that "poverty is nature's way of 'excreting ... unhealthy, imbecile, slow, vacillating, faithless members' of society in order to make room for the fit" (Eitzen and Baca-Zinn, 1994:170). 

Social Darwinists, therefore, oppose social programs because, they argue, social programs perpetuate the existence of the unfit group who would probably disappear in the absence of social welfare.