Group+Four

SOCIAL CHANGE: Gun Control

INTRODUCTION

As it states in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" (Kopel, par 2). This Second Amendment of our constitution is under great debate in our society today. Many people believe that by making all gun ownership illegal, the use of guns will diminish and the occurrence of crime involving guns will decrease. But d oes limiting the number of people who have legal access to guns lower the crime rates in the United Sates? Will making the process of obtaining a weapon more difficult prevent law-abiding citizens from attaining guns and therefore reduce the number of deaths caused by shootings? This proposal appears to solve many of society’s issues involving violence, unfortunately, many of the crimes involving guns are perpetrated by criminals who have gained access to a weapon illegally. For our project, we are choosing to observe this issue through the eyes of a Social Conflict theorist. According to this perspective, gun control laws limiting access to guns will leave the law-abiding citizens weaponless and powerless, while criminals continue to find ways to attain firearm resources illegally. It will give power to those people who access to the illegal purchase weapons, while at the same time prohibiting protection to their innocent victims. A compromise must be made and proactive people must make a stand in order to improve the gun control situation. Guns themselves are not evil; rather guns put into the hands of unlawful people will frequently result in destruction. For this research project we will introduce the social conflict theory and what it means, including the hypothesis and variables. We will then provide some researched data to support our claims, followed by a conclusion which includes our resolution to the gun control problem.

THEORY

SOCIAL CHANGE INTRODUCTION introduce topic and perspective very briefly, outline what The TTt  The Gun Control controversy is an important factor in the quest for Social Change. The Social Conflict perspective emphasizes the distribution of power and allocation of resources. In other words, from this perspective, the focus is on who benefits and who suffers from the existing system. It is a materialist view and according to Karl Marx, our society is compiled of a history of power struggles. There are two important variables present in this research case. The independent variables are those people who possess the guns in our country. The dependent variable is the rate of gun related crimes in America. The idea of gun control, as seen through the eyes of a social conflict theorist, is yet another issue that produces inequality in and amongst society. Under the current gun control laws some people have the right to bear arms, but with many conditions. Other people do not have the right to bear arms at all, such as minors and ex-convicts. Then there is the criminal class whose members typically do not have the right to own guns, but who disregard the law and own firearms none the less. This imbalance in those who possess guns leads to an unequal distribution of the power and resources connected to the right to bear arms. Law-abiding citizens may be hindered by gun control laws, such as not being able to carry a concealed weapon. On the hand, criminals who do not abide by gun laws, benefit from gun control laws because they possess an abundance of firearms and the power that comes with them. To fix this problem, keeping in mind the Social Conflict perspective, the right to bear arms needs to be distributed evenly. Our goal for this project is to discover what is currently being done to change the social imbalance caused by gun control and to learn what we can do to support the cause.

An organization that would allow us to represent the support of the Second Amendment would be the National Rifle Association (NRA). Within this group we could participate in gun safety awareness clinics as well as educate people on how to properly use a gun. By being a member of the NRA, we could be politically active and keep abreast of current gun legislation that is being considered in congress.

LITERATURE REVIEW

For this research project on Gun Control and Social Cahnge we looked at two articles for reference, one by David Lampo (2000) and one by Franklin Zimring (1975). The article by Lampo (2000) gives facts about gun control and essentially proves that lower citizen gun ownership does not lower crime rates, but tends to have the opposite effect. According to this article, gun ownership and concealed carry weapons have a direct relationship with lower violent crime rates as well. Studies have shown that the 31 states which allow citizens to carry firearms have much lower robbery, violent crime and murder rates than those which do not allow citizens concealed carry licenses. This idea of Gun Control creates a severe imbalance in society because when law-abiding citizens hand over their guns, the only ones left with weapons are criminals. With this knowledge, criminals wont have to think twice before committing a crime. When citizens have a proper means to self-defense, criminals are swayed from certain damaging behaviors. Also, when unarmed citizens have to rely on police officers for defense, the help will undoubtedly get to the scene too late; however, when citizens are able to protect themselves, many crimes can be avoided. Proof of this theory exists in countries like Switzerland and Israel where citizens are allowed to carry weapons and the crime rates are lower, much like those in the 31 states that allow concealed carry. Furthermore, the argument that citizens should not own guns is not valid because gun related deaths among children are extremely low. In fact, more children die from drowning, bicycle accidents, and even space heaters. The reading by Zimring (1975), produces the Gun Control argument from a more supportive position, indicating that preventing or limiting citizen gun ownership would actually decrease crime. However, the statistics provided in this article prove that crime rate are still increasing despite the fact that the government is limiting citizens' abilities to own guns. Both of these articles prove that Gun Control is causing inequality in society and will cause social imbalance in the future. Currently no one is doing much of anything to implement change in Gun Control to create more equality. The government is pushing for total Gun Control or prohibition, and individuals and organizations like the National Rifle Association are protesting, but nothing has been done. Within the realm of our research, it is evident that government implementation of further Gun Control laws would have a reverse effect of the intended outcome: instead of lower crime and gun-related deaths, these numbers would, in fact, increase creating greater inequality in the distribution of the power and resources associated with gun ownership. This is clearly a huge social issue that needs to be changed, which is the purpose of this project.

SOCIAL CHANGE INTRODUCTION introduce topic and perspective very briefly, outline what each.. SOLUTION

Based on the information about gun control in the theory and literature review it is clear that, from a Social Conflict Perspective, Gun Control laws create inequality in society. This unequal distribution of the power and resources associated with the possession of firearms is something that we need to change in society. As pointed out previously, the current concentration of firearms are possessed by criminals, who do not abide by gun possession laws, and law enforcement officials, who are called to the crime scene after the fact. This leaves law-abiding citizens without any resources for self-defense in the event of a burglary or robbery; therefore, the bulk of the population must rely on law enforcement for defense, creating an unreasonable burden for law enforcement officers. In order to create a more even distribution of firearms in America we should petition the government to streamline the application process for law-abiding citizens who are attempting to possess a firearm legally and to have stricter penalties for those people who are selling or obtaining guns illegally. This Social Change would potentially allow for more law-abiding citizens to possess gun, and would hopefully discourage criminals from trying to obtain illegal weapon. Thus, firearm resources would be balanced among everyone in the United States, and the unequal distribution of power would be remedied.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Bibliographic Information:

Lampo, David. "Gun Control: Myths and Realities." May 13, 2000. [] (accessed April 28, 2010).

Main Questions:

1) How prevalent is child mortality due to gun accidents? 2) Are gun shows responsible for criminals obtaining guns? 3) Do states with laws allowing registered citizens to carry concealed weapons have higher crime rates? 4) Do waiting periods for gun ownership reduce crime? 5) Do lower murder rates in foreign countries prove gun control works?

Main Findings:

The numbers show that child mortality due to gun accidents is low. In 1997 only 142 children under the age of fifteen died in gun accidents. The total number of gun related deaths for that year in that age range was 642. More children die from accidents involving bikes, space heaters, or drowning each year than gun accidents. Gun shows are not responsible for criminals obtaining guns. All commercial firearm dealers at gun shows must run background checks for potential buyers. The US Department of Justice says at most 2% of guns used by criminals are purchased at gun shows. Most of the guns that are purchased and used in crime is purchased legally by people who passed background checks. At the time of this article, thirty-one states allowed private citizens to carry concealed weapons. Those thirty-one states had on average had a 24% lower violent crime rate, a 19% lower murder rate, and a 39% lower robbery rate than states who do not have permit laws. Also, guns are used for self-defense more than two million times a year. This figure is three to five times the estimated number of violent crimes committed with guns. Studies consistently show that there is no correlation between waiting periods and murder or robbery rates. The University of Maryland anti-gun researcher David McDowell found that, “waiting periods have no influence on either gun homicides or gun suicides.” The facts show there is no correlation between gun control laws and murder or suicide rates across a wide spectrum of nations and cultures. For example, Israel and Switzerland have a license to possess guns that is available to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable. Both countries allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms. According to Dr. Arthur Kellerman, Switzerland and Israel, “have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the US.” A comparison of crime rates within Europe reveals no correlation between access to guns and crime.

How Does This Relate to Our Research:

It is important to know the facts of gun and crime relations. It is clear from this research that the presence of guns does not cause crime, and in some cases they actually reduce crime.


 * Bibliographic Information **

Zimring, Franklin E. "Firearms and Federal Law: The Gun Control Act of 1968." Journal of Legal Studies 4 (1975): 133. []

1. Why was The Gun Control Act of 1968 a considered a failure? What have we learned? 2. What are the major objectives of the Act? 3. Who is affected by The Gun Control Act of 1968? 4. What were the major implications caused by the Act? 5. What was one major success of The Gun Control Act of 1968? The symbolism of gun control seemed more important to the vast majority of Congress than the specifics of regulation. Finally, the gun control issue remained a relatively unimportant one for the Congress. No serious effort was made to oversee or evaluate the administration of the Act. No committee of Congress maintained any special competence in the substantive issue of federal gun regulation. Each group has already decided that the 1968 Act has failed, and each group uses the Act’s presumed failure to confirm views already strongly held. Stricter laws are obviously needed where opponents see it as evidence that no controls will work. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">There is also reason to believe that the potential impact of the Act is quite limited when measured against the problems it sought to alleviate. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Major Objectives <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">(1) <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Eliminating the interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition that had previously frustrated state and local efforts to license, register, or restrict ownership of guns. · <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The sale of guns by non dealers was, from the beginning, outside of any record-keeping requirement of the Act. For a private party, the knowing transfer or interstate transportation of firearms was illegal but rarely dangerous. Moreover, enforcing the ban on sales to residents of another state required federal agents to inspect the forms kept by the dealers. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> (2) Denying access to firearms to certain congressionally defined groups, including minors, convicted felons, and persons who had been adjudicated as mental defectives or committed to mental institutions. · Minors (under eighteen for shotguns and rifles; under twenty-one for handguns). [Page 152] · Persons convicted of a state or federal felony, as well as the fugitives and defendants under indictment covered by the F.F.A. · Adjudicated mental defectives and any person who had been committed to a mental institution. · Persons who are* unlawful users of or "addicted to marijuana or any depressant or stimulant drug . . . or narcotic drug." <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">3.) The Gun Control Act prohibited the importation of all military surplus firearms and any other firearms unless the Secretary of the Treasury found them to be generally recognized as "particularly suitable for or readily adapted to sporting purposes." The hard questions concerning the "sporting purposes" test related to handguns, because the handgun, whether domestic or imported, is not primarily a sporting weapon. In contrast to rifles and shotguns, handguns are owned more frequently in cities than in rural areas, are rarely used to hunt with, and are viewed by consumers as weapons of self-defense.  [164] Handguns are carried by some hunters as a "finishing weapon" for killing wounded animals, and are widely used for informal target practice ("plinking"). But it is unclear whether these uses would or should have been considered sporting purposes, nor is it clears what kind of handguns should be considered generally recognized as particularly suited to shooting at tin cans. The essential problem, then, was that the "sporting purposes" test was something of a //non sequitur// when applied to handguns, because the great majority of them were not, in any event, intended for sporting purposes. Under these circumstances, interpreting the "sporting purposes" standard was bound to cause problems. One approach would have been to prohibit the importation of any pistols or revolvers. This was apparently within the power of the Treasury but would have produced a storm of partially justified criticism, since Congress had not explicitly singled out handguns for exclusion. // Handgun homicides and gun assaults increase consistently throughout the period, but the rate of increase slows considerably after 1969. Assuming about a one-year lead time for guns produced or imported to reach city streets, the moderating rate of increase coincides with the reduction in new handguns entering the civilian market .//
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Main Questions **
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Main Findings **

Works Cited

Kopel, Dave. "Words of Freedom" __NRO Columnist__. May 16, 2001. <[]> (Accessed April 27, 2010)

AMERICAN INEQUALITY

INTRODUCTION Our research proposal on American Inequality raises the question of the availability of the American dream or the ideal American situation to every American citizen. Are all Americans given an equal chance to live a comfortable lifestyle? The author of the phrase "American Dream," James Truslow Adams defined it as, "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" (Nakate). We are approaching this problem from a Social Conflict perspective. This sociological theory emphasizes the distribution of power and resources within a society, making it impossible for all the citizens of the United States to have an equal chance of obtaining the ideal American life. The theory section of our research project explains our sociological viewpoint in greater detail. The theory stage of our research also discusses how the Social Conflict perspective relates to our study of the absence of equal opportunity in America. The next portion of our research is the literature review, which explores and explains what prior research has been done and it states about our research topic. Then, in the methods section, we discuss the different dependent and independent variables that are included in our research of the unbalanced distribution of opportunity among American citizens. In the methods stage of our research, we also present and defend our hypothesis about the lack of equal opportunity in our country and what the United States' government can do to remedy this problem. Finally, the results of our research concludes our findings. In this section, we use our hypothesis of how the problem of unequal opportunity can be dealt with, as well as using any information gained from prior research to reach a specific and logical conclusion as to a resolution for this problem. The main purpose of this research is to prove, from a Social Conflict point of view, that the American Dream is not equally available to all American citizens, to discuss the causes of this inequality, and to explain how the government can fix this inequality by balancing job and monetary resources in American society. THEORY In order to prove that the availability of the American dream to citizens of the United States is unequal, we are looking at the research question through the eyes of a Social Conflict theorist. The Social Conflict perspective has a material view of society. It considers how the status quo is established and maintained in society, and who benefits and who suffers from society’s existing systems. The power struggle the Social Conflict perspective focuses on is the struggle between people who control the means of production, those in power, and the workers, who are not in power. Also, Social Conflict theorists place a great deal of stress on social structures because they feel these structures contribute to the distribution of power and the allocation of resources. This distribution of power and resources in society serves as the basis for the divisions in society and keeps the people who hold power in control and holds back those who are not in power (Class notes 1/21/10). Working from a conflict perspective, the equal opportunity for all Americans to obtain the American Dream is not a reality. Instead, real society is disproportionate in that only those who hold power have the benefit of living the American Dream, and those at the bottom of society are prevented from attaining the American dream due to their lack of resources. The Social Conflict perspective also suggests several variables involved in our research problem. Namely, this perspective views ascribed status, or status a person is born with and does not take into account that person's talents, as influencing peoples' achieved statuses, or their statuses that they obtain through their own efforts. Thus, in our research project, we are looking at how the imbalance of resources in society creates unequal opportunity in America, and we are discussing the different variables that affect or are affected by this social imbalance. LITERATURE REVIEW Previous research sheds light on the different aspects of the question about the availability of the American dream and discusses the variables responsible for this social imbalance. There are two articles which we read to get information on our research question. The first article is by Robert Jackson (2007) and the second is by Rank (2003). Jackson (2007) states that if there is no inequality there can be no standard from which the idea of equality can be determined. This statement alone suggests that there is inequality in the United States because Americans do have an idea of equal opportunity. The article goes on to point out that there are four specific types of inequality in the United States. There is an imbalance of power and resources among individuals and individual organizations, among certain groups within society, among different occupations or positions, and among the nations of the world. Jackson (2007) then points out that these inequalities are viewed as fairly unchanging. This opinion that unequal opportunity cannot be changed is largely due to the many obstacles to social mobility in the United States. The article states that the income, wealth, education, occupation, and residential location of a person's parents has a great deal of influence on a child's future social status. Thus, people from a wealthy family will inherit a great deal money to help get them started in life; they will have been able to go places and interact with people from other places; they will have had the benefit of being able to become acquainted with people in high places; they will have been given a good education, exposed to many different things, and know about a wide variety of subjects, and therefore have high goals; and they have wealthy relations to help them out when they make mistakes. All of this will help children of a wealthy family end up at the top of society when they grow up. On the other hand, people born into poor families do not have any of these opportunity or financial resources, so people coming from poor families do not have the money, education, experience, or high goals to help them do well in life. Two other factors that contribute to the lack of social mobility are the structure of the economy and discrimination in the working world based on race and ethnicity. The information in this article is helpful in our research of unequal availability of the American dream because, from a Social Conflict perspective, it proves that the power and resources available to individuals in society rest largely on the status of the family they grew up in and their race. Thus, according to Jackson (2007) there is definitely inequality in the United States when it comes to a person's ability to gain the American dream. The second article we read, by Rank (2003), discusses how common poverty is in the United States and presents evidence of why it is so common. In his article, Rank (2003) states that the major reasons for the overwhelming amount of poverty in America are the extended amount of time that people work in their life, the deficiency of the government's policies to help those people who have fallen on hard times, and the lack of labor opportunities for American citizens. These factors relate to our research question in that they create unequal opportunities for American citizens. That is to say, there are more people available to work than there are jobs to be found, and the United States lacks sufficient resources to help those people without jobs. Rank (2003) suggests that the problem of inequality created by time, government deficiency, and the lack of jobs can be fixed by creating an effective safety net following the example of European welfare countries and by creating more jobs. This article also notes that much of the United States' current inability to rid itself of poverty rests on the fact that most people think that poverty is a rare thing in our country and that those who are poor, are poor through some fault of their own and do not deserve help. Thus, there are various causes for the imbalance of power and resources that has in turn caused unequal opportunity in American society. METHODS From the Social Conflict Perspective, our group is working to better understand the reasons behind inequality among Americans in obtaining the American Dream. Inequality in America fosters the Social Conflict Theory, but an effort should still be made to lessen the severity of difference and imbalance between groups of people as well as to create more opportunities for the underprivileged. Our hypothesis states that due to ascribed status the American dream is not equally available to everyone; however, government aid programs can help overcome some of the difficulties imposed by these statuses people are born with. The independent variables are our ascribed and acquired statuses. People have no control over the family they are born into or their race or gender, but achieving certain statuses does require a great deal of personal effort. The dependent variable is the access a person has to wealth, jobs, and a comfortable lifestyle. These variables would include job type and level of income. A person’s ascribed or acquired status will determine the opportunities that arise for that person’s education, social ranking, future careers and much more. The more opportunities a person is given the better chance he or she has of making the most out of what he or she is given. Some statistics to back up our hypothesis that the statuses of a person's childhood family, such as race and socioeconomic status, affect a person's opportunity to obtain the American dream come from our wiki worksheet. For example, the income in dollars of the top 10% of Americans increased from $327,843 in 1980 to $915,968 in 2000, while the income for the bottom 90% of Americans only increased from $25,951 to $28,030over the same twenty year span. These dollar figures support our hypothesis that those born into high class families remain in the upper social class or move even higher on the ladder of social status, and those born into poverty or discriminated groups remain in those poor groups for their entire lives. Based on the information in prior research and our wiki worksheet, and according to our hypothesis, this imbalance of opportunity is not an individual problem, but a social problem that involves many people within the American society. Therefore, society or the governing bodies of society should work to help the members of society who have less access to the American dream. The government could assist the nation in its inequality crisis in various ways, and we will discuss some of these methods in the results section of our research. RESULTS The present topic of our group's wiki is the idea of equal availability to all American citizens to the American dream, or the ideal situation where every American is equally capable of a attaining a comfortable lifestyle. Looking at previous research and the information in our wiki worksheet through the eyes of a social conflict theorist, it is clear that the American dream is not equally available to all citizens. Based on information in prior research, it can be concluded that peoples' statuses and the opportunities to improve their statuses in society can be contributed to the different ascribed and achieved statuses of their families and family members when they were growing up. Since many people are judged based on their statuses and the statuses of their family, imaginary lines are created in society setting different groups of people apart based on these differing statuses, thereby creating inequality in America. Poverty is another factor involved in the unequal availability of the American dream. Reasons for continually rising poverty are the extended amount of time that people work in their life, the deficiency of the government's policies to help those people who have fallen on hard times, and the lack of labor opportunities for American citizens. By studying charts and graphs that contain information concerning the rates of wealth, wages, unemployment, and poverty in America over the past few decades, we can prove that the availability of the American dream is not equal for all individuals. Looking at the net worth, or the wealth, of the American population in 2004, the upper twenty percent of the population had 84.7% of the total wealth, and the bottom eighty percent had only 15.3% of the total wealth. These numbers prove that, even in the past, there has been inequality in America created by the imbalanced distribution of income and wealth. By defining a good job as one that pays at least 60% of the national average wage, 31.5% of Caucasians have good jobs, 28.1% of Asians have good jobs, 21.8% of Blacks have good jobs, and 14.4% of Hispanics have good jobs. This shows how race affects the availability of the American dream to American citizens. Concerning the amount of education people have, 47% of Caucasians who have a bachelors degree or higher have good jobs, 43.3% of Blacks who have a bachelors degree or more have good jobs, 39.2% of Asians with a bachelors degree or higher have good jobs, and 37% of Hispanics with a bachelors degree or more have good jobs. Of those with a high school diploma, 22.5% of Caucasians have good jobs, 14.3% of Blacks have good jobs, 12% of Hispanics have good jobs, and 11.4% of Asians with only a high school education have good jobs. These figures show that both race and education affect how available good jobs and a good lifestyle are to individuals. To look at more current numbers, in February 2010, the unemployment rate for Asian men was 9.6, for White males the unemployment rate was 11.3, the unemployment rate for Hispanic men was 14.4, and Black men had an unemployment rate of 20.1. Again, this shows that race is definitely a factor in creating unequal opportunity. Also, as of December 2008, there were 6.1 people searching for jobs per every available job, so a lack of labor opportunities is also a variable in American inequality. Finally, the United States government does not use its tax and transfer money to assist the poor. The United States poverty rate before taxes and transfers is 26.6%, and after taxes and transfers, the poverty rate is still 21.9%. Thus, there is very clearly an unequal distribution of income, wealth, and jobs in America based on social status, race, education, and other variables. All of the variables involved in creating this inequality are very difficult to overcome because many people feel like people living in poverty are poor due to their own personal shortcomings; however, to conclude this research on the availability of the American dream, we are outlining just a couple of ideas that could be put into action in order to balance out the unequal opportunity in America. Knowing the basic causes of this lack of equal opportunity to have the American dream allows us to determine things that can be done to even out the distribution of power and resources. One idea would be the government creation of more jobs by offering opportunities for business owners to grow their companies. By doing this, everyone, not just the wealthy and well educated, has available job opportunities. Another way to help fix the imbalance in America is to make things like higher education and job training more easily accessible to people of all financial groups. Weeding out racial and gender discrimination in the working world could also help equal out opportunities in America. Finally, according to research by Rank (2003), the problem of inequality can also be fixed by creating an effective financial safety net or financial aid programs, like the ones found in most European countries, to help support people who have fallen below the poverty line due to hard economic times. These suggestions can be used to work toward the goal of achieving the availability of the American dream for everyone. Maybe one day there will be equality amongst all, but until that day, working to even out the distribution of power and resources is a plan that could begin to even out the imbalance in America. ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Bibliographic Information: Jackson, Robert Max. “Keyword: Inequalities” 2007. American Sociological Association, pp 59-61. Main Question: Inequalities remain prevalent in the United States today. There are various theories as to why we have not fully assimilated as equals, and Jackson (2007) offers a few theories of his own. The author raises the question of how enduring inequalities of social status in the United States are affected by the distribution of wealth among groups. Specifically, Jackson (2007) asks how wealth has caused certain racial groups to remain at the bottom of the social hierarchy? Main Findings: 1. First of all, Jackson (2007)states that only societies that harbor inequalities offer the idea of equality, because ones that do not experience inequality think nothing of it. Equality is merely a notion of a goal to work towards in giving everyone the same opportunities in life. In societies where there is no inequality, people are not mindful of there sociological differences. 2. People generally accept the boundaries of their status as simple, obvious, and unchangeable. We may recognize inequality among individuals or organizations; among segments of a population, such as ethnicities or those in rural versus urban areas; among positions, such as occupations or locations in a hierarchy; and among nations. 3. Inheritance, obstacles to social mobility, and the economy uphold wealth inequalities because it favors those who have more to pass on to the next generation. Social exclusion, discrimination, and hostilities between races are also factors in the prevailing status deficiencies. 4. The author points out that previous research indicates parents’ income, wealth, education, occupation, and residential location all influence a person’s future standing in the economic hierarchy. Privileged positions in these hierarchies offer children not only direct financial support, but cultural and interpersonal skills, personal connections, high aspirations, and some insurance against unavoidable mistakes. Underprivileged children are much less likely to succeed because of the tremendous obstacles they must overcome due to their lack of finances, cultural skills, connections, high goals in life, and insurance. How this relates to our research: The article is very descriptive of the inequalities we face in the areas of wealth and socioeconomic status as a nation. The author offers a valid argument on the reasons different opportunities are specifically available to certain groups and exclude other groups. We are given a viewpoint from the wealthy perspective of the American society. Through the author’s eyes, we can see how and why the wealthy remain weathly, and the poor can’t climb out of desperation. The article points out that status mobility is largely dependent on race rather than gender and other demographics, and this lack of mobilty for certain racial groups plays a huge role in maintaining unequal opportunity. With this information, we can clearly see that the American dream is not equally available to all of the citizens of the United States. Bibliographic Information: Rank, Mark R. (2003). “As American as Apple Pie: Poverty and Welfare.” American Sociological Association pp. 159-164. Main Question: The American Dream is affected by this idea in the heads of Americans that some people are less equal than others. This is merely just a stereotypical suggestion in its own, but what really separates Americans and actually causes inequality in this country is poverty. Rank (2003) discusses in his article “As American as Apple Pie: Poverty and Welfare” that people all throughout America will at least once in there lifetime experience poverty. Rank (2003), posing his research through the backing of colleagues and the census bureau, looks into the major reasons of poverty in America. While taking in all the factors of poverty within the U.S., Rank glances into our government’s ability to solve or at least help the growing poverty problem. Main Findings: 1. Poverty is often looked down upon in this country while Rank believes it shouldn’t be. Rank thinks poverty is actually as normal as apple pie. Welfare is a form of help to the less fortunate that may include: high school dropouts, unwed mothers, the homeless, inner city black males and so on. That is who the media perceives as “the poor” or the underclass that seem to get alienated away from other classes causing inequalities. All the while in reality a good percentage of stable homes across America are struggling with poverty, too. 2. The article refers a lot of its research to the Census Bureau and its annual surveys on poverty. In which came to prove that between 11 and 15 percent of Americans have lived below the poverty line in any given year. 3. Some people are at a greater risk than others when it comes to poverty due to their personal status. These depend on age, race, gender, family structure, community, education, work skills and disabilities. 4. Social Safety nets are put in place by the government to aid the people experiencing poverty. These include: food stamps, Medicaid, AFDC, Supplemental Security Income, and other cash subsidies such as general assistance. 5. Rank (2003) surveys the amount of people using welfare programs to draw some conclusions to his research. By the time Americans reach the age of 65, approximately two-thirds, will have, as adults, received assistance for at least a year, while 40 percent will have used a welfare program in at least 5 separate years. 6. America has the highest poverty rates in the western industrialized world. Poverty in the U.S. exists because of an unstable labor market. There is simply more workers than jobs or the jobs available don’t pay well enough. Rank (2003) suggests that the American government has the means to lower the poverty percentage and should make it a bigger concern. How this relates to our research: Poverty within the United States is obviously an ongoing conflict. The people suffering from it, the volunteers reaching out to lend a helping hand, and the politicians debating about impoverishment is just the beginning. The different groups that rise up, and the social structure formed within the United States due to poverty causes inequality throughout America. Although welfare use by “the poor” is looked down upon, this article simply suggests that poverty is a normal part of the cycle of life, and welfare is a type of aid that makes this part of peoples life easier. The American people must agree with this assumption or they too are at the beginning stages of separating people into an unequal society ultimately damaging The American Dream. Works Cited Nakate, Shashank. "History of the American Dream." Buzzle.com. April 1, 2010. <http://www.buzzle.com/articles/history-of-the-american-dream.html>

CRISIS PREGNACY CENTERS

INTRODUCTION The focus of this research project is to explore various Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC) and to compile what are believed to be the best practices for them, more specifically those in rural areas. By analyzing answered interview questions from CPC around the nation, we hope to come up with the practices that best suit them. Some answers will differ from others, while others might have very similar answers. That is the beauty of interviewing several different CPC. By showing the diversity and similarities each contain, conclusions can be drawn and the best practices can be determined. We will be looking at the results of these questionnaires through the eyes of a symbolic interactionalist. According to Witt, this point of view takes the idea of social interaction and uses it to explain the society as a whole (Witt 2009). In this set of data, we will take into consideration how individuals interact with one another, for example, the volunteers at CPC and the clients, and conclude which practices help explain the society as a unit. This project can reveal so much, and by incorporating our particular theory, symbolic interactionalist, we can successfully determine the best practices for rural CPC around the nation. THEORY Our group is working from the symbolic interactionist perspective. This perspective looks at society and how it is made up of indiviuals and their interactions with eachother (Witt 2009). We are focused on how Crisis Pregnancy Centers educate and provide tools and resources for the women they help. We will also look for the values that the CPC use in interacting with the women they are helping, and how these values are passed on to the women. From the symbolic ineractionist perspective, those providing aid focus on their interaction with the individual and individual values. This is a key component when the pregnancy centers provide aid to women, pregnant or otherwise. The individual attention gives the women the dignity they deserve and need to make it throught the crisis they are experiencing. Lastly, working from this perspective allows us to look at how CPC help these women feel less alone, and reassures them that there is help for them, and there are people that love them and are seeking their well being. Basically, the dependent variables in this research are the women experienceing unintended pregnancies from CPC and the pregnancy centers themselves, and the independent variables are the individual values passed from the CPC to the women they help. The symbolic interactionalist perspective then takes these individual interactions and values and looks at how they affect the CPC and attempts to make the centers more successful, and how these interactions and values affect the women within society. LITERATURE REVIEW Prior research done on Crisis Pregnancy Centers gives us some ideas as to what CPC deal with and what their goals are. Just over forty years ago, if you were a single woman without a stable job or a permanent place to live, and you were pregnant, you would have had no place to go for assistance. Thankfully, for the past forty years, pregnancy centers have been established to aid single mothers who are pregnant. CPC are specifically intended to help pregnant women who are single, struggling financially, and have no place to go for help and sometimes no place to live. With the rates of unintended pregnancies and abortions increasing every year these centers are becoming crucial for our society. In a 1994 study done by the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), it was concluded that in the category of single women, 77% of the pregnancies were unintended (Henshaw, 1998). Studies by the NSFG also show the impact that age, marital status, income, race, and ethnicity have had on the rate of unintended pregnancies, births, and abortions from 1982 until 1994. This research also looked at the rising and falling trend of unintended pregnancies, births, and abortions over the years. Overall, these rates are increasing making CPC more and more an important part of society. These centers, who have volunteers for workers, will take in the women free of charge. The main goal of the center is to successfully deliver a new baby into the world, but this noble deed is sometimes sullied by the hard life the child and mother may have after they leave the center. Many new single mothers cannot afford to give their child the necessities they will need throughout their life, and therefore it is argued that it would have been better if the baby was aborted. There is a third option besides abortion and having the mother raise the child in a harsh environment. The additional option is adoption. This promoting of adoption is a new and improved goal for pregnancy centers. Volunteers, however, must be careful not to push this alternative of adoption upon expecting mothers since the center is not certified as an adoption agency. June Ring, who is the coordinator at Presbyterians Pro-life says, “We don’t coerce, convince, or make the decisions, but we do give complete, objective, and accurate information.” (Mathewes-Green 1996). The volunteers give the young mothers-to-be great insight on what it means to be a good parent as well as stressing the difficulties involved. Many times training exercises for the women include caring for an electronic baby that cries and needs to be fed and changed periodically. The volunteers not only care about the women they help, but they also care about the babies that are both unborn and born. According to previous research, the goal of CPC is to give the mother the opportunity to raise their child in a healthy environment or to give the child a family with two adopted parents. Using these goals as guidelines and looking at these goals from a symbolic interactionists point of view, we can determine what the best practices for CPC should be. METHODS Since our group will be focusing on the interactionist perspective, we will be researching the best practices for Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC) by looking at the way individuals work together with these organizations and society. The interactionist perspective will allow us to see how CPC are developed through the everyday interactions of the individuals who operate and visit them. In order to determine the answer to the question of what the best practices for CPC are, we will have to think about the problems and the goals of CPC as well as finding synonymous problems on the Internet that we can learn from. Also, we will need to find things that are not part of our research goal. Asking question such as "what will we call it?"; "what would someone else call it?"; "what are the issues associated with it?"; and "what issues should we exclude from it?" We will also need to look at previous research on this topic to better understand what we are dealing with. The literature provided will give us the appropriate information in order to accomplish the goal of this project and come up with best practices for CPC in rural areas. Then we will conduct our own research, in this case phone interviews. Interviewing members or managers of various CPC will give us firsthand knowledge of how these non-profit organizations operate successfully. The people we interview will need to be very knowledgeable about CPC practices. We will get comfortable in the conversation and describe the project accurately and briefly to our interviewees. The questions we use during the interview are unbiased and exactly the same across the board for each interviewer and interviewee. Some of the questions may be difficult to ask and answer, but will greatly aid in the effectiveness of the research. We will also need a standard method of tracking the interview results. To accomplish this, we will accurately enter the answer to each question beneath the question that was asked and compare the results of each interview. With the collection of results, we will be able to determine what the different CPC have done to be successful. Looking at the information we have from a symbolic interactionalist perspective, we will focus on the different organizations’ values and morals and how they relate to or affect the people that come to CPC for help. In this way we will be able to determine what the best practices for CPC in rural are from a symbolic interactionalist point of view. RESULTS Our research project was to come up with best practices for Crisis Pregnancy Centers in rural areas. We were looking at this problem from a symbolic interactionalist point of view. That is, we were trying to arrive at best practices by, "generalizing about everyday forms of social interaction in order to explain society as a whole" (Witt 2009, 15). Previous related researches discuss how to research best practices; how emphasizing good, helpful values can lower the chances of women experiencing unintended pregnancies and births, and abortions; and how CPC should focus on emphasizing courses of action that will help the mother and child arfter the birth, and not just help the mother get through the pregnancy. Based on this information and the information gathered in our interviews, we have come up with three major best practices for CPC in rural areas. First of all, CPC should focus on reassuring and aiding women who are having difficulties dealing with their pregnancies or recovering from an abortion, or just helping any women who want and need help. The information provided by the interviews stated that talking and listening to women who are suffering from a crisis will help them gain values like dignity, love, respect, and self-confidence, which are all life affirming values and will help steer women away from abortion. All of these individual values are viewed as very important by the symbolic interactionalist, who focuses on individual interaction to explain society. Secondly, from a symbolic interactionalist perspective, it would be benefical if CPC instructed both male and female parents about the best way to proceed with life after the birth of the baby and instill good family values in the parent or parents. Almost all of the interviews showed results that stressed the importance of educating the mother or both parents on how to raise a child and give him or her a good environment to grow up in. The interview results showed that only a few of the CPC would try to help set the women up with work or general education. However, the interviews showed that most of the CPC talked to the women about good family and life values to teach the women how to give their child a good home. Thirdly, CPC should encourage a deeper religious life and things like prayer, sacraments, church, and the like. Along with this emphasis on religion, CPC should encourage values that go hand in hand with religion, such as chastity, abstinance, and respect for life. All of the CPC that were interviewed stressed the idea of giving some sort of religious support to the women. All of the values and morals that come with a religion will teach the women the sanctity of sex and life, and help lead them away from abortion. Also, such values as chastity and abstinance will help keep the women from finding themselves experiencing another unintended pregnancy. Based on prior research, other good practices for CPC, especially if the women are not open to the first three best practices, would be to teach young women important values that will help prevent unintended pregnancies, like the use of condoms and contraceptives, and refraining from risky sexual behavior. Also, prior research suggests that if the expecting mothers are not open to raising their child, along with stressing necessary family and life values, CPC can encourage giving the unborn child a good family and a life through adoption rather than aborting the baby. All of these best practices focus on teaching values to individual women that will help them get throught their pregnancies, hopefully keep them away from abortion, and prepare them for life after the birht of their child. These individual interactions and values help CPC work toward the betterment of society as a whole. ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Bibliographic Information: Henshaw, Stanley. “Unintended Pregnancy in the United States”. Family Planning Perspectives. 30. January/February, 1998. Main Questions: 1. How does age affect the rate of unintended pregnancies, unintended births, and abortions? 2. How does marital status affect the rate of unintended pregnancies, unintended births, and abortions? 3. How does poverty status affect the rate of unintended pregnancies, unintended births, and abortions? 4. How does race affect the rate of unintended pregnancies, unintended births, and abortions? 5. How does ethnicity affect the rate of unintended pregnancies, unintended births, and abortions? 6. Percentage of women who have had at least one unintended pregnancy, unintended birth, abortion, or all three. 7. Percentage of women who will have an abortion by age 45. Main Findings: This article uses information from National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) in 1982, 1988, and 1995 to estimate rates and percentages of unintended pregnancies, unintended births, and abortions in 1994. It also uses this information to estimate the number of women who will have had an abortion by age 45. In 1994 there were approximately 5,383,800 pregnancies. About 22.6% of these pregnancies ended in unintended births and 26.6% ended in abortion. All total 49% of pregnancies that ended in 1994 were unintended and 54% of these unintended pregnancies ended in abortion. 1. Age: The greatest number of pregnancies in 1994 was among women ages 20-24, and teenagers younger than 15 had the least number of pregnancies in 1994. Teenagers had the highest percentage of unintended pregnancies (75%-82.7%), and the younger the teenagers have a higher percentage of unintended pregnancies. Teenage girls also have the highest percentage of unintended births (61.7%-72.9%); the 18-19 year old bracket had the lowest percentage of unplanned births. Women over 40 had the highest rate of unintended pregnancies terminated by abortion (64.7%). Women ages 30-34 had the lowest rate of unintended pregnancies (33.1%) and unintended births (18%). However, girls ages 15-17 had the lowest rate of unplanned pregnancies that were terminated by abortion (43.8%). All across the board, the rate of unintended pregnancies between 1981 and 1994 had risen by 1987 but dropped again by 1994. The rate of unintended births for women of all ages varied between 1981 and 1994, but by 1994 the rate had increased for all age groups except for women from 25-34 years of age. In the youngest and oldest two age groups, the rate of pregnancies ended by abortion was lower in 1994 than in 1981, but in women ages 20-34 the rate of pregnancies that ended in abortion were greater in 1994 than in 1981. 2. Marital Status: Currently married women had the highest number of pregnancies in 1994 while previously married women had the smallest number of pregnancies that year. Never married women had the highest percentage of unintended pregnancies (77.7%) and births (58.2%). Previously married women had the highest percentage of unintended pregnancies ending in abortion (65.1%). Currently married women had the lowest percentage of unintended pregnancies (30.7%), births (21.8%), and unplanned pregnancies that ended in abortions (37%). Between 1987 and 1994 the rate of unintended pregnancies among married, formerly married, and never married women all dropped. The rate of unintended births dropped from 1987 to 1994 for women who were or had been married, but this rate increased for women who had never been married. The rate of pregnancies that were terminated by abortion was higher in 1994 than in 1987 for married women. The rate of pregnancies ended by abortion was almost exactly the same in 1994 as it had been in 1987 for women who had been formerly married. The rate of pregnancies terminated with abortion was lower in 1994 than in 1987 among never married women. 3. Poverty: Women’s poverty status is very much connected with the rate of unintended pregnancies. In 1994, there was the greatest number of pregnancies among women whose income was greater than or equal to 200% of the poverty level. There was the least number of pregnancies in the middle class. Women who had the lowest income had the highest percentage of unintended pregnancies (61.4%) and unintended births (44.8%). Women with the highest income had the highest percentage of unplanned pregnancies that were terminated by abortion (61.5%). Women with the highest income had the smallest percentage of unplanned pregnancies (41.2%) and births (21.3%) while women with middle class incomes had the lowest percentage of unintended pregnancies ended by abortion (47.9%). Women with high, middle and low incomes all experienced a lowering of the rate of unintended pregnancies between 1981 and 1994. However, the rate of unintended pregnancies that were ended by abortion increased among women with high income, decreased among women with low income, and remained about the same for low income women. 4. Race: White women had the greatest number of pregnancies in 1994, Black women had the second largest number of pregnancies, and other unspecified races had the least number of pregnancies by a large margin. Black women had the highest percentage of unintended pregnancies (72.3%) and births (50.8%), and the largest percentage of unplanned pregnancies terminated by abortion (60.4%). White women had the lowest percentage in all three areas. 5. Ethnicity: Non-Hispanic women had a much larger number of pregnancies than Hispanic women in 1994. Non-Hispanic women also had a higher percentage of unintended pregnancies, births, and abortions. 6. 47.7% of women have experienced one or more unintended pregnancy. The percentage of women of a particular age group who have had an unintended pregnancy increases as the age range increases until it reaches the 40-44 age group at which point the percentage of women who have had one or more unintended pregnancies drops again. 28.4% of all women have experienced one or more unintended births, 29.9% have had one or more abortions, and 10.6% have done both. The percentage of women who have had unintended births increases with age. The percentage of women who have had at least one abortion increases, peaks in the 30-34 age range, and then decreases again. The percentage of women who have had one or more of both unintended births and abortions increases, peaks in the 35-39 age range, and then decreases. 7. Approximately 43% of women will have had an abortion by the time they reach the age of forty-five. How this relates to our research: We are trying to discover the best practices for Crisis Pregnancy Centers in rural communities. This article suggests several practices to help lower the number of unplanned pregnancies. For example, Henshaw (1998) suggests that promoting the use of condoms and contraceptives or increasing the efficiency of condoms and contraceptives could decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies. Also, this article stated that the rate of unintended pregnancies could be lowered by emphasizing the need to decrease participation in risky sexual behavior. These practices could be beneficial for Crisis Pregnancy Centers by reducing the number of women seeking abortions since less women would be experiencing unintended pregnancies. Bibliographic Information: Mathewes-Green, Frederica “Pro-Life Dilemma” Pregnancy centers and the welfare trap. July and August 1996. Main Question: If the pregnancy-care movement could find effective ways to encourage women to choose adoption over abortion, could this help give children a two-parent home and offer both the children and their mothers’ greater security? Main Findings: Frederica Mathewes-Green’s article on the “Pro-Life Dilemma” Pregnancy centers and the welfare trap (1996) dives into one of the most serious problems our society faces here in the United States. The focus of the article is based on unmarried teens and other single, soon-to-be mothers facing the struggles of unexpected pregnancies. Being a new mother of a child takes a tremendous amount of preparation prior to birth, and the single mother could be facing a series of struggles on a long stressful path. What researchers have come to find out is that young unmarried females getting unexpectedly pregnant can’t handle all the pressures of being a mother or going through with having a baby at all. This article entails some of the positive ways Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC) can help provide the appropriate amount of support to the single mothers by influencing adoption over abortion. · In today’s world women that get pregnant have three options: First they can have the baby and keep it, secondly they could have the baby and put it up for adoption, and thirdly the mother can go through with an abortion. What appeals to me in this article is that these three options are a lot more troublesome when dealing with a single mother especially if she is unprepared. · Pro-lifers working in these Crisis Pregnancy Centers provide these women facing unwanted pregnancy with a variety of tactics to ease them away from abortion. One of the first things counselors do is bring up the option of adoption in their first meeting with their client. "One study found that in 40 percent of counseling situations, adoption was not even mentioned to the client” (Mathewes-Green 1996) this proposes that pregnancy-care workers resolve to mention adoption to every single client. · The movement once focused narrowly on saving unborn babies; now it emphasizes giving the mother practical support so she can save her own child after it is born. · “According to the National Council for Adoption, a 1991 study found that pregnant, unmarried teens that were counseled in a program that mentioned adoption to every client were seven times more likely to choose it.”(Mathewes-Green 1996) · Now a day’s Crisis Pregnancy Centers are using what they call "reality therapy" which helps clients understand what it would be like in the tough life of a single parent or as a mother who chooses adoption. Crisis centers make it clear though that they won’t state that adoption is better. "We don't coerce, convince, or make the decisions, but we do give complete, objective, and accurate information," Ring says. "We want the client to consider adoption equally and in as much depth as other options." (Mathewes-Green 1996) · When CPC have clients that are faced with the decision of having the baby or aborting the child CPC will take the initiative and try and sway the mother into life over death. What the CPC does to these females is simply try and ignite the maternal emotions within her. They try and make the mother fall in love with her unborn baby by giving her baby gifts and quilts and letting her see new mothers cuddling their newborns. In the end the decision for the mother to choose adoption over abortion is not as easy as it was before. · "A Future and a Hope" seminar. "The pregnant woman needs to see that she's giving the child the gift of a family," Pierson says, "not that she's giving the adoptive couple the gift of a child. She is being a very good parent by making a good plan for the child." (Mathewes-Green, 1996) How this relates to our research: This article is dealing with single mothers and teens after they fall into unwanted pregnancy. Pro-lifers, volunteers, and CPC are seeing more and more clients choosing abortion over adoption. The sad truth is these mothers aren’t prepared for a child in their lives yet and instead of dealing with being a parent they choose to abort the situation. CPC is trying to help the greater society by choosing Pro-life and getting therapy and proper support to these troubled soon to be mothers. The CPC tactics discussed in this article are good strategies for helping the single mother give her child a two parent home. Through adoption the baby will have a chance to live and be raised properly while the mother can still move on in her life without the negative lingering effects of an unwanted pregnancy. In other words, this article relates to our research of best practices in that emphasizing adoption as a choice for women experiencing unintended pregnancies is becoming a bigger and more important role of CPC. Bibliographic Information: Eglene, Ophelia. “Conducting Best and Current Practices Research and A Starter Kit” January, 2000. Main Questions: 1. What is the point of best practice research? 2. What steps are involved in the process? 3. What are some useful tips and hints in finding information? Main Findings: 1. In doing best practice research, to goal is for organizations to learn how to be successful from other associations and organizations. This is done through current practice; which is an attempt to learn from the experience of other organizations. It is important to learn not only from other’s success, but also from their failures. Best practice research is inexpensive and a good time investment. It is important to note that it is highly unlikely that: an agency is completely unique, a problem is completely unique and unprecedented, that there is only one solution to the problem, and that an organization with the problem knows more about the problem than anyone else. It is also important to find a research method that is best for your organization. 2. There are three main steps to take during best practice research. Step one: Formulate the Question. In this you must think about the problem and goal. It is important to find synonyms of the problem to aid in Internet search engines. The organization must find things that are not part of their research goals. They also must ask questions like, “what will we call it?” “what someone else might call it” “issues associated with it” and “issue to exclude from it.” Step two: Gather Preliminary Information. This can be done through the Internet, library, or phone interviews. It is important to do cost-effective methods first, the library, and then more expensive, interviews. You must contact people you know first, and then contact best practice organizations and associations related to the topic. It is important to keep track of the Internet sites you visit, and to search for similar organizations that are solving similar problems. You should also make a professional contact list from the sites you visited. Step three: Interview Selecting People in-Depth. You are looking for people who are knowledgeable. Attributes to have when doing your interview include: feeling comfortable in conversation, being able to describe your project accurately, but briefly, identify the right person to talk to, ask targeted and difficult questions, and have a standard method for tracking interview results. 3. Here is a list of helpful Internet search engines: northernlight.com, altavista.com, google.com, and clearinghouse.net. Sites for a quick overview search include: debriefing.com, and askjeeves.com. Some library databases are: JSTOR, EBSCO, and UnCover Reveal. A free database is www.interscience.wiley.com/journalfinder.html. Useful bookmarks are: www.gol.org/bestof.html, and pti.nw.dc.us/. Professional organizations you can talk to are: National Governors Association (www.nga.org), American Society for Information Science (www.asis.org), and the Society for Information Management (www.simnet.org). A helpful hint when searching on the Internet is to use AND when looking for two topics at once. Also if you use + before each word the whole fraise will be used. For example, +women +in +politics. How this relates to our research: It is important to know how to utilize best practice research. Because we have that as our goal, we must make sure we do all we can to obtain the best practice for our research. There are simple steps we can take to make sure we follow best practice research to obtain our goals for this project.

OBESITY

Introduction The question we are dealing with in this research project is how Atchison, KS can address its growing obesity epidemic. The stance that we are taking as we look at the obesity problem in Atchison, Kansas is the social conflict perspective. The social conflict perspective allows us to look at obesity as a problem caused by the poor alloction of power and resources in the United States; the wealthy have money that allows them access to healthy foods, while the poor do not always have the money to eat healthy. We believe that changing the structure of government aid, and more specifically changing WIC (Women, Infants, and Children), will lower the obesity rate in the lower SES (Socioeconomic Status) classes. Changing these structures will enable everyone to have healthy eating choices which will in turn result in lowering the rate at which fast food consumption and obesity are rising. We will start our research by exploring and explaining the social conflict theory and how it pertains to our hypothesis. Next, we will present a literature review, which will show what previous research has stated about the topic of obesity and its causes and consequences. We will conclude our project with an outline of the methods of our research. The methods portion of our project will include a presentation of our hypothesis, a discussion of how we will go about gaining the information we need to reach a conclusion about our hypothesis, and it will explain the variables in our research. Using our hypothesis that the increase in obesity rates is connected to SES, and implementing the information we have gathered about growing obesity rates, we could initiate experimental, obesity-reducing projects in Atchison, Kansas. Theory One way in which American society can understand the disease of obesity, its causes, and its consequences is through sociological theories. According to Witt, theory is “a set of statements that seeks to explain problems, actions, or behavior” (8). Theories not only allow people to view the world through different methods of understanding, but good theories also help explain why things happen the way they do, and they predict what the future will hold. For this project the social conflict perspective will be used to attempt to fully grasp the reasons behind the problem of growing obesity in the United States and Atchison, Kansas and how to reduce this increase. In SOC, Witt describes the Social conflict perspective as a perspective that “assumes that social behavior is best understood in terms of tension between groups over power or the allocation of resources, including housing, money, access to services, and political representation” (15). This perspective acknowledges the formation of a dominant ideology, or world view, and how it operates in society. The social conflict perspective also takes into account the people involved in the social struggle to classify the individuals as either benefitting or suffering from the system. The social conflict perspective is a materialistic view of the world, and it relates to the distribution of people with power and resources or a lack there of. Now that we have explored how the social conflict perspective views society in general, we can look at how this perspective sees the problem of increasing obesity. This the WIC program in regards to obesity. Right now, WIC does not cover the purchasing of fresh fruits and vegetables, which are necessities for healthy eating. Therefore, people with low incomes and WIC can not afford the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables, and they end up eating cheap, unhealthy foods which can lead to obesity. Thus, according to the conflict perspective, obesity is the result of wealthy having the power and resources, or money and expensive healthy foods, necassary for a healthy lifestyle, and the poor having neither the power or resources to live healthy. Also, this situation deals with the variables of government control and income, that is the government has control over what the WIC can buy, and low income people do not have the resources necessary to eat right. The conflict perspective can be used to present the problem of increasing obesity as a result of the struggle over access to healthy food. Work Cited Witt, Jon. SOC. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Literature Review Previous research points out many important details about the rising obesity epidemic in the United States. With technology always changing and growing, we are becoming less and less physically active. Children are becoming too concentrated on video games and television without exercising an appropriate amount of time each day (Finkelstein, Ruhm, and Kosa, 2005). Adults are experiencing change in that many jobs involving manual labor are being replaced by technology, so the physical activity required at work is decreasing. Also, higher wages frequently result in longer hours and less time at home, which in turn causes a larger fast food diet; however, the overall relation between socioeconomic status and obesity is minimal. Along with these changes, the average serving size is increasing in the United States resulting in higher calorie intake. Race and ethnicity were also considered in the obesity research, showing that minorities have higher obesity rates than Caucasians (Beydoun and Wang, 2007). In adolescents, Native American showed the highest obesity rates in boys while African Americans had the highest obesity rates of girls. The research in these articles shows us where we need to focus our attention in the fight against obesity. We should limit video games and television, and create fun activities that will help kids burn calories, which are important in forming healthy habits. The influence parents transmit to their children is vital in shaping good eating and exercising habits. The research also tells us that exercising simply isn’t enough in peoples’ efforts of staying healthy. Americans need to reduce their daily calorie intake and eat well-rounded meals along with proper exercise in order to combat this problem. Certain demographics are more prone to obesity based on their surrounding environment and home life. Through organizations like the CDC, we can continue to learn ways to reduce obesity. If the program could reach WIC in particular, the epidemic could be greatly diminished. Thus, past research has not only come up with ideas as to what causes obesity, but it has also provided us with sufficient information to initiate plans to help reduce the increasing obesity rates. Methods As our group is working from a social conflict perspective we are trying to determine how the distribution of power and resources has impacted the increasing obesity rates in the United States and specifically, Atchison, Kansas. In order to decrease obesity we want to provide healthy choices to impoverished citizens that are receiving WIC so as to balance healthy food resources between the wealthy and the poor. Our hypothesis states that if the local government allows WIC to include fresh, healthy choices, obesity in Atchison, Kansas will decrease because the poor population will be able to eat something other than cheap, unhealthy food. For this project, our independent variable is WIC including fresh fruits and vegetables. Our dependent variable for this research project is the rate of obesity in Atchison, Kansas. The relation between independent and dependent varibles is that change in the dependent variable depends on change in the independent variable. In order to research on the topic of obesity as related to WIC we would look at a random sample of the people of Atchison, which we will get by use of a random number generator. When we contact the people in our random population sample, we will explain our research and, provided the people do not mind, ask them for their height, weight, and whether they receive WIC. We will use height and weight to come up with each individual's BMI (Body Mass Index). We will then see if WIC has any connection to the obesity of individuals. If our hypothesis that if WIC were to include fresh fruits and other healthy food, the obesity rates would drop in Atchison, Kansas is true, then this increase in obesity should be viewed as a community problem and not an individual problem. The community can then work as a whole to make these changes in the availability of healthy food; therefore, there will not be a burden placed on any one individual or family. Annotated Bibliogphy Bibliographic Information: Laura Kettle Khan et al. “Recommended Community Strategies and Measures to Prevent Obesity in the United States”. 2009. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 58: RR-7 Main Question: America is facing a national epidemic. The obesity rate of American adults has doubled since the 1980’s. This is a growing problem within our country and only seems to be getting worse. There are a number of ways to approach this epidemic in an attempt to solve the problem, and the question is: if the government allows WIC to include more affordable fresh healthy choices will obesity rate lower? The Department of Health and Human Services has been conducting significant amounts of research and has come up with a number of strategies. Main Findings: In a summary of recommended community strategies and measurements to prevent obesity in the United States there are some related strategies The Department of Health and Human Services has come up with. · Greater availability of healthy foods and beverages at schools and other learning institutions will give students a better opportunity to make a healthier decision. · It is known that, normally, healthier food items are more expensive then less healthy food items. The fact of the matter is that individuals with higher incomes will more likely consume a healthy diet than those of a lower class for strictly monetary reasons. · Some strategies to decrease the cost of food have been taken into account, and some of these ideas are already in effect. These strategies include: lowering the prices of healthier foods and providing discount coupons and vouchers for healthy produce. According to this article, “Pricing strategies create incentives for purchasing and consuming healthier foods and beverages by lowering the prices of such items relative to less healthy foods.” (Kahn et al. 2009, 7) · Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is responding to the rising obesity rate by trying to make healthier food more affordable. “For example, one community-based intervention indicated that WIC recipients who received weekly $10 vouchers for fresh produce increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables compared with a control group and sustained the increase 6 months after the intervention.” (Kahn et al. 2009, 8) · There has been a number of cross sectional studies in the interest that more access to nearby supermarkets will influence people to make a healthier choice. One study showed that people living in poor neighborhoods with at least one supermarket were more likely to consume healthy foods than those in low income areas without a supermarket. How this relates to our research: Throughout this study it is obvious that healthier food must be made more affordable and more available. Programs such as WIC, where people are given vouchers for fruit and vegetables, is a great way to get people on the right track. By getting people started on fresh healthy choices they may grow to love it. Price is a huge barrier when it comes to purchasing groceries. People with big families are more likely interested in quantity than quality. Some families might not ever consume healthy foods due to the costs. WIC may be effective because people with vouchers will take what they can get even if it is just fruit and vegetables. Whatever the case may be, using various strategies and programs such as WIC could show a positive increase in American’s lifestyles and a decrease in obesity rate. Bibliography Information: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2009. Obesity: Halting the Epidemic by Making Healthy Eating Easier. Main Questions: 1. What causes obesity and how severe of a national issue is it? 2. What are the consequences of obesity? 3. How can this problem of growing obesity be handled and specifically, what is Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC doing to help? Findings: This article addresses the growing problem of nation-wide obesity in America, plausible reasons for this epidemic, and preventative measures being made to improve the health of Americans. 1. The source of obesity is not a single cause; rather, it is related to several different factors of a person’s lifestyle. Social, economic, environmental, and individual reasons all contribute to the rise of obesity in America. Our society has become “obesogenic,” meaning that our cultural habits and way of life make it easier for people to gain weight. Some examples of this lifestyle would include: a sedentary occupation, using the elevator instead of the stairs, buying from vending machines, and eating fast-food on a daily basis. When people make poor nutritional choices and do not participate regularly in physical activity, the chance that he or she will gain weight and possibly become obese increases. Currently there are over 72 million adults who are obese, and 16% of our nation’s children are obese. For adults this figure has doubled since 1980, but for kids this amount has tripled over the past two decades. 2. Obesity is not merely a physical issue, for it also has negative affects on an individual’s psychological, social, and economic life. Some of the physical health concerns include: heart disease, type two diabetes, cancer, hypertension, and stroke. Healthcare costs have increased due to the increase in obesity,and the aliments it creates. Businesses also suffer financially when they employ obese workers who may have higher medical needs, which ultimately lead to more sick days. 3. The best way to fix or reduce the obesity problem is to target areas with high concentrations of people such as schools, workplaces, and community centers. In order to get people involved with weight loss programs they have to be available, affordable, and easy to commit to. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is attempting to reduce the occurrence of obesity through numerous programs throughout the nation. The first type of program consist of the State Based Programs, which are focused on enhancing the environment, increasing physical activity, increasing intake of fruits and vegetables, promoting the breast feeding of infants, decreasing the amount of television viewing, and decreasing sugar filled and high calorie foods. Additionally, the CDC has implemented Technical Assistance and Training to build community and educate leaders on the issue of obesity and ways to overcome the epidemic. The CDC also conducts surveillance and research in order to discover the trends that lead to obesity and ways to eliminate those habits. The CDC also has multiple innovative partnerships, such as with Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention and Addressing Obesity Through Commercial Health Plans. Overall, the CDC is fully involved with the prevention of obesity and positive results have emerged as seen from 2005-2006 when there was no significant rise in obesity. How this relates: The information is beneficial for this Wiki project because it deals with obesity and preventative measures for the nation. Obesity has become a serious problem for Americans, and strong programs must be implemented in order to reach the goal of minimizing the obese population. If these programs have been working throughout the nation, then it is possible that they will also work in Atchison, Kansas. Bibliographic Information: Finkelstein, Eric; Ruhm, Christopher; Kosa, Katherine 2005. “Economic Causes and Consequences of Obesity”. Annual Review of Public Health. 26. 239-57 Main Question of Article: The purpose of the article by Finkelstein, Ruhm, and Kosa (2005) was to explore the economic causes of obesity, the economic cost of obesity, and what actions could be taken to reduce the increasing obesity problem in America. Main Findings: The article pointed out that advances in technology in the workplace have contributed to boosting obesity rates by allowing people to do more while burning fewer calories. However, it also noted that the percentage of people that engage in some form of physical activity in their free time is actually on the rise, yet obesity is still increasing. Another point made by Finkelstein, Ruhm, and Kosa (2005) was that the drastic increase in calorie intake could explain the increasing obesity rate. Since high calorie, highly processed, mass produced foods cost less than fresh fruits and vegetables and other healthy food, more people are able and willing to buy and eat cheap, unhealthy food. Furthermore, the serving size of food taken during and between meals has increased. So people are not only eating more calories, but they are eating them in greater portions. Also Economic Causes and Consequences of Obesity (2005) stated that with the increase of technology has come an increase in wages. It naturally follows that higher wages equals longer hours at work, which in turn means less time for cooking healthy meals and eating unhealthy fast food more frequently. The article also mentions that the spread of urbanization is connected to the increase in obesity rates. According to this article, television, video games, and other pastimes involving sitting in front of a screen have played a part in the increase of obesity rates too, as they encourage a non-active lifestyle. Plus, television promotes unhealthy foods in the form of commercials. Some consequences of increasing obesity rates mentioned in Economic Causes and Consequences of Obesity (2005) are greater obesity related medical costs, but less lifetime costs due to the shorter life expectancies of obese people. Other results of the increase in obesity are more people being absent from work due to obesity related medical conditions and lower wages for people who are obese because overweight employees are not able to work as long or as hard as other employees due to their physical restrictions. It remains to be seen whether obesity is the cause of lower wages or vise versa; are obese people are paid less due to discrimination, other peoples’ natural repulsion of obese people because they look different, or are they paid less because their obesity prevents them from competing with other employees’ productivity. Finally, this article states that in order to fix the growing obesity problem one must do more than just inform the general public that they are living and unhealthy lifestyle, action must be taken, such as shrinking serving sizes and meal portions. How this relates to our research: Technology seems primarily, if indirectly, responsible for the obesity epidemic. Technology causes people to burn fewer calories; lowers the price of unhealthy, fast foods thereby causing people to eat more calories; and technology is responsible for television, video games and other devises that involve sitting around instead of exercising. The previous information about how technology has resulted in cheaper, unhealthy foods and how it has not lowered the price of healthy foods can be used in our study of the relation of obesity to WIC. Then, using the information provided by this article and other articles, we can come up with a plan to help halt the increase in obesity rates in Atchison, Kansas. Bibliographic Information Beydoun, May A. and Wang, Youfa. “The Obesity Epidemic in the United States—Gender, Age, Socioeconomic, Racial/Ethnic, and Geographic Characteristics: A Systematic Review and Meta-Regression Analysis”. January 25, 2007: 1-23. Main Question Do Gender, Age, Socioeconomic, Racial/Ethnic, or Geographic Characteristics play a role in obesity rates? Findings This article displayed the findings and results of research done concerning the relationship gender, age, socioeconomic, race and ethnicity, and geographic characteristics have with obesity. The first points taken under consideration were the overall patterns, age, and gender disparities in American adults. According to the article, “men and women aged 20 years or older, approximately two thirds (66.3 percent) were overweight or obese, 32.42 percent were obese, and 4.8 percent were extremely obese (BMI 40 kg/m2). The combined prevalence increased with age. Of persons in the United States aged 60 years or older, more than 70 percent were overweight or obese, and the trend was similar for men and women” (Wang and Beydoun 2007, 3). The article then moved onto discuss the point of race and ethnicity. Their results demonstrated that minority groups, such as non-Hispanic Blacks, had higher obesity rates than that of Caucasians (Wang and Beydoun 2007). Within this, the researchers also took into consideration the variable of gender and their research showed that, in both cases (minorities verse Caucasians) minorities’ obesity rates were higher, but in men, in was a lower ratio than that found among women (Wang and Beydoun 2007). The team looked at the results from the variable of Geographic and urban-rural differences as well. The article documents their discoveries stating that “states in the southeastern United States have higher prevalence rates (percent) than states on the West Coast, in the Midwest, and on the northeast coast” (Wang and Beydoun 2007,7). After looking at the above factors, the team moved onto the numbers central obesity produced and the obesity rate in children and adolescents. Their findings showed that obesity was not very dominant in young children whose ages were between one and five. However, higher obesity rates could be found in adolescents aging from twelve to ninteen. It was also observed that most children and adolescents who were obese remained obese throughout adulthood (Wang and Beydoun 2007). Ethinicity played a role in these rates as well, with Asian children having the lowest obesity rates, Native American children having the highest obesity rate in boys, and non-Hispanic Blacks having the highest obesity rate among young girls. (Wang and Beydoun 2007). The last factor that was discussed was SES, or Socioeconomic Status. It was discovered that obesity increased across the board, but there was “no consistent patterns for a SES difference in the increasing [obesity] trend” (Wang and Beydoun 2007). The article ends in a discussion, and it concluded that obesity has risen across the board and will continue to increase. Obesity is an epidemic, and it has deathly consequences (Wang and Beydoun 2007). How this relates to our research: The variable that we are looking at in our research would be the idea of WIC (women, infants, children) and obesity, and if changes were made in WIC, how they would effect obesity rates. In the above article, there is information dealing with SES (socioeconomic status) that can relate to our own research. WIC is usually given to those individuals that have low SES, so by looking at the findings about SES in the article, we can correlate it to our own research.