Social Problems
One of the study areas for sociologists is social problems, in fact that is the basis of almost all sociology. We are intimately interested in what makes our society work, and what has happened when it doesn't.
Crime, violence, deviance, racism, sexism, agism - just about any other -ism you can think of operate in our society on a daily basis. But, and it is a big but, that isn't how it is supposed to be. So what happened? One of the best looks at social problems, in a general way, was C. Wright Mills in his book The Sociological Imagination. In this book he talked about how to understand something as a social issue, rather than a personal problem. Here is a short excerpt from the book that explains. "The Promise" As Mills demonstrates, personal problems become social issues partly by sheer size, but more importantly, as an issue of social policy. So when we study social problems, we do so with an eye toward the policies involved and how they affect the problem. Another part of the process of studying social problems, is looking at possible solutions. As Karl Marx pointed out, it was not enough to merely analyze and explain something, science should offer possible solutions as well or it wasn't really doing its job very well. So just as someone studying biology might be searching for a cure for a disease, or a chemist searching for a new kind of fuel, or a physicist might look for new sources of energy; sociologists look as well for solutions to problems of poverty, crime, racism, etc. in our society.