A sociological perspective
By Kwame Gilbert
GUYANA presents an interesting contextual construct of the evolution of society, in the multifaceted dimensions of how the various sociological perspectives are brought to bear upon the study of our various social problems.

Social problems, as we seek to understand them, are societal induced conditions that harm any segment of the population, and acts and conditions that violate the norms and values found in society. Social problems in the context of Guyana are addressed very often in a way that instead of expunging the problems, we exacerbate them.

Very often it is as a result of our narrow understanding of what the real problems are, and secondly, an inappropriate, uninformed response.

For example, let us take a line from Michael Parenti (in Eitzen and Baca-Zinn, 2000) “Focusing on the poor and ignoring the system of power, privilege, and profit which makes them poor, is a little like blaming the corpse for the murder”.

Our approach somehow has always been to find someone to blame for our social problems, without taking time to understand how the very systems and societal structures we have constructed are responsible for those problems.

Kendall suggests in his theory of the sociological imagination, that “The sociological imagination refers to the ability to see the relationship between individual experiences and the larger society (Kendall, 1998:7). As opposed to looking at isolated events by themselves, the student of social problems is encouraged to look at social problems in relation to other aspects of society like the economy, culture or religion.

There is a deep undeniable correlation between history, the construct of social institutions, and individual experiences.

The problem with the blame approach to resolving social problems is that it does not take into account the historical influences, the influence of the political culture, religion and the media, upon human behaviour. All of these influences separately and collectively, bear heavily upon the social behavior hence contributing to the nature and characteristics and manifestations of our social problems. Person-Blame distracts attention away from institutions. When one uses only the person blame approach, it frees the institutions of state as well as the social institutions –economic, political, religious, and educational, from taking their fair share of blame for how societal induced conditions emerge and thrive to harm and retard the progress of a nation. The person-blame approach ignores the strains for example that are caused by co-existence in a plural society. Person-blame makes it more difficult also to institute systemic change. By excluding the existing social or political order from blame, it makes it only that much harder to initiate change in economic, social, or political institutions. Sometimes, it is the way a political or social or economical system is set-up, which may be archaic, or discriminatory, or draconian that breads a certain type of behaviour. Hence to blame an individual or individuals may be again, “blaming the corpse for the murder”. Sometimes though, individuals can be the problem. People very often, are a reflection of their environment and exposure, and try as you may; deviant, anti-social behaviour seems engrained into their very being. Blaming the system also presents problems for social scientists as well. Ultimately the system is made up of people. Society results from the interaction of individuals. Individuals are sometimes aggressive, mean, and nasty (Eitzen, 2000:14). Systemic explanations for social problems are only part of the truth. The system-blame approach may, there fore, absolve individuals from responsibility for their actions.

Since most people tend to blame individuals, we need a balance. We must critically examine in every case, how the failure of families due to an abdicating of the patriarchal role, has contributed to the kind of societies that spawns, teenage terrorists.

We must carefully study how the constant preaching of hate and racism in homes on political platforms and in places of worship has given birth to a hateful angry generation.

We must examine how an irresponsible media, hell bent on sacrificing truth, nationhood and decency upon the altar of expediency, have helped to produce a lawless, disrespectful-to-authority, generation.

So before we point fingers at who is to be blamed and who should be doing what, let us consider how we can change the very way we have been doing things.