Social Curiosity

Social curiosity provides intellectual and moral energy giving us the motivation to use the "intellectual scaffolding" of theory and methods that are available to us. (Persell) This is evidenced by Pivon and Cloward historical social analysis demonstrating that welfare forces the poor to accept low paying, exploitative dead end jobs, and that policy has historically supported a demand for cheep labor. The poor are forced to work at low end jobs that do not support their families even with welfare funding, resulting in less control of the family, less opportunities for the young, creating social disruption's like delinquency, school failure, drug taking, etc.

O'Conner's macro-level socio-economic analysis of the interacting sectors of capitalism helps us understand the broader implications of capitalism and the how capitalism needs to change and expand into foreign markets, and that monopoly sector growth is directly related to creating surplus goods and surplus population or technological unemployment and that the "employed poor working full time earn wages below the poverty line, is a larger problem then the unemployed. "

Blumer wants our social curiosity to be heightened to the point of social participation by suggesting five phases of collective definition through which changes might be introduced and improvements suggested. Spitzer is suggesting that under the capitalist mode of production, class control is institutionalized within the family, church, schools, associations, as a way of coping with the contradictions of capitalism. Capitalist development must not be interrupted, and if it is what to do with the interrupting force. Problem populations that disrupt or potentially disrupt the social relations of productions are "eligible for management". Capitalism has been successful in coping with problem populations, historically. Pivon and Cloward's historical analysis gives examples of this successful process during the depression, when the unemployed fought collectively for help by the state during their time of need. Spitzer suggests that the rates of deviance are influenced by (1) intensity of controls, (2)degree of threat of problem population, (3)level of organization of problem population, (4) effectiveness of controls in place already, (5)availability of official processing, (6) parallel control structures such as private police, organized crime (7)utility of problem populations, social junk and social dynamite are conditions under which populations are transformed into deviants and proper objects of social control. O'C onner points to the growth of the monopoly sector creating some employment while taking over competitive industries and creating unemployment while liquidating small businesses.

The theoretical Human Service worker has a theoretical