According to Mills (The Promise), what is the difference between personal trouble and a public issue? Why is this distinction important?

Personal troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his/her immediate relations with others. They have to do with self and within those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware. A trouble is a private matter - values cherished by the individual felt to be threatened.

Public issues have to do with matters that transcend the local area/immediate relations of the individual. They have to do with the various environments overlap and penetrate within each other to form the larger structure of social and historic life. It is a public matter - some value cherished by the public is felt to be threatened.

The distinction between the two is an essential tool of the sociological imagination and a feature of all classic work in social science. Most issues cannot be defined in terms of everyday environments of ordinary men. Issues involve a crisis in institutional arrangements and often involve contradictions or opposition. The sociological imagination helps humans to shift from one perspective to another.

According to Bender and Smith (Population, Food, and Nutrition), why are there so many starving or malnourished people in the world when we produce so much food?


There are multiple reasons why despite relatively high food production in the world there remain a large number of starving and malnourished people in the world. Factors at the forefront of the problem include poverty, waste, diet, and disruptions in distribution networks.

Poverty is the number one cause of world hunger. Many, if not most, low-income countries cannot grow enough food to feed their citizens. Moreover, these countries do not have the financial resources to make up the difference through food importation. 
Even the United States does not provision sufficient food resources to feed their poor. Statistics show that nearly 25 percent of children under the age of six live below the poverty line in the United States. Chances are, the majority of the children that fall 
within those statistics go to bed hungry every night. These people are our neighbors – the very children that live and play in our communities. 

Food loss through waste is inevitable, but is even more common in developed nations where the demand for larger quantities and greater variety of food is the norm. For instance, to accommodate the selection of meats in the diets of citizens in developed nations, 40 percent of the world’s supply of grain is fed to livestock. Sadly, grain provides greater nutritional value, almost twice as much, when consumed directly. 

Waste is also the result of hoarding goods to increase prices. Unfortunately, spoilage is a by-product of hoarding. In turn, smaller quantities result in greater demand and higher prices – a vicious cycle.

Diet also plays a critical role when evaluating food production versus distribution. People in developed countries have richer and more diversified diets. They also consume greater amounts of food than people in Third World countries. Food goods that are particularly favored include starches, animal products, oils, sweeteners, fruits and vegetables. With the exception of the fruits and vegetables, many of these products are unhealthy and can be costly to produce. Unfortunately, because other countries favor Westerners’ values, as citizens from developing countries gain increased financial and industrial strength, they 
adopt our poor and gluttonous diets. 

A significant portion of the world’s food production does not reach distribution networks because of natural disasters and political violence. Emergency food provisions are currently coordinated by United Nation agencies for literally dozens of areas involved in civil strife. Refugees displaced as a result of war are also prevented from obtaining food goods in many parts of the world, as are those involved in natural disasters. While humankind is quick to provide food supplies as soon as is humanly possible, they do not provide long-term solutions. And, depending on the timeliness, food delivery may be too late for many. 

The bottom line – with the exception of dire and extreme situations – there is no such thing as a free lunch. The world’s trade system is based primarily on the exchange of cash for goods. If you do not have one then your chances of obtaining the other are slim and none. Additionally, social programs and assistance are limited. As a consequence, unless the system changes, even an overabundant food supply will never meet the needs of the entire population. 

What is the hierarchy of credibility? Provide an example from your own life to illustrate this concept.

The hierarchy of credibility is a system of ranked groups, where participants take it as a given that members of the highest group have the right to define the way things really are. Those at the top of the hierarchy are given more credibility. Subordinates are at the bottom and super ordinates are at the top. In any organization, information is more accessible and 
complete for those who are at the top. Members in the lower group will have incomplete information and their view of reality will be distorted. Society, as a system, is socialized into the hierarchy of credibility. 

C. Wright Mills applied this concept to the elite theory of democracy. He claimed that power is in the hands of a small number of people. All of them have a common social background that gives the elites their cohesion. Mills felt that the elites were drawn from executive branches of government, leadership of the top corporations, and the top military brass. Their power is based on their institutional positions, not personal wealth. Their power is in holding top office positions in huge bureaucracies that dominate the modern society. At the bottom of the power structure stand ordinary citizens who are unorganized and 
powerless. Mills feels that the government is controlled by corporate and government leaders who are concerned with their own interests. He points out three aspects of this theory. The first is legitimation, which applies to what we are taught in school that supports the government. Education, which has turned to a bureaucratic form, reinforces what the government wants us to learn. The next is repression. This is preventing people from taking actions that would harm the state and capitalist systems. Lastly, accumulation is establishing policies that assist the capitalist class in its accumulation of capital. This is an example of applying the hierarchy of credibility to the governmental process. 

When illustrating the hierarchy of credibility in one's own life, it is evident in all areas. Many people will find that work environments are set up in this manner. There are many aspects of our lives that are bureaucratic, and hierarchy is a component of bureaucracies. When examining my own job, I am at the bottom of the chain. I report directly to a specialist who reports to an assistant director. The assistant director, in turn, reports to his super ordinate. Those who are at the top of the chain relay information that they want me to receive to the bottom of the chain. The guidelines and information I receive I assume to be correct. My super ordinates are given more credibility than I because specialists and other institutional bureaucracies trained them. As our society evolves, it becomes more goal orientated and directed towards greater efficiency. To meet these objectives, the hierarchy of credibility is put into place. 

Ms. Carson begins by reminding us how through time, up until the last century life and our surroundings has not changed a great deal. Nature and the damages that had been done were not significant enough to totally disrupt things. Then in the last century the population has grown to such a large number that we are really beginning to damage the earth. The 
chemicals that are getting into the air, water and eventually us are becoming lethal. 
Ms. Carson talks about how it has taken millions of years for life to be here and that eventually we came into a balance with our surroundings. But it has taken an extraordinary amount of time for this to happen. Things are now changing at such a rapid pace that nature does not have a chance to catch up and get back in balance. Also the chemicals that are being used are man made chemicals that are much more dangerous. If these chemicals were only being produced a few at a time it would still take generations to adjust to them, but these chemicals are being produced and used by approximately five hundred a year. So it is impossible for the body and the earth to adjust itself so quickly. Just like the cycle of insects. We kill them out using one insecticide and some survive and they multiply, then you have to make a stronger insecticide, which then puts more chemicals into the system. Will the cycle ever end? That is why time is so important. 

In the Earth Day 2000 article it talked about how, “half the world’s wetlands have been lost in the past century; 58% of coral reefs are imperiled by human activity; 80% of grasslands are suffering from soil degradation.” That is just a few of the statistics. I can only imagine the centuries of time it would take to begin building these things back into a normal balance. If we as a people don’t start realizing this and making some changes it won’t matter how much time there is it will eventually become beyond repair.