Category: Essays on Controversial Topics
Browse our collection of essays on controversial topics. Each topic in this category represents a controversial issue and thus is a good choice if you are looking for argumentative or persuasive essay topics. When writing an argumentative essay or a persuasive essay you should focus on picking a topic that is current and relevant to society and can be argued logically.
While a strong interest in a topic is important, it’s not enough to be interested. You have to consider what position you can back up with reasoning and evidence. It’s one thing to have a strong belief, but when shaping an argument you’ll have to explain why your belief is reasonable and logical. As you explore the topics, make a mental list of points you could use as evidence for or against an issue.
George Weinberg, in Society and the Healthy Homosexual of 1972, coined the term homophobia to refer to the psychological fear of homosexuals and homosexuality. That definition, however, is limited in its focus, as it neglects wider structural sources behind the taboo of same-sex sexual relationships and the negative …
Homosexuality is a sexual orientation in which one experiences sexual attraction primarily toward members of one’s own sex and is also sexual behavior with partners of the same sex. The prefix homo- is from the Greek word for “same.” The general term gay, and the gender-specific terms gay …
Hospice emerged in response to improvements in medicine and technology to address the needs of the dying more effectively than hospitals can. Caring for only the terminally ill, hospices can be independent, hospital-affiliated, nursing home based, in an extended care facility, or home health agency based. The modern …
Hostile environment is a concept describing a workplace environment that has become intolerable to an employee, due to treatment based on that employee’s race, ethnicity, sex, religion, or ability. The idea that some employees suffer discrimination in the form of a “hostile environment” developed in the context of …
Housing refers to buildings or other types of shelter construction in which people live. Types of housing have varied across time and geographic location. Housing also varies by structure, layout, building material, shape, and, to some extent, function, depending on location, culture, and socioeconomic status. A house provides …
The concept of human rights is not a modern phenomenon. Through codes, decrees, or laws, rulers of empires in ancient India, Mesopotamia, and Persia, for example, established certain rights and privileges for their citizens. Also, some of the oldest written sources on rights and responsibilities are in the …
Human trafficking is a widespread global human rights problem and refers to the recruiting, transporting, harboring, or receipt of human beings by use of force, coercion, or fraud. Trafficked persons are subjected to labor exploitation, sexual exploitation, or both. Exploitation may include forced labor, debt bondage, slavery, abuse …
When a group is so segregated that its members have little chance of contact with outsiders, that group is hypersegregated. In the case of residential location, hypersegregation means that the members of different groups are extremely unlikely to live together. U.S. experts primarily pay attention to the spatial …
Identity politics refers to political activism of various social movements including, but not limited to, the civil rights movement, feminist movements, gay and lesbian movements, ethnic separatist movements for political recognition, self-determination, and elimination of discrimination. The term suggests that people who have suffered from actual or perceived …
Although identity theft is often heralded as a new crime threat, the phenomenon itself is by no means unique to the information age. Throughout history, criminals have used false identities to commit their crimes. However, as identity theft emerges as a growing crime problem in the 21st century, …
During the 1950s two predominant theories of criminal behavior were Edwin H. Sutherland’s differential association theory and Robert K. Merton’s anomie theory. Sutherland argued that criminal behavior is learned in the same manner as other behaviors; people who are socialized to sanction criminal behavior are likely to become …
The last decade of the 20th century witnessed an unprecedented concern for adult literacy in many developed nations. This concern was stimulated by the completion of the first International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), undertaken in the mid-1990s by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and a …
For more than 60 years the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has tracked the progress of nations around the globe in achieving higher rates of adult literacy. Though nations may define literacy somewhat differently, most consider literacy as the ability to read and write simple …
Immigration is the arrival of citizens from one nation-state who plan on taking or do take up long-term or permanent residence in another country. Thus it is secondary to the preceding migration. subsequent generations of these immigrants either assimilate and become invisible or maintain features distinguishing them from …
Often described as a nation of immigrants, the United States had a foreign-born population of 12.4 percent in 2005. Before the 19th century, however, people rarely used the term immigrant. Instead, the foreign-born came as settlers, pioneers, slaves, or indentured servants. The Naturalization Act of 1790 first established …
Imperialism corresponds closely to the concept of empire and signifies all sorts of expansion policies: economic, political, military, cultural, and so on. In The Civil War in France, Karl Marx introduced the concept of imperialism into modern social and political thought. With his classical work Imperialism: A Study, …
The United States incarcerates a larger share of its population than any other country. Increasingly, the criminal justice system affects not only the lives of convicted offenders individually but also the relative standing of demographic groups and outcomes in the country as a whole. This entry deals with …
Incest refers to sexual relations between closely related persons. The degrees of kinship defined as incestuous vary, but virtually every known society has prohibited father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister from having sexual contact or marrying. Only in recent decades, though, has society recognized …
Income disparity refers to differences in income between two or more individuals or aggregates. Aggregates can be defined by relationship (family, household) or by some other attribute (community, nation, gender, ethnicity, age, class). Income disparities are important for several reasons: (a) Income is the primary source of economic …
The term index of dissimilarity refers to a standard measure of residential segregation, which gauges the extent to which two groups are evenly spread throughout neighborhoods in a given geographic area, usually a city or metropolitan area. It is interpreted as the percentage of either of the two …
