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.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) currently recognizes 27 million persons as refugees (persons who have sought refuge across national boundaries) and another 26 million as internally displaced persons (IDPs) (persons who have sought refuge within their own countries). These people have fled war and political persecution …
Whether one is talking about the latest actor, politician, or average person, the term rehabilitation is likely to pop up in casual conversation. This is testimony to how quickly the term has entered the pop culture lexicon. Partially because of this, it is difficult to disentangle the different …
The theory of relative deprivation proposes that people view their well-being as compared to the situations of others. If individuals perceive themselves to be worse off than their comparison (reference) group, then they will feel relatively deprived. This is opposed to absolute deprivation, in which a person measures …
Civil religion in the United States is a concept most closely associated with Robert N. Bellah, whose 1967 seminal work argued that a “religion”—separate and distinct from church or synagogue—provides the unifying civil underpinning that bonds and guides U.S. society. According to this argument, a “biblical republicanism” was …
Conflict and religion both are ubiquitous social processes, but at first they may appear to be autonomous, even contradictory, social processes: Conflict presumes division, distress, and discord; religion presumes cohesion, tranquility, and peace. However, conflict can also be integrative and religion can move actors to challenge and overturn …
Religion and politics share a common concern: the order of human beings in the social world in order to avoid the problem of chaos. If at least one definition of politics is the means by which we order our community and even our personal conduct through the formulation …
Religious extremism is a radicalized and intolerant viewpoint that typically sanctions the use of violence to promote a defined, religiously motivated political agenda. Religious extremist groups share several interlocking characteristics. Among the most important are a sense of persecution, a sense of injustice suffered at the hand of …
The holiday of Christmas has become a global social problem because it invites terrorism and other forms of violence. In fact, violence is a part of many religious holidays. On Purim in 1996, Palestinian terrorists killed 13 people and injured 125. During 2006 Ramadan, the spike in U.S. …
The gap between the humanitarian ideals of most religions and the often inhumane actions of their practitioners is wide and widely observed. Religious people are clearly not immune to the tendencies toward biased judgments, intolerance, contempt, and even violence that are apparently universal features of human societies. The …
Loosely defined, reparations are something done or paid to compensate or make amends for a wrongdoing. More specifically, the term reparation refers to compensation given for loss, suffering, or damage suffered by an injured party. Reparations exist in different forms. For example, war reparations are payments from one …
The term repatriation refers to the return of individuals, human remains, cultural property, or other artifacts to their homelands or to their original owners. Repatriation applies to such processes as the return of the bodies of foreign soldiers after a war; the restoration of Native American artifacts from …
The Oxford English Dictionary definition of resettlement, to “settle or cause to settle in a different place,” implicitly recognizes that moving can be voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary movers are generally called immigrants; involuntary movers are called refugees. Resettlement countries are typically preoccupied with selecting those immigrants most likely …
During the 1980s, analysts developed the resource mobilization perspective to better understand and explain the emergence, significance, and impact of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Resource mobilization is at root a theory explaining how individuals and groups overcome resource inequalities and organize themselves to pursue …
During the past several decades, restorative justice has emerged as an important new approach to criminal justice theory and practice. It is based on the goal of repairing the harm of crime rather than the traditional criminal justice goals of assigning blame and imposing punishment for criminal transgressions. …
Retirement is an economic-based term that traditionally refers to the ending of paid work, often signaling the end of one’s professional or work career. In the United States, retirement is usually accompanied by the receipt of Social Security to provide income, Medicare to cover some health care costs, …
Riots arise when groups of people are committing, or may be about to commit, a variety of violent and/or unlawful acts in relation to an apparent grievance or complaint, and/or out of opposition to some form of authority or practice. Riots have occurred for many reasons: from poor …
Road rage is any spontaneous, assaultive behavior arising from instances of aggressive driving, traffic annoyances, and/or altercations that begin on roadways or parking lots. Examples of roadway annoyances can include, but are not limited to, arguments, threats, rivalry over parking spaces, inappropriate lane changes, tailgating, speeding, interference of …
Role conflict refers to a condition in which competing and incompatible normative expectations associated with the enactment of social statuses are imposed on an individual. The most noted, though not the only, condition under which this circumstance might occur is when an individual is required to enact simultaneously …
Role strain refers to a condition whereby an individual experiences unease in fulfilling role expectations. For various reasons, the expectations associated with a role may be mutually incompatible or undesirable, leaving a person with feelings of discomfort as she or he is called upon to fulfill role obligations. …
Runaways are children under the age of majority who leave home without the permission of their caretakers. The simplicity of this definition belies the complexity and diversity of the situations that are sometimes covered by this term. Disputes arise over such dimensions of runaway behavior as duration, distance, …
