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 term victimization refers to a process whereby an external force comes in contact with a person, causing that person to feel pain, sometimes causing injury, either of which can be short-lived or which might cause extended suffering and sometimes death. That force can be legal or illegal, …
The term victimless crimes and its alternative phrasing crimes without victims refer to illegal acts that involve behavior that the participants engage in voluntarily. For example, the prostitute and the prostitute’s customer both view their interaction as a business transaction in which, as in other commercial arrangements, both …
Victim-offender mediation is a process that provides interested victims of primarily property crimes and minor assaults the opportunity to meet the juvenile or adult offenders, in a safe and structured setting, with the goal of holding the offenders directly accountable for their behavior while providing assistance and compensation …
Vigilantes are those who take enforcement of the law or moral code into their own hands. The term developed in ancient Rome, and today it applies to citizens carrying out frontier justice when they perceive established authorities as weak, corrupt, and/or insufficient. The word vigilante originated in Spain. …
Violence is an injurious force exerted to cause damage to people or things. Shaped by a multitude of social, political, and economic forces within families, neighborhoods, nation-states, and the broader international community, violence is a complex problem related to patterns of thinking and behavior. It embodies an expression …
Collective violence is the handling of a grievance by group aggression against persons or property. Although states engage in violence in wars, police operations, and the punishment of criminals, most social scientists regard collective violence as aggression by civilians. Forms of Collective Violence The universe of collective violence …
No universal definition of sexual violence exists because cultural and social norms and laws define the act; however, many professionals agree on several underlying concepts of sexual violence. Sexual violence includes any unwanted or unlawful behavior perpetrated with the use of coercion and/or force against one’s sexuality by …
Violent crime is a crime involving force or the threat of force against a person or persons. It includes crimes such as robbery, murder, rape, and assault. Crimes of violence account for slightly more than 20 percent of all crime. According to both the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), …
Voter apathy is a lack of interest on the part of individuals in the electoral process generally or in political campaigns during an election period. Apathy is an abstract concept and is therefore difficult to measure. Individual-level measures of voter apathy usually assess the level of interest individuals …
Women, on average, make less than men, a differential commonly known as the wage gap. Although significant changes in the status of women in society occurred since the phenomenon was identified, the gap still persists in the 21st century. Currently, women earn about 77 cents for a man’s …
War is a form of social conflict between two or more collective political actors, involving the organized use of physical violence, with the central aim of coercing one political actor to comply with the will of another. In broader terms, war is a complex and highly contingent set …
War crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law during an armed conflict. Armed conflicts may be either international or internal (noninternational). International armed conflicts are between two or more states, whereas internal armed conflicts occur within one state (e.g., a civil war). International humanitarian law, which is …
When water moves from rivers and reservoirs through canals and pipelines to fulfill crop consumptive needs, when it moves through urban water treatment plants to serve household and industrial requirements, when it is left in-stream for recreational and ecological purposes, it is because people have socially organized to …
Water quality is a general term to describe the purity of water, usually in a natural setting. Water that contains low concentrations of impurities or pollutants is generally said to be of high quality; water with many impurities or high concentrations of impurities is considered to be of …
Water is an essential resource. It is also a nonrenewable or finite resource: While water supplies can be regenerated by creating new water molecules from their elemental beginnings (hydrogen and oxygen), the energy required to create large usable pools of water is currently too energy costly to be …
Wealth disparities exist both within and across societies. The distribution of income and wealth within any given society is a reflection of its class structure. Individual wealth is the total accumulated value of people’s assets or property, commonly referred to as their “net worth.” Specifically, net worth is …
Welfare policy in the United States is controversial. Given the country’s ethos of individualism and self-reliance, the public often blames the poor for their misfortunes and views those who receive public aid with distrust. Historically, both cash aid and publicly supported poorhouses reflected the philosophy that aid was …
Welfare capitalism is a term that social scientists employ to define a specific form of regulating industrial relations and of controlling class struggles. With the onset of industrialization, advanced economies faced several problems and restrictions. At a more general level, constant revolutionizing of production and increasing degrees of …
The term welfare state is strongly associated with socioeconomic policies adopted in advanced capitalist economies particularly after 1945, which rested on the conviction that societies can be shaped by conscious policies designed by state institutions to eliminate abuses resulting from the market process within a capitalist economy. Nevertheless, …
White-collar crime encompasses overt and hidden misconduct and transgressions by corporations, professionals, and political officials who engage in a wide variety of regulatory, civil, and criminal wrongdoing. The broad categorization of white-collar crime may involve anti-trust conspiracies, insider trading, defective products, insurance fraud, dangerous medical devices, unwanted surgeries, …
