1) The Heaven’s Gate group and the actions of terrorists in present day Iraq and Israel both share certain indications of suicide as illustrated by Emile Durkheim’s theory: suicide is linked to an overly strong or overly weak individual’s perception of social bonding to society.  The theory states that when one is placed into a state of anomy, where one has no perceived value or knowledge of existence in a society, that individual or group of individuals is more prone to suicide.  It states that such individuals are also incentivized of rewards and treasures stored up in heaven to perform suicide tasks/rituals.  The observations of Durkheim’s theory provide a solid explanation to the actions of such social misfits and heaven incentivized groups such as Heaven’s gate and terrorists.

2) The main causes of the increasing population of homeless persons in the U.S is due to a lack of affordable housing and a lack of available medical care to these individuals.  Without proper medical assistance, they are unable to receive help for ailments such as alcohol and drug addiction.  Additionally, the marginalization and public apathy towards the homeless from society only compounds the problem.  Affordable housing and free medical assistance from the government must be established to help these victims of society.

3) A disproportionate number of prisoners from minority groups in U.S. prisons exist because both the police and justice departments stereotype these individuals as criminals.  Because such individuals are discriminated against, they begin to participate in innovative deviance: where an individual will use illegal methods to achieve success based upon the looking-glass self method.  To remedy the solution, unjust laws such as mandatory sentencing and the death penalty must be repealed.  Additionally, programs must be implemented to raise awareness of such travesties.

4) Women are targets for sexual violence because they are objectified by marketers and other forms of media as products to sell in society.  Also, women are seen as weak and submissive, whereas men are seen strong and aggressive.  These characteristics are seen as favorable in the global patriarchic society.  There is a tendency within the U.S. to keep women illiterate on purpose by keeping them at home, and allow only the man to become educated and advance professionally.

5) The exploitation of indigenous workers in developing countries by multi-national corporations is the primary problem why developing countries lag behind developed nations with regard to per-person gross national income.  Another primary cause of hunger and famine in these countries is due to colonization.  Developed countries exploit developing countries for their natural resources and labor, which causes such countries to exist in a cycle of debt by not being self sufficient.  Compound this problem with recent advanced in medical technology, which have drastically decreased the mortality rate of babies, have ballooned populations and have burdened the fragile society with more mouths to feed.  Policy must be enacted to both regulate multi-national corporations and the colonization of other countries, as well as increase birth control efforts in these countries.

6)  The U.S. women’s movement began and progress out of the 1830’s abolition movement. After actualizing the right for slaves to vote, the women of the movement then progressed to fight for their right to vote.  The 19th amendment of the constitution was passed on August 26, 1920, but was not realized until the civil rights movement in 1960s. The reason it took women so long to have the right to vote was because men dominated the political landscape, and power lobbies such as the alcohol lobby feared that if women had the right to vote, they would pass a prohibition on alcohol.  Gender wage gap still exists in our society because men are holding a glass-ceiling of opportunity over the heads of women and purposefully paying them less.  

7) A significant characteristic of multi-national corporations is that they are not under the authority of any one government.  By being unaccountable to any one kind of legislation, such corporations are capable of exploiting some countries to benefit themselves.  This perpetuates global inequality, while making the United States more wealthy on the expense of other developing worlds.