Thinking About Social Problems: An Introduction to Constructionist Perspectives

by Donileen R. Loseke

While many scholars in sociology, communication, media studies, public policy, psychotherapy, and criminology use social construction perspectives in their own research, these perspectives tend not to be adequately covered in popular college-level texts. This book can bring constructionist perspectives into college classrooms because it offers an accessible overview of these perspectives that is interdisciplinary in scope and historically current in examples. The topics cover a broad range of issues including how successful images of social problem conditions, victims, and villains are constructed; how these images shape public policy and social services; and how these images can change the ways we make sense of ourselves and others. In focusing on what constructionist examination tells readers about their own lives, this book encourages critical reasoning skills; it encourages readers to become thoughtful and knowledgeable consumers of all talk about social problems and to think about the individual, social, and political consequences of the process of constructing public worry.

227 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 1999