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# Contents

- Introduction
- Learning outcomes
- 1 The social construction of social problems
  - 1.1 What is ‘social’ about a social problem?
  - 1.2 From private trouble to public issue: the emergence of negative equity
  - 1.3 Social problems and social policy
  - 1.4 Summary
- 2 ‘What everybody knows’
  - 2.1 Common sense and social problems
  - 2.2 Summary
- 3 Tracing the deposits
  - 3.1 Competing explanations of social problems
  - 3.2 Poverty as natural/inevitable
  - 3.3 Poverty as the result of poor people
  - 3.4 Poverty as the effect of economic or political causes
  - 3.5 Social science approaches
  - 3.6 Summary
- 4 Mapping the field: competing constructions
  - 4.1 Natural/social
  - 4.2 Levels of explanation
  - 4.3 Summary
- 5 Scepticism and social construction
  - 5.1 Common sense revisited
  - 5.2 From social construction to social constructionism
  - 5.3 Summary
- 6 The question of ideology: social interests and social constructions
  - 6.1 Legitimating the powerful
  - 6.2 Contesting ideologies
  - 6.3 Summary
- 7 Norms, truth and power: discourses of social problems
  - 7.1 Ideologies and discourses
  - 7.2 The institutionalisation of discourses
  - 7.3 Summary
- 8 Conclusion: the view from social constructionism
- Further reading
- Take the next step
- References
- Acknowledgements

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