Social problems: Who makes them?
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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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