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Constructionist theory describes and analyzes social problems as emerging through the efforts of claimsmakers who bring issues to public attention. By typifying a problem and characterizing it as a particular sort, claimsmakers can shape policymaking and public response to the problem. Th is new edition of Images of Issues addresses claimsmaking in the 1990s, featuring such issues as fathers' rights, stalking, sexual abuse by the clergy, hate crimes, multicultural education, factory farming, and concluding with an expanded discussion of the theoretical debate over constructionism.
List of contents
Introduction; 1: Typification and Social Problems Construction; I: Claims; 2: Horror Stories and the Construction of Child Abuse; 3: Stalking Strangers and Lovers: Changing Media Typifications of a New Crime Problem; 4: Rethinking Medicalization: Alcoholism and Anomalies; 5: The Moral Drama of Multicultural Education; II: Claimsmakers; 6: Clergy Sexual Abuse: The Symbolic Politics of a Social Problem; 7: The Social Construction of Infertility: From Private Matter to Social Concern; 8: The Crack Attack: America's Latest Drug Scare, 1986-1992; III: Connections; 9: "All We Want Is Equality": Rhetorical Framing in the Fathers' Rights Movement; 10: Hate Crimes in the United States: The Transformation of Injured Persons into Victims and the Extension of Victim Status to Multiple Constituencies; 11: Down on the Farm: Rationale Expansion in the Construction of Factory Farming as a Social Problem; IV: Policies; 12: Writing Rights: The "Homeless Mentally III and Involuntary Hospitalization; 13: Creativity, Conflict, and Control: Film Industry Campaigns to Shape Video Policy; 14: Cold Wars, Evil Empires, Treacherous Japanese: Effects of International Context on Problem Construction; Afterword; 15: Constructionism in Context
About the author
Joel Best
Summary
Constructionist theory describes and analyzes social problems as emerging through the efforts of claimsmakers who bring issues to public attention
