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Chapter 1 - The Challenges of Conceptualizing Social Problems

from Part I - General Concerns and Orientations in the Study of Social Problems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2018

By
Joseph Schneider
Edited by
A. Javier Treviño
A. Javier Treviño
Affiliation:
Wheaton College, Massachusetts
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Summary

The sociological study of social problems is reviewed in terms of the question of conceptualizing the key term social problems as a technical term in the discipline and beyond. Dilemmas brought by the very word problem, by who uses it and how, are considered. Against a dominant tradition of the sociologist using the term normatively, elements of the definitional approach proposed by Malcolm Spector and John Kitsuse are reviewed as the most analytically sound conceptualization of the last century, still offering promise. That argument is then linked to work in science studies and the respecification of sociology by Bruno Latour to suggest a revitalized study of social problems and sociology.

Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge Handbook of Social Problems , pp. 3 - 22
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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