1.3 Constructing a Social Problem
Kimberly Puttman
Sociologists argue that social problems are socially constructed. In order to explain why some issues become relevant to particular communities, sociologists propose a process, or sequence of steps, that an issue undergoes before it becomes a social problem. These steps may include requests for action and subsequent responses. Sociologist Joel Best proposes a useful six-step process.
The Social Problems Process
In order to explain why social problems arise, sociologists look for patterns across many social problems. As early as 1940, Richard Fuller and Richard Myers proposed a model for social problem creation, action, and resolution. They called the model a natural history of a social problem. It may seem odd at first to hear social problems described in terms of natural history.
More simply, Fuller and Myers are asking us to be excellent observers, looking at the social world the way a biologist would study nature. A biologist would observe, gather evidence, and explain patterns she sees. Sociologists who study social problems also observe and organize details into steps or models. They use those models to explain social phenomena or predict what might happen next. In this book, we describe this approach as the social problems process.
Recently, sociologist Joel Best proposed a more detailed framework for the social problems process (Figure 1.14). In it, he includes steps for identifying and examining what a social problem is. He considers modern technology by describing how social media can rally people to a cause or promote government programs. He also expands our understanding of how the government takes action with social problems and helps us think about what happens next. This model is helpful because it allows us to explore what is common in social problems, and perhaps more importantly, what is effective in trying to solve them. The following sections walk through the model step by step.
Step One: Claimsmaking
In this step, people and groups identify an issue and try to convince others to take it seriously. In this step, the problem is called a claim, or “an argument that a particular troubling condition needs to be addressed” (Best 2020:15). In this stage, people disagree about whether a problem exists. They disagree on who should take action. In Best’s classic example, civil rights activists claimed that racial segregation in public spaces, employment, housing, voting and other aspects of social life was unacceptable. Predominantly Black activists held sit-ins, boycotts, marches, and demonstrations to assert their claim. The people conducting these actions are claimsmakers, the “people who seek to convince others that there is a troubling condition about which something needs to be done” (Best 2020:15).
Step Two: Media Coverage
In the second step, claimsmakers work to find other people and groups who agree with them on the causes, impacts, and desired outcomes of the particular issue at hand. Civil rights activists, as pictured in Figure 1.15, used newspapers, radio, and television to build an audience sympathetic to the needed civil rights changes. Dr. King and other speakers used their gifts for impassioned speaking to encourage media coverage and gain wide agreement about how and why civil rights laws should change. Media coverage also includes using social media, like the #MeToo movement mentioned earlier in this chapter.
Step Three: Public Reaction
In this step, individuals, groups, and organizations begin to align to a particular explanation of the problem and request a change in policy or law. Often, at this step, it is the power of social movements that creates the changes in policy or law. For example, the marches for civil rights in the United States led to Congress passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Step Four: Policy Making
In the policy making step, governments create new laws. These laws force institutions to create new policies to address social problems. Response to the social problem requires institutions with power to take action to make change. With civil rights, race-based segregation became illegal at the federal level.
Step Five: Social Problems Work
Once a new policy is put into place, institutions must act to implement the change. For the civil rights movement, this work included integrating schools, which we will talk about more in Chapter 5. It included registering Black and Brown people to vote. It included ending the legal segregation of public spaces, even though de facto segregation still exists today.
Step Six: Policy Outcomes
In this step, claimsmakers examine the outcomes of the policies and actions taken to respond to the social problem. Often, the outcome of this step is making the claim stronger and requesting more action. The civil rights movement became a training ground for other protests. People who learned to organize, march, and lead non-violent resistance in the civil rights movement used these skills to advocate for women’s rights, ending the war in Vietnam, and beginning to expand recognition of the LGBTQIA+ community. We continue the cycle of social problem creation and resolution, moving toward a new—and potentially transformative—normal.
Sociologists Fuller, Meyers, and Best contribute a model that we can use to understand and explain why social problems get our attention and how we take action. Other sociologists criticize this model. We’ll explore some of these criticisms in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, but for now we have a powerful place to start.
Licenses and Attributions for Constructing a Social Problem
Open Content, Original
“Constructing a Social Problem” by Kimberly Puttman is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Figure 1.14. “Best’s Model of Claimsmaking” designed by Kimberly Puttman, based on Joel Best’s model of social problems, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Open Content, Shared Previously
Figure 1.15. “Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C.” by Rowland Scherman, Wikimedia Commons is in the Public Domain.
a social condition or pattern of behavior that has negative consequences for individuals, our social world, or our physical world
the physical separation of two groups, particularly in residence, but also in workplace and social functions.
the ability of an actor to sway the actions of another actor or actors, even against resistance
purposeful, organized groups that strive to work toward a common social goal
an acronym that stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, and more.