Seminar Constructing social problems

*THIS CLASS IS HELD IN ENGLISH. Exams and papers can be handed in in German or English.* Social problems are contested, negotiated, offered and accepted, assailed and defended. For a social problem to exist, it requires -claimsmakers- (Spector/Kitsuse) and -moral entrepreneurs- (Becker) that bring it into public debate, claimsmakers who are themselves lodged in social frameworks in ways that allow specific things to appear to them as problems in the first place. If these claimsmakers engage in the process of defining a phenomenon as a social problem, they will be met with opposition, attempts at redefinition, counter-claims and modifications. Some actors will deny a problem exists at all; others will support it, but claim different causes, different consequences, and different affected populations.  These are strategic moves. With defining the causes, victims, and consequences of a problem comes jurisdiction over it; successful claimsmakers can gain responsibility, and thereby social status, through their success. Those who lose can see other institutions and organizations gain jurisdiction, and hence power, over them, suddenly becoming -victims- in need of -help- by the victors, or -perpetrators- who need to be -stopped.- As all other social meanings, a -social problem- is, first and foremost, a meaning. A sociology of social problems does not ask whether something -is- a problem, but will rather survey the actors engaged in definitional processes, the practices and techniques used to construct social problems, the processes and scripts in which these practices are lodged, and the surrounding meanings that are drawn into these negotiations. The end result, again, is not an evaluation whether these problems are -true- in the sense of asking whether the actors are right; the reality of a social problem, and the reality of its causes, victims, and consequences, are the result of successful definitional activity, and personal opinions speak to the efficacy of construction practices. An analytical detachment is, therefore, a central requirement of this class. The more formal requirement of this class consists of writing a research paper, in German or English, analyzing a social problem, identifying the actors, identifying the structural position of these actors and the frames through which they perceive the phenomenon, and the interests involved in constructing it as a problem; and identifying the actors involved in opposing the problem, with all the concomitant elements repeating. FB 05 Gesellschaftswissenschaften Uni Kassel SoSe 2016 Soziologie HF Dr. Dellwing Michael