Highlights
A unified approach gives students an intellectual toolkit they can use to analyze any social problem.
Best provides readers with the tools to recognize, think about, and respond to claims about social problems that they hear from the media, experts, politicians, and activists. This theoretical framework helps students consider competing agendas and special interests in an analytical manner. Social Problems illustrates how people and organizations compete to persuade the public that their claims about social problems are the correct way of thinking.
An emphasis on social constructionist theory throughout the book.
Best focuses on the social problems process—the complex relationships between public opinion, the media, activists, politicians, and service providers that transform a condition into a social problem. Each chapter in Social Problems builds on the previous one, taking readers along the typical path that an issue follows as it is transformed from its initial status as a “claim” to its eventual designation as a “social problem.”
Two themes, Resources and Rhetoric, organize the discussion of social problems.
Best illustrates how those with money, power, and other resources find it easier to have their claims heard than those without. In addition, he shows how the construction of these claims, and their transformation into a social problem, is inevitably a rhetorical process. These two themes unify the narrative and help students evaluate social problems both within and outside of the classroom.
Extensive pedagogy makes connections between theory and everyday life.
Best connects social constructionist theory to the real world by including 4–5 boxed examples in each chapter and concluding with end-of-chapter case studies. In addition, every chapter ends with “Making Connections” boxes that relate the chapter to previous and upcoming chapters in the book, helping students to keep track of the big picture.
Social Problems: Readings.
Edited by Ira Silver (Framingham State College), the reader gives professors the flexibility and resources to teach their social problems course the way they want.
Copyright © 2007, W. W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved.
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