 This video is about Chapter 8, Evaluating Constructionist Perspectives on Social Problems. In the book Thinking About Social Problems, it is the last video in this series, and it is Going Over Concepts in this last chapter. That may be on your module exam. So, Lowsky in this chapter kind of compares and contrasts what Objectivists are looking at versus what Constructionists are looking at. He points out that the main concern of Objectivists is to document and verify what social problem conditions exist in the real world and to demonstrate and try to figure out exactly how widespread these problems are, how long they have persisted, and so forth. So, you're going to be looking at a lot of data from an Objectivist point of view, and you're trying to find more information about these conditions and describe these conditions accurately. Constructionists say that these conditions can exist, but that there is a process through which people come to look at these conditions actually as a social problem. So, even though you can document that these conditions exist, understanding that these conditions are a social problem is a matter of how people construct them. Because not everybody constructs everything, you know, the same conditions as problematic. Some people is in their interest to consider it business as usual, instead of considering it a problem per se. So, constructionists are, you know, interested in why did this become this condition become considered a problem, and why when it was considered a problem did it also come to be considered a problem that needs to be solved within the public arena. Objectivists are concerned about how the world is. They are very much wanting to describe accurately the extent of problems, accurately the extent of conditions to accurately show what the conditions are. Where constructionists are more interested in what people believe. Do people believe this is a problem? Do people believe it is a problem because of how they are affected by the problem? Do they believe this is a problem? Because they believe that it will be a bigger problem if they are not addressed and so forth. So, the focus is on the subjective view of people and what they believe as opposed to the objective documentation of what is actually going on. Objectivists see social problems as a violation of belief. So, they don't really examine how these beliefs and attitudes came into being, but rather they assume or take for granted those beliefs and see the problems as a violation of those beliefs. So, take the idea of justice. So, there is an assumption when you are collecting data on particular conditions that if it is problematic, it is problematic because it has violated this belief in justice. But there is no real examination of why people think this is just and why people think this is unjust. So, constructionists are interested in knowing how people come to hold the idea that something is just or unjust. Objectivists see claims and claims making is about how the world should be set up. So, again, this is left kind of unexamined. There are assumptions made in looking at the conditions that if people are being hurt or something isn't functioning well, it should be set up better. It should function. It should be just, it should be conflict-free, where constructionists are examining that. How do people come to believe that this is the characteristics of a better world? How do they see it? And there are conflicts between groups on how they construct what is or is not a better world. And so, constructionists kind of get at the heart of these kind of conflicts where you're not just talking about interests of the groups. You know, like what's in their best interest, but you're also talking about their world view and how they see the world and how this construction of the world is contributing to the conflicts and the problems that exist in the world. So, as you can tell, objectivists are asking what questions. They want to describe accurately the conditions that are going on in the world, the phenomena that is going on in the world. Constructionists are looking at the same phenomena that they are asking how, you know, a process question. How did this come to be? A why question. What are the motives of the people that are involved? So, constructionists would say that they are not trying to fix something wrong with objectivist point of view. But rather, constructionists are saying we need to add this layer like, okay, now that we know what, let's understand the how and the why. So, constructionists see themselves as working with and giving additional information to objectivism where objectivists are concentrating on what they, what the problems are in the world and how to solve them without stopping and asking how do we get to this point. As you can imagine, there are critiques of constructionism. Constructionists are said to be diverting our attention from the most important questions and concerns which are what are the problems and how do we solve them. So, if you're over here doing what seems to be like an academic exercise of trying to understand how and why you're spending time on things that they consider not really addressing the problems and making changes to the problem. So, there is a critique that, you know, this is more of an academic exercise than anything that has practical implications for actually solving problems in the world. There is an argument that constructionists are not really paying attention to what is good and what is bad when looking at these social problems claims. They're looking at these social problems claims and trying to understand the point of view of the people who are making these claims without trying to figure out which are good claims and which are bad claims, which are good solutions and which are bad solutions. And very much related to that is whether the claims are true or not is not the relevant question and understanding the how and why. The relevant question to constructionists is the point of view of the persons who are making the claims and how those claims affect the points of view of the audience who are hearing those claims without really asking is the claim true or not. So, these are valid critiques, you know, are we spending enough time trying to solve problems? Are we in fact diverting our attention from those problems and from those solutions? Isn't there something good, you know, there's good in the world, there's bad in the world, should we be pointing out the bad stuff and should we be pointing out the lies? So, these are valid criticisms, but Loski makes a case that the, that some of this is mitigated by what constructionists have to offer in understanding social problems. So, she said these are lessons that we can learn from constructionists that indeed do help us in solving problems in the world and in understanding a sociology of social problems so that we are not just merely being political and advocating particular points of view on particular problems. Albeit, oftentimes when that happens, the sociologist is basing that much more on objective facts than upon opinion, but she's arguing that there are some lessons that you can only learn if you take a constructionist point of view. For one thing, we can understand why people worry. Humans are notoriously bad at worrying about the things that are most dangerous and not worrying about things that are, you know, peripheral. If you take a constructionist point of view, you can begin to understand how this worry came into being, why people are worrying about something out of proportion to the risks that's involved. You can understand the historical, the political, the cultural context of this worry. You can understand the symbology that has been created that creates this worry and reinforces this worry. So, it's a way of getting at, you know, the question of, you know, why can't we get people to worry about global warming and climate change and yet they will worry about whether or not children are going to be given poison on Halloween. Even though there is absolutely no evidence about Halloween candy being poisoned on any kind of regular basis and there is a lot of evidence that we are warming the planet and climate change is happening and so forth. So, you know, this is a conundrum for a lot of people who are trying to change the world and constructionists can demonstrate how come this is such a tough thing to do to get people to worry about the things that are more dangerous to them. So, most of the time when people look at conditions and look at the people who are affected by these conditions, constructionists can give you an idea of the meanings of this. How did these conditions become, call the social problem and how do the people that are categorized within these social problems claims come to be categorized that way. So, category, you know, all social problems claims categorized conditions. They're saying this is bad. This is good. This is a problem. This is a solution so forth. And they categorize people. These are victims. These are villains. These are, you know, oppressed people. These are people in power and so forth. So constructionists instead of just accepting these categories can actually uncover how these categories are created and reproduced in our social worlds. A lot of people who study social problems, a lot of people who are active and trying to make social change, realize that there is a big sort of elephant in the living room. And that is some very big social problems have been worked on in a lot of places over a lot of time, you know, historically. And yet those problems have not been eliminated. Poverty is probably the best example of this. People have been trying to solve the problem of poverty for millennia now. And yet poverty still exists and it gets worse and it's still creating a lot of social problems in the world and it is a social problem in and of itself. So documenting poverty and explaining where poverty is and showing the what of poverty does and even documenting some of the more successful solutions for poverty. You still have not, you have still not gotten to the heart of why we have not eliminated poverty. So where constructionists can start looking at questions of victimhood and how these victims are constructed to be victims. And they can also look at the unintended consequences of solutions, which is something that we talked about in chapter seven. Very often when people propose the solution and they implement that solution, it actually creates more problems, even though they didn't intend it. If you recall in chapter seven we talked about the problem with prisons. So you send somebody to prison for committing a crime, being convicted of a crime. The idea behind this is deterrence, right? You want to tell this person, punish this person so that they won't go out and do it again. But in reality what happens is you put them with a lot of other people have done bad things and you set up a situation where they are more likely to commit a crime than they would have if they hadn't gone to prison. So you create this situation of recidivism, and it's an unintended consequence of using punishment as a way to eliminate crime. A constructionist can get at this in a way that objectivists can't. You know, objectivists can document the recidivism, the repetition of crime, but they don't necessarily have a way to get to how this is a consequence of the solution that was implemented. Even though there is a critique of constructionists that they are not paying attention to good and bad and paying attention to the truth of the claims that are being made, Loski is arguing that nonetheless, because you begin to understand how culture works, how symbology works, how typification works, you can begin to understand what reflects and what perpetuates inequalities in our society. So she's by getting to the subjective by understanding the meanings of these typifications and the ways people use this, you can get a more, a better understanding of how inequality works. You know, the data on inequality can be very convincing at times, because you can literally see inequality by studying the differences between groups and classes and so forth. But she's saying that this gets at why it is being perpetuated, why people are using the symbologies in oppressive ways. And so because it's getting to that why it adds more information to the what. She also argues, you know, we talked about individual worries and so forth. Well, when you study how social problems claims works and most especially how formula stories work, you begin to see how worry gets constructed within a culture, and how, you know, for instance, she uses Americans in this. Americans worry about the most troublesome conditions, producing the most extremely harmed victims. Well, this worry is is part of the formula story. The formula story wants to create a plot that shows you the worst case scenarios are close to the worst case scenarios. And this itself creates a understanding within culture of these things being troublesome of these things extremely harming the victims of these troublesome conditions. And so this helps under helps us understand also how people are responding more in an emotional appeal than a logical one. Why it is that people come up with weird ideas that don't seem to be connected to the facts. In part because they are being given these simplified stories that that creates that understanding of what to worry about. This also demonstrates how we spend a lot more time thinking about harm than we do thinking about prevention. And that's another conundrum that a lot of people who try to do social change have a hard time understanding why, you know, if you know that this is harmful why we're not taking the next step and paying attention to prevention. Well, part of this is the way social problems claims are constructed. It, it emphasizes that harm more than emphasizes those solutions. It also helps us understand fear and pessimism in our culture and especially fear of others. Because when you are creating or perpetuating typifications and sometimes those typifications are stereotypes. You can create a situation where in your effort to make a social problems claim, you construct the other as being the problem. And if you understand the process of social problems claims you understand this need to simplify to be concise and so forth. You can see how these stereotypes and typifications become perpetuated. And this is, you know, a, this digs deeper than just documenting the incidences of this. It helps us understand how these, how these things work. So a constructionist approach to social problems study is good because it helps us understand the sociology of social problems much better. But it also because it's digging into the ways in which culture in gives context to these claims and the way these claims gives and changes the culture. We begin to understand social life more in general as well. The important takeaway is that Loski's argument and the argument of other constructionists as to why we should study social problems this way is it's a way of going beyond just taking positions on particular problems. We are actually looking at the sociological aspects of how social problems are how social problems claims are made and how they affect the culture at large. So, you know, the argument is that in taking an objective is approach. Many sociologists have not really gotten into the heart of the sociology of it, whether they are just simply recounting what the problems are and what the proposed solutions are. So Loski is arguing that by taking a constructionist point of view, you actually become more sociological in your approach to social problems because you begin to understand how social life in general is affected by and gives context to social problems that we're studying. So she ends this chapter and ends the book by arguing that if you become aware of the process of social problems claims making you as a practical actor in your society has a better perspective to bring to any social problems claims that you encounter. So, in essence, she's saying this makes you a critical thinker about all of the proposals that you are hearing and all of the problems and conditions that you're hearing about, so that you can better understand what people are saying to you, what to believe, what not to believe, how to ask questions and interrogate it more and to become much more savvy about your social world and about the problems that are being faced within your society. So she outlines eight things that you can take away having studied social problems in this way. One is that, you know, everybody who hears about a social problem is essentially part of the audience. And while audiences are not necessarily, you know, the social problems claims maker is not necessarily aiming at the general public as an audience or as their final audience. Still, if you want to be an informed consumer of media and you hear about this, you are part of the audience and this helps you be an active participant as an audience member, rather than just simply a passive consumer of the information that is being given to you. You also, because you understand this process, understand that it is a process whereby people are convinced of a particular point of view. They are being convinced that something is a problem. They are being convinced that this is a viable solution to that problem. They're being convinced that they should give their money, give their time, give their effort to that problem. Well, if you know that this is the process that's going on, it helps you be more open to possibilities of other people's point of view and open to the possibility that you can be convinced of this problem. Whereas if you are just reacting emotionally to it or you already have ideas or ways of thinking about something that you take for granted, you may not be as open to the possibility that somebody else's point of view might actually teach you something. So this kind of critical thinking oftentimes is characterized as making you critical of everything, but also she's arguing it makes you open to more things because you can have more confidence. You can ask questions of social problems claims makers that dig deeper than what they're going to tell you in their initial arguments. Even mine because now you know how formula stories work and why formula stories are used and what you know is what the drawbacks are of formula stories and the claims making process. You can in fact dig deeper. You can ask what are the nuances? What are the things you're not telling me? You can go and look at and see the data for yourself and then come back and ask questions about what was left out. Because you are aware that something is probably being left out because you are aware that something is probably being put in its most negative light or in a more negative light. You can begin to question and inquire about these claims in a more educated way and a more in a deeper dive into them. You can also because you understand the hierarchy of credibility kind of get past who's making the claim, right? Claims makers are chosen for a reason. They're not just people who think this way. They're people who think this way that an audience will listen to. So you can get caught up sometimes in the appeal of the claims maker and say, oh, well, that's an expert or, oh my God, that's a victim or look, that celebrity cares about this. And because you get into the appeal of the claims maker, you can miss the opportunity to actually understand the claim itself. Whereas if you understand this is part of the process that this credibility is part of what has to be addressed in order to make the social problems claims, you can in fact dig deeper and get past that emotional appeal. You can be critical of the moral problem is defined by the diagnostic frame. What she means by that is that diagnostic frames are always going to be giving you a particular understanding of what the problem is and where the problem came from and so forth and why it is wrong. That's what she means by moral problem. Well, because you understand that you're being approached with this diagnostic framework, you can essentially critique that and see whether or not it's as bad as this framework is suggesting that it is. And ask, you know, what data is being left out because when you are doing a diagnostic frame, you tend to pick the information that supports your moral claim, rather than information that might undermine it. If you are somebody who understands this process, then you know to look for sort of the stuff that has been left out. She's arguing that you can be aware of claims competition, and that will help you identify more general issues. What she means by this is, in part, is that because you understand that every claim that is being made is trying to be heard among the noise. You can, in fact, start looking for commonality between claims. You can look for, you know, what are the multiple sides of a particular claim. You can also look at, you know, that claims tend to be very narrow, but problems tend to be interrelated. Environmentalism is a good example of this. Environmentalism is not just talking about ecology. Environmentalism is also talking about race. There is a racial difference in who is impacted by pollution. There is a racial difference in who will be impacted by global warming, by rising seas, and so forth. So you begin to understand race and racism as being connected to environmentalism. If you know that these claims competitions exist, and that because of this competition, people are being very, very narrow in their telling of their formula stories, you can analyze this, think critically about it, and begin to make these connections into more identifying more general issues. Also, you know, claims making is about tugging at your heartstrings. And if you are aware of the claims making process, then you can be aware of, wow, that made me feel sad, or that made me feel angry, or that made me feel helpless. And because you can know that your feelings are being, this may be a harsh word, but manipulated, you can begin to look beyond how you feel about something and begin to ask critical questions about it, and understand the broader picture and not just how it makes you feel. And you can also understand how this idea of creating collective identities, like victims, villains, oppressed, you know, these different kinds of categories, can't, you know, while they are useful in a social problems claim formula story, you need to, you can, through this, understand what are the pitfalls of relying upon them and reproducing them. Which is what the social claims process often does. So I hope you understand that this is essentially what she's arguing is that the constructionist viewpoint, the constructionist perspective on social problems is key in making you a critical thinker. And giving you the tools that you need to not just accept what's being told to you, but also to think critically about it to consider what is being told to you and figure out ways to dig deeper in it and decide on more than just an emotional level. What you believe, what you, what you want to give your time, what to want you to give your money, what you want to give your effort to. And this is the end of the book. And I hope this has helped you on the exam and also helped you understand this framework and think more critically about sociology and about social problems.