ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews the ongoing commentaries and critiques that bear upon the constructionist formulation of social problems, especially as presented in Constructing Social Problems (CSP). It demonstrates the fruitfulness of investigating vernacular resources, especially rhetorical forms, in the social problems process. In proposing the term condition-category to rectify the confusions that have been generated by putative condition the chapter has outlined an agenda that directs attention to research sites consistent with Spector and Kitsuse's premises that will be productive of an interpretive theory of the social problems process. In particular, the discursive practices through which the claims are constituted attune us to the richness of language and reasoning that participants are capable of tapping as a continually available resource. The study of the vernacular constituents of social problems provides us with new ways of indicating the necessity for rethinking or refining the theoretical language employed to reconstruct the social interactions called "claims-making activities.".