ABSTRACT
The "field" of social problems has a very different character from most of the substantive areas of sociology, such as social stratification or interaction processes or the family. The social scientist focuses on the characterization of a given objective condition as a social problem. The range of social problems traditionally covered by sociology, however, has not been of equal concern to the other social sciences. Earl Rubington and Martin S. Weinberg have analyzed the development of five different sociological perspectives: social pathology, social disorganization, value conflict, deviant behavior, and labelling. The analysis of particular social problems requires that the analyst learn something of how the problematic situation came to be defined as it is, and how the particular actions that make up the problem came to be established. For the sociologist who focuses on social disorganization, the problem is the ineffectiveness of rules for organizing constructive social processes.
