ABSTRACT
One way in which, the successful claims change the world is through thetroubled persons' industry. This is a very general term for all the organizations, programs, and groups designed to do something for victims, potential victims, villains, and potential villains involved in social problems. Successful claims produce images of troubled people who need assistance of the particular sorts constructed in prognostic claims about what should be done. The category of "gifted children" offers a very different example of how categories of people come to be defined as troubled and in need of services. These children are constructed as different from other children because they have been identified by their teachers as children with greater learning capabilities. Workers in the troubled persons' industry—be they highly educated or uneducated, highly trained or untrained, paid or volunteer, do the important work of deciding which people requesting service will become clients.
