ABSTRACT
Constructionism has become a highly visible and influential perspective for studying social problems. Ludwig Wittgenstein would list an array of social problems language games or, more precisely, a plurality of language games affiliated with specific orders of activity that are in turn associated with the various substantive topics included in lay and professional discussions of social problems. In the field of social problems research, constructionists also draw upon the "labeling theory" of deviance that was popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The point of interrogating their text is not only to question their particular conception of the social problems language game, but more importantly to raise the question of whether social problems research needs a general theory at all. The key is to place vernacular or "folk" versions of social problems into a state of suspended animation in order to maintain a "basic distinction between vernacular resources and analytic constructs.
