ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on deconstructionist themes in constructionism and poststructuralism. The wide-flowing theoretical stream named deconstruction has two main arteries: literary deconstruction; and social deconstruction. Each has produced its own form of deconstructionism both beyond and within sociology. The implications of both literary deconstruction and social deconstruction have found their way into the study of social problems, producing rhetorical deconstruction and ritual deconstruction. The work of Peter R. Ibarra and John I. Kitsuse is an example of literary deconstruction reformulated as rhetorical (de)construction. Criminological Displacements, a videotext about the METAphorical construction of modernist control system, is an example of the social deconstructive strategy. The chapter distinguishes between Ibarra and Kitsuse's rhetorical deconstruction, and recently emergent ritual deconstructionist perspectives. It argues that the latter perspectives offer a broader theoretical framework for analyzing social problems and encouraging social change.
