Social Constructionism and Social Problems Work

This chapter outlines an approach to the study of social problems work, linking ethnomethodological concerns for constitutive practice with constructionist interests in social problems categories. It discusses the social problems work perspective can address the diverse interpretive and interactional procedures and occasions through which otherwise mundane aspects of everyday life are cast as social problems. The chapter focuses on the interactional basis of the social problems work process. Being an open-ended process, the designation of a case as an instance of a social problem does not finalize its interpretation. Social problems categories become a part of persons&s; and groups&s; ways of understanding and representing their everyday experience— locally available resources for constructing instances of social problems. Social problems work articulates interpretive resources with concrete experience to constitute instances of social problems. Social problems work is apparent in staff members&s; entries in the shelter "logbook," which offered accounts for the full range of workers organizational decisions and actions.