Social Construction of Social Problems Over Time

Abstract

When it comes down to it, there are few, if any, people who have not already, or who will not in the future, contribute to the world's social problems. And I am not talking about a simple condition harming society or its components. I am talking about a social problem in the way any sensible student of Blumer (1971) would do so. Something about us has already been, or will be, defined by a significant number of people or by a number of significant people (Julian, 1973) as part of a social problem. I am a woman, and as such I have been defined, categorized, agonized over, and been a subject of policy for centuries. I am a Polish immigrant to the United States, and sociologists are familiar with the problems of immigrants. Finally, I have been a child: most of this paper is devoted to the problems which children present to society. As a young girl I conformed. Cavan (1962) has pointed out that conformity is a form of deviance: in my case I was conforming to Polish norms and values while living in the United States. I am now in my middle years and grateful that I am not a man undergoing the mid-life crises of my male colleagues. I will be old someday, and part of the social problem of the elderly. I am a sociologist, and read the paper each morning with trepidation, since it looks as if sociologists might become a serious social problem -especially if Senator William Proxmire has anything to do with it. I have been married - to the same man - for 37 years, which must be labeled as some form of deviant behavior. My husband once belonged to a Polish gang in Chicago's Buck Town, which leaves him ripe for labeling theories. (Polish is a label in itself, since the gang really did not care what nationality its members were as long as they fought well enough through the Italian territory on the way to the lake.) I am a parent of children whose every trouble is my fault and falls into one or another of the current problems of society at large. I am a suburbanite and an ex-urbanite, draining income from the city of Chicago and contributing to its difficulties. You, the readers, represent a multitude of other social problems. Some of you are black or Hispanic, and I do not have to tell you of all the definitions swirling around your heads; you must have had poverty in your background. Some of you have used drugs, or drank alcohol. Some of you have contributed to the problems of educational institutions in the United States by favoring prepared and interested students over basketball players and pre-med youth, and perhaps even by teaching somebody something. Most of you have had sexual relations, and you know how many different ways that can constitute a social problem. Most of us have contributed either to the population explosion or to zero growth, or to pollution, or international tension. In short, we are all part of some social problem.