Abstract
John Kitsuse’s views about the prospects for the constructionist analysis of social problems are distilled in summary form. As a mentor to the present author, Kitsuse expressed his appreciation for the continued growth and development of the tradition of sociological analysis that that he was instrumental in developing, while also believing that the perspective had been sidetracked in ways that were reminiscent of the morass that eventually undermined what was commonly called “labeling theory,” also known as the “societal reaction” perspective on deviance. Kitsuse’s positive vision for the constructionist tradition is framed in terms of the craft that imbues this mode of analysis with its vigor and perspicacity.
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Notes
Ibarra and Kitsuse (1993) has been widely taken as a statement about strict constructionism, but it was written as a call for investigating aspects of the social problem process that went beyond, or were independent of, “stages” and “cases” per se. Intending to hasten this work while moving on from objective-subjective questions, we argued for replacing the term “putative condition” with the term “condition-category” to indicate how the referents of claims-making activities are ultimately rooted in the systems of classification and categorization that are discussed in chapter one of CSP. Condition-categories, such as “roid rage” and “sexting,” are members’ terms (Emerson et al. 1995). They are constantly being invented, and hence provide perennial fodder for claims-making activities and the social problems process. “Putative” was ultimately too ambiguous for Kitsuse, in that it suggested the condition in question might or might not exist. Kitsuse was not interested in social problems as objective conditions at all, and he believed that investigating the social problems process did not entail independently taking a position on a putative condition’s factual existence.
When teaching courses on deviance and social problems, Kitsuse assigned CW Mills’ famous (Mills 1943) article on “the professional ideology of social pathologists,” perhaps out of recognition of this impulse in his students.
Kitsuse was aware of participatory action research and activist-oriented scholarship – indeed, the latter defines a core mission of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, for which he served as President in the early 1980s. Based on conversations with him, Kitsuse was not opposed in principle to activist-infused social problems analysis in a constructionist vein, so long as those undertaking such an approach carefully documented how they became involved with and shaped the process under study, through meticulous fieldnotes, for instance. First person documentation of claims-making activities would likely be of theoretical interest as well.
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Ibarra, P.R. Five Ways to Improve Constructionist Craft in Social Problems Inquiries: Notes from an Apprenticeship. Am Soc 50, 195–203 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-018-9393-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-018-9393-1