Social Problems in Global Perspective

doi:10.1017/9781108656184.006

Chapter 5 - Social Problems in Global Perspective

from Part I - General Concerns and Orientations in the Study of Social Problems

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 March 2018

Yvonne A. Braun and

Michael C. Dreiling

Edited by

A. Javier Treviño

Show author details

A. Javier Treviño: Affiliation:
Wheaton College, Massachusetts

Book contents

Get access

Summary

For decades, sociological inquiry and praxis about social problems have developed a primary orientation focused on the nation-state and policy solutions within the nation-state system. We argue for globalizing the study of social problems by adjusting analytical frames that explain, address, or remedy social problems. We first examine several transnational processes that illuminate ways that public issues are bursting the seams of nation-states while weaving new spaces for the emergence of, and contest over, global social problems. We then briefly recap a recent history of globalization, suggesting that both the forms of world-historical processes and their consequences trigger new, globally specific social problems. Adapting social problems theory, we then present an analytical framework for globalizing social problems inquiry and praxis. Two cases illustrate this globalized approach to social problems. Last, we conclude with a view toward the future of global social problems research, its place in the wider sociological project, and the importance of transnational intellectual and organizational praxis.

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of Social Problems , pp. 77 - 98

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108656184.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adams, Gordon. 1981. The Iron Triangle: The Politics of Defense Contracting. New York: Council on Economic Priorities.Google Scholar

Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century. London: Verso Press.Google Scholar

Basu, Amrita, ed. 2010. Women's Movements in the Global Era: The Power of Local Feminisms. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar

Beck, Ulrich. 2007. Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy. Oxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar

Best, Joel, ed. 2001. How Claims Spread: Cross-National Diffusion of Social Problems. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar

Blumer, Herbert. 1971. Social problems as collective behavior. Social Problems 18(3):298–306.Google Scholar

Boulding, Kenneth. 1989. Three Faces of Power. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge Press.Google Scholar

Braun, Yvonne A. 2011. The reproduction of inequality: Race, class, gender and the social organization of work at the site of large-scale development projects. Social Problems 58(2):281–303.Google Scholar

Braun, Yvonne A., and Dreiling, Michael C.. 2010. From developmentalism to the HIV/AIDS crisis: The amplification of women's rights in Lesotho. International Feminist Journal of Politics 12(3):464–83.Google Scholar

Brulle, Robert. 2013. Institutionalizing delay: Foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations. Climatic Change 122:681–94.Google Scholar

Chorev, Nitsan. 2007. Remaking U.S. Trade Policy: From Protectionism to Globalization. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar

Dello Buono, Ricardo A. 2013. Time to change the subject: A new sociology of praxis. Critical Sociology 39(6):795–99.Google Scholar

Domhoff, G. William. 2013. The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy: Corporate Dominance from the Great Depression to the Great Recession. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.Google Scholar

Domhoff, G. William. 2014. Is the corporate elite fractured, or is there continuing corporate dominance? Two contrasting views. Class, Race and Corporate Power 3(1). http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol3/iss1/1.Google Scholar

Dreiling, Michael C., and Darves, Derek. 2016. Agents of Neoliberal Globalization: Corporate Networks, State Structures, and Trade Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Dunlap, Riley E., and McCright, Aaron M.. 2011. Organized climate change denial. In The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, edited by Dryzek, John S., Norgaard, Richard B., and Schlosberg, David, 144–59. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Elder, Charles D., and Cobb, Roger W.. 1984. Agenda building and the politics of aging. Policy Studies Journal 13(1):115–29.Google Scholar

Enloe, Cynthia. 2004. The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar

Enloe, Cynthia. 2007. Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar

Evans, Peter B. 1995. Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar

Farrell, Justin. 2015. Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(1):92–97. www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/11/18/1509433112.Google Scholar

Farrell, Justin. 2016. Network structure and influence of the climate change counter-movement. Nature Climate Change 6:370–74. www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2875.html.Google Scholar

Ferree, Myra Marx, and Tripp, Aili Mari. 2006. Global Feminism: Transnational Women's Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar

Fortune.com. 2015. Global 500. http://fortune.com/global500/.Google Scholar

Global Coalition on Women and AIDS (GCWA). 2006. 2006 Progress Report. UNAIDS.Google Scholar

Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio. 2001. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Johnson, Krista. 2006. Framing AIDS mobilization and human rights in post-apartheid South Africa. Perspectives on Politics 4:663–70.Google Scholar

Kellner, Douglas. 1992. The Persian Gulf TV War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar

Kreckel, Reinhard. 2008. Soziologie der sozialen Ungleichheit im globalen Kontext. In Transnationale Ungleichheitsforschung. Eine neue Herausforderung für die Soziologie, edited by Bayer, Michael, Mordt, Gabriele, Terpe, Sylvia, and Winter, Martin, 23–70. Frankfurt: Campus.Google Scholar

Lillemets, Krista. 2013. Global social inequalities: Review essay. Working Paper Series 45, desiguALdades.net Research Network on Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America.Google Scholar

Lukes, Stephen. 2005. Power: A Radical View. 2nd ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar

Lull, James. 1995/2000. Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach. New York: Polity Press/Columbia University Press.Google Scholar

Mann, Michael. 1986. The Sources of Social Power: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

McAdam, Douglas. 1999. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

McCall, Leslie C. 2005. The complexity of intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30(3):1771–800.Google Scholar

McChesney, Robert W. 2008. The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar

McCright, Aaron M., and Dunlap, Riley E.. 2000. Challenging global warming as a social problem: An analysis of the conservative movement's counter-claims. Social Problems 47(4):499–522.Google Scholar

McCright, Aaron M., and Dunlap, Riley E.. 2003. Defeating Kyoto: The Conservative Movement's Impact on U.S. Climate Change Policy. Social Problems 5(3):348–73.Google Scholar

McKibben, Bill. 2016. “What Does Big Oil Really Think about Climate Science?” The Nation, February 18. www.thenation.com/article/what-does-big-oil-really-think-about-climate-science/.Google Scholar

Milgram, Stanley. 1974. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar

Mills, C. Wright. 1943. The professional ideology of social pathologists. American Journal of Sociology 49(2):165–80.Google Scholar

Mills, C. Wright. 1956. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Mizruchi, Mark S. 2013. The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

Nattrass, Nicoli. 2004. The Moral Economy of AIDS in South Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Plankey-Videla, Nancy. 2012. We Are in This Dance Together: Gender, Power, and Globalization at a Mexican Garment Firm. NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar

Pyle, Jean L., and Ward, Kathleen B. 2003. Recasting our understanding of gender and work during global restructuring. International Sociology 18:461–89.Google Scholar

Ruggie, John G. 1982. International regimes, transactions, and change: Embedded liberalism in the postwar economic order. International Organization 36:379–415.Google Scholar

Ruggie, John G. 1998. Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalization. New York: Routledge Press.Google Scholar

Schneider, Helen. 2002. On the fault-line: The politics of AIDS policy in contemporary South Africa. African Studies 61:145–67.Google Scholar

Smith, David A. 2015. Globalizing social problems: A message from the president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/641/2016_Annual_Meeting/.Google Scholar

Smith, Jackie. 2008. Social Movements for Global Democracy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar

United Nations. 2015. Goal 4: Reduce child mortality. www.un.org/millenniumgoals/childhealth.shtml.Google Scholar

Vitali, Stefania, Glattfelder, James B, and Battiston, Stefano. 2011. The network of corporate control. PLoS ONE 6(10):e25995. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025995.Google Scholar

Williams, Raymond. 1958. Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar

World Health Organization (WHO). 2003. World Health Report 2003: Shaping the Future. Geneva: World Health Organization.Google Scholar

World Health Organization (WHO). 2009. Strengthening gender-sensitive national HIV monitoring and evaluation systems to improve HIV programming for women and girls. www.who.int/gender/events/2010/poster_20100723_en.pdf.Google Scholar

World Health Organization (WHO). 2011. Child mortality. www.who.int/pmnch/media/press_materials/fs/fs_mdg4_childmortality/en/.Google Scholar

World Health Organization (WHO). 2014. HIV fact file. www.who.int/features/factfiles/hiv/facts/en/index3.html.Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.