Reading Questions

Barry Glassner, “Narrative Techniques of Fear Mongering”

Joel Best, “Beyond Instances,” excerpt from Random Violence

Kristin Luker, “Is Academic Sociology Politically Obsolete?”

1. According to Barry Glassner, what are three techniques of fear-mongering?

2. In the last few years, “illegal immigrants” have displaced “welfare mothers” as a pressing social problem. What “meta-narratives” are connected to the attention and concern focused on these two groups?

3. What does it mean to say that “social problems” are not discovered--they are socially constructed?

4. Using Joel Best’s analysis of the process by which acts come to be defined as new “crime problems” explain the role that professionals/experts play in the construction of social problems.

5. What other social actors play important roles in the process through which social problems are constructed?

6. What groups, if any, tend to be excluded from the process through which social problems are constructed?

7. Kristin Luker compares academic social scientists to 19^th century carriage makers confronting the rise of the automobile industry. If social scientists are “carriage makers,” who are the “new industrialists” in the production and dissemination of knowledge?

8. What are some of the claims that construct teen-pregnancy as a “social problem” What evidence do we have that these claims are unfounded?