Constructing the Ownership of Social Problems: Fun and Profit in the Welfare State

Links between the emergence of social problems and the welfare state are examined, with particular attention to the place of the “troubled persons” professions, mass media and educational institutions, the place of the language of conflict and consensus in social problems activities, contested and uncontested definitions of problem conditions, how meanings and problems are transformed, and how mobilization activities contribute to these transformations. The paper ends with a plea to move the study of social problems closer to the study of how social movements and institutions affect and are affected by the interpretations, the language, and the symbols that constitute seeing a situation as a social problem in historical and institutional context.