From Claims to Chains: the Materiality of Social Problems

The Constructionist as Claims-Maker? A Pragmatist Intervention into Social Problems Theory

“…While Nichols invites a wider set of actors to be included across the social mosaics whereby claims are made (see also Christensen, 2019 ), Del Rosso ( 2019 ) suggests that such mosaics must be cast wider still. Building on the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour ( 1993 , 2005 ), he argues that claims are not made in linguistic vacuums, but through chains of associations between human and non-human actors.…”

“…The history of science shows us that such artful productions of human-nonhuman arrangements have been cast aside once they enter into “crisis” and give way to new paradigms (Kuhn, 1962 ). 4 Yet by taking the material production of claims seriously, we can discern differences between claims that are carefully constructed (calibrated) through many reliable chains of human-nonhuman networks, and those which seem to be produced more from thin air (Del Rosso, 2019 ). Thus, for example, understanding how claims of election integrity are provided by US electoral officials would require an in-depth investigation of the many links between proof of citizenship and district, ballots, digital scanners, volunteers, computer systems, accounting software, and procedures to check and recount the votes across multiple districts.…”

“…Del Rosso ( 2019 ) is correct that Latour avoids the choice between social constructionism and naïve realism by allowing non-humans into the mix of relevant social actors who participate in the constitution of social problems. Using this framework solves many of the problems identified by Woolgar and Pawluch ( 1985 ), for example, in their critique of Pfhol’s ( 1977 ) analysis of the “discovery” of child abuse.…”

“…Crawley ( 2019 ) argues for the use of multi-epistemology studies as useful references for criticism and advancement rather than finding one coherent system once and for all. In contrast, actor-network theory does seem to unite around epistemological consistency, by dealing with all claims as chains of association in a wider socio-material network of activity (Del Rosso, 2019 ). It must be said that actor-network-theory is not without its problems, however, as it tends to de-center human agency, forbids using macro-structural forces as explanations, and has a method of analysis that is very difficult to pin down, even by its own author (Latour, 2005 ).…”

“…We went through many friendly rounds of debating, where I would try and argue that movements in parallel fields to social problems research (most centrally, non-modernist advances in social studies of science [Latour, 1993 ]) had essentially solved the problems of dualism in social constructionism, since the material world could also be seen as an actor in the co-construction of meaning. As such, I argued at the time (circa 2005), it was only now necessary for social problems research to benefit from these epistemic advances in order to find a symmetrical approach to social problems that did not privilege the “social” over the “material” aspects of problems in the world (see Del Rosso ( 2019 ) for a good argument in this line).…”