Role of Social Movements in the Construction of Social Problems

Bogomyagkova Elena, St.-Petersburg State University,
The Chair of Theory and History of Sociology

Social movements are the participants of constructing of social problems; however, they are often out of sociologists' view, as they do not have access to main public arenas for the articulation of their own position. Most of the case studies of social problems refers to the official policy, official media, etc. Meanwhile, now social movements take a great part in the processes of problematization and they use new ways of claims-making activity.

The purpose is to offer the conceptual framework for study of the role of social movements in the construction of social problems.

We need to define what social problem is. Nowadays objective approaches to understanding social problems remains the most popular and widespread in Russia. However, it is difficult to research social movements from this perspective. We assume that the most appropriate approach in this way is social constructionism. The main features of constructive perspective are presented in the following table.