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What Are Social Problems? What Is Claimsmaking?

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What Are Social Problems? What Is Claimsmaking?

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Before we dive into our main topics about claimsmaking, we need to understand what're claims and how people define social problems.

Objectivist viewpoint: people who hold an objectivist view believe that social problems can be defined as "harmful conditions" to societies (Best, 2020, p. 4). A solid definition may help us formalize and categorize social problems, but defining what is considered "harmful" is hard.

Subjectivist viewpoint: A social problem is something people believe to be a problem to society (Best, 2020, p.9). It avoids the downsides of the objectivist's view. But then social problems would change all the time based on people's beliefs.

Best's viewpoint: Social problems are social constructions, which means that the meanings of social problems are assigned by people (Best, 2020).

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What Are Social Problems? What Is Claimsmaking?

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What Are Social Problems? What Is Claimsmaking?

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Given the background, we want to study the reason behind the formation of social problems, and claimsmaking is the process where claimsmakers draw attention from the audiences by making claims for some troubling conditions (Best, 2020, p. 15)

For example, people in CALPRIG UC Davis as an activism group often ask passengers on campus to support them in protecting the ocean through donations. They are considered claimsmakers, and they make claims that ocean pollution is an example of claimsmaking that we can see around us.

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Claims are the arguments to persuade the audience that certain social problems are important. There are three main parts of it: grounds, warrants, and conclusions.

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Essentially, grounds are data and evidence that support your claim. There are three main types of grounds:

Typifying examples: extreme examples that characterize the main issue and draw attention.

Name: some phrases or words that sound serious to draw more attention and make it easier to spread.

Statistic: Stats related to the social problem in the claim.

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Warrants are the justifications of the claim. By invoking values and emotions, a claimsmaker points out why some troubling social problems might be a threat to the justice people holds.

For example, if people believe that equality is a good virtue, then for claimsmakers who work against racism, the warrants are the justification for how racism would damage racial equality.

Moreover, since people's sense of justice and righteousness changes over time, it is also an important job for claimsmakers to keep updating warrants accordingly.

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Given grounds and warrants, claims also need a conclusion, which is some statements that offer a solution to the social problem mentioned in the claim, and this solution is usually shaped by the grounds and warrants (Best, 2020, p. 38).

Conclusions can also be categorized as short-range conclusions and long-range conclusions.

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One most common types of claimsmakers is activists. They are usually considered outsider claimsmakers: meaning that they don't have direct connections with the policymakers (Best, 2020, p. 66).

Thus, they will need to use other ways (through media or public speaking) to spread their claims to more audiences. As more and more people are joining in, it will eventually pressure the policymakers to take action.

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On the other hand, people with special knowledge are known as experts, and can also make a huge difference in policymaking. Usually, they are insider claimsmakers, meaning that they have direct connections with policymakers. Different from activists, experts don't usually need to worry about drawing more attention from the crowd through the media or the public. Instead, they can directly talk to policymakers because of the knowledge they hold.

For example, medical authorities studied and constructed the social problem of drinking (Best, 2020, p. 101).

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Mistrust of Authorities as Claimsmakers in the US

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Mistrust of Authorities as Claimsmakers in the US

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In Urahn's article, they pointed out the decreasing trust in the institutions in the United States. There are several potential reasons mentioned in the article, including the polarization of the society, the inefficiency of the institutions, and the new social value of being skeptical.

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Trust in our nation’s institutions has never been lower. And experts tend to blame our politically polarized society, which certainly contributes to the deep unease that is being felt by a majority of Americans today.

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Activists Case Example: Pro-Palestinian Protest on UC Davis

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Activists Case Example: Pro-Palestinian Protest on UC Davis

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Around May 2024, due to the Palestine-Isreal conflict around the Gaza area, many activists at UC Davis started to protest against violence in Gaza on campus by camping in the Quad area and demonstrating. This is a perfect example of how activists as claimsmakers work in real life.

They first make a claim by bringing the grounds that the incident in Gaza is treated as a typifying example. After that, they invoke people's values on how this war crime is against our sense of justice, as a part of warrants. In the end, they came to the conclusion: asking UC to defund Israeli institutions.

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Activists Cases Example: Pro-Palestinian Protest on UC Davis

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Activists Cases Example: Pro-Palestinian Protest on UC Davis

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Later in the spring quarter, the UC student workers also started a demonstration against the UC. This shows how activists as claimsmakers often work towards a policy change: through public/media demonstrations to draw attention from more people.

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1. Best, J. (2020). Social problems (4th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

2. UC Davis CALPIRG. https://calpirgstudents.org/chapters/uc-davis/

3. Susan K. Urahn. (2024). Americans’ mistrust of institutions. Pew Trusts. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trend/archive/fall-2024/americans-mistrust-of-institutions

4. Cecilio Padilla. (2024, June 20). Demonstrators break down pro-Palestinian encampment at UC Davis. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/demonstrators-break-down-pro-palestinian-encampment-at-uc-davis/

5. Kristin Lam. (2024, May 28). UC Davis student workers join strike over handling of pro-Palestinian encampments. CapRadio. https://www.capradio.org/articles/2024/05/28/uc-davis-student-workers-join-strike-over-handling-of-pro-palestinian-encampments/