Lived Realities and the Construction of Social Problems
The Case of Wife Abuse
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2480915 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Donileen R Loseke (Skidmore College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1987 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 229-243 |
| Publication date | 1987-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Symbolic Interaction (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0195-6086 • E-ISSN: 1533-8665 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1525/si.1987.10.2.229 |
| OpenAlex | W2048839867 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 21 |
| References cited | 34 |
This article examines the official and subjective realities of one social problem, wife abuse, and it considers consequences of differences between these two types of reality. First, claims appearing in the professional literature are used to define the specific content of the official social problem. Then, characteristics of violence as experienced are compared with this official definition. Finally, data from a shelter for battered women are used to illustrate consequences of official definitions in organizations designed to ameliorate the individual troubles associated with social problems. The study demonstrates how the official definition of wife abuse acts and actors has reduced the recognizability of the phenomenon in lived experience and also set the stage for reality-definition contests in social services for abused wives. This illustrates the importance of examining sociologically the specific content of social problems claims and the necessity of attending to social problems in their full phenomenological realities
Criminology · Epistemology · Phenomenon · Political science · Social issues · Social phenomenon · Social reality · Social science · Sociology · Wife · Computer Science · Intimate Partner and Family Violence · Law · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Social Psychology · Social Work Education and Practice
Cannabis, Moral Entrepreneurship, and Stigma
Abused Husbands
Speak of the Devil
Rhetoric in Claims-Making
Deviant Selves, Transgressive Acts, and Moral Narratives
Grow Your Hair Out”
When You're Involved, It's Just Different”
Surviving Wife Rape
The Social Construction of Wife Abuse
Provision and Exclusion
Is She Imminently Fleeing?”
Women's strategies for survival
Irremedial Work and Act‐Person Merger
Problems in Identifying, Reporting, and Treating Family Mistreatment
Reply to Murray A. Straus
Children who witness women battering
Welfare Application Encounters
The Other Side of Help
The Rhetoric of Rights and Needs
Get Therapy and Work on It
Discrediting Identity Work
The culture of public problems
Wife battering
The Existential self in society
Collected Papers
Medicine and Patriarchal Violence
Making an Issue of Child Abuse
The Adjustment of the Family to the Crisis of Alcoholism
A comparison between strategies used on prisoners of war and battered wives
Beliefs of Service Providers about Abused Women and Abusing Men
The Psychological Meaning of Mental Illness in the Family
Family systems approaches to wife battering
Unearthing Contradictions
The New Scholarship on Family Violence
The Social Construction of Deviance
How Women Experience Battering
The Battered Women Movement and the Creation of the Wife Beating Problem
We Don't Care about What Happened, We Only Care about What Is Going to Happen
The Micro-Politics of Trouble
Rape as a Social Problem
Toward a Sociology of Social Problems
Normal Crimes
Toward a Phenomenology of Domestic, Family Violence
| Unique citing works | 21 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,54 |
| Citation span | 1987 - 2024 (38) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 17 |