Books in the Social Problems & Social Issues series

This volume retains the original text of "Sexual Conduct" published in 1973 with a small amount of revision and updating. The text is accompanied by a new preface, two essays reflecting on the conditions of writing the book, edited interviews on its contribution to the field, and a new epilogue.

This text focuses on how people construct fatness and thinness, examining different strategies used to interpret body weight, such as negotiating weight identities, reinterpreting weight, and becoming involved in weight-related organizations.

The rapid expansion of the American drug court movement is by now a well-documented story. Practitioners, politicians, and academics alike acknowledge the profound impact that drug courts have had on the American criminal justice system. This work seeks to make sense of this judicial innovation.

Framing the Victim illustrates how victims of domestic violence are "framed" by the dominant media perspectives focused on them and falsely blamed for a crime committed by someone else. Berns critiques the stories that emerge when social problems are shaped by guidelines that promote entertainment, victim empowerment, inspiration and politics.

This text discusses how images of social problems can shape public policy, social services, and how we make sense of ourselves and others. It advocates social change through identity transformation rather than through structural change and emphasizes the role of emotions in this.

Constructionist theory describes and analyzes social problems as emerging through the efforts of claimsmakers who bring issues to public attention

How has the tobacco control movement become such a significant force in shaping contemporary public policy, social norms, and the habits of millions of Americans? This text develops two central arguments to answer this question.

When does a body weight problem become a social problem? This text offers several perspectives that explain the way society deals with fatness and thinness, considering historical foundations, medical models, gendered dimensions, institutional components, and collective perspectives.

While crime, law, and punishment are subjects that have everyday meanings not very far from their academic representations, "social control" is one of those terms that appear in the sociological discourse without any corresponding everyday usage

Constructionist theory describes and analyzes social problems as emerging through the efforts of claimsmakers who bring issues to public attention

Framing the Victim illustrates how victims of domestic violence are "framed" by the dominant media perspectives focused on them and falsely blamed for a crime committed by someone else. Berns critiques the stories that emerge when social problems are shaped by guidelines that promote entertainment, victim empowerment, inspiration and politics.

The new second edition of this distinctive and widely adopted textbook brings into the classroom an overview of how images of social problems can shape not only public policy and social services, but also the ways in which we make sense of ourselves and others