Anti-social behaviour, homelessness, drugs, mental illness: all problems in today's society. But what makes a problem social? This free course, Social problems: Who makes them?, will help you to discover how these issues are identified, defined, given meaning and acted upon. You will also look at the conflicts within social science in this area.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
illustrate what is social about social science
demonstrate how certain social constructions become dominant
distinguish how labelling something can create expectations about behaviour and actions
give examples of inequalities that result from particular social constructions.
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Creative commons: The Open University is proud to release this free course under a Creative Commons licence.
However, any third-party materials featured within it are used with permission and are not ours to give away. These
materials are not subject to the Creative Commons licence. See terms and conditions377 and our FAQs378.
Full copyright details can be found in the Acknowledgements section of each week.
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