All responses to social problems are mediated by the contexts in which they are socially constructed. Effective social constructions bestow a taken-for-granted character upon the stories they tell about why problems occur and what to do about them. This can make certain approaches to social problems appear commonsensical, blessing particular viewpoints on social trouble while cursing others. As such, both social problems and strategies aimed at their amelioration are forever entangled in contested fields of power and knowledge. Although what is considered a problem varies in different times and places, contested social constructions are not merely relative. Nothing is merely relative. Like all aspects of life, constructions of social problems are complex, relational, and systemic. They are produced in dynamic fields of power where first-hand experience and the stories people tell about what troubles them fold recursively back into each other.

How exactly are constructions of social problems shaped by the contexts in which they are produced and contested? And how might reckoning with the contextual framing of social problems contribute to struggles for social justice as we enter the third decade of the twentyfirst century? In exploring these questions, this chapter draws attention to four interdependent vectors of influence on how some aspects of troubled social life, rather than others, come to be understood as social problems— natural historical materiality, social psychic subjectivity, practices of power, and ritual configurations of knowledge. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of power-reflexive approaches to social problems that locate participants, theorists, activists, and policymakers within the troubled social and historical spheres to which they belong.

The Natural Historical Materiality of Social Problems

A focus on the natural historical materiality of contested constructions of social problems explores the influence of a society's dominant mode of economic production on how that society understands behaviors or conditions that are considered problematic. This is an aspect of what Marx and Engels meant by historical materialism. Constructed understandings of social problems are no exception. No matter the troubled behavior or condition— be it gendered violence, racialized policing, corporate malfeasance, religious discrimination, political corruption, the plight of refugees, or drone strikes against suspected terrorists in distant lands— whether or not something is viewed as a social problem is affected by its location within complex economic systems that privilege the wellbeing of some groups, classes, or castes of people over that of others.