American Nightmares: Social Problems in an Anxious World by Joel Best (review)

If you are favorably disposed toward Hilgartner and Bosk's (1988) social arenas model of social problems, then American Nightmares is a book that you will want to read. Joel Best and co-authors creatively apply the social arenas model to a set of social problems across six chapters, and along the way articulate a full-throated critique of academic sociology.

Best's critique of sociology is situated within his purpose of analyzing the rise and fall of social problems, and how the framing of social problems is related to statistical incidence and related social behavior. For example, he analyzes the problem of gun-related homicide as a "popular hazard" by comparing it to the incidence of gun accidents and criminal victimization using firearms. This expansive view is further justified by the fact that gun ownership is widespread and politically entrenched. Because this analysis demonstrates that gun homicide is relatively rare, a broad approach taking into account all of the related behaviors is presumed more efficacious than a narrow focus upon homicide alone.

This kind of attention to detail matters because American society, while apparently resting upon a bedrock of middle-class optimism, has a long history of obsession with threatening nightmares. Best asserts that these nightmares have taken the form of "witches, immigrants, Catholics, alcohol, capitalism, labor unions, Communists, criminals, dime novels, comic books, movies, drugs, cults—the list is almost endless" (xvi). By contextualizing social problems, sociologists would better serve society as well as gain professional credibility, thus better serving themselves.

Best argues that this balanced approach to research is not happening for two reasons. First, because sociological research demonstrates a lack of appreciation for the most important contours of American society. Studies are cited that pose the "American dream" as a straw man, rather than what it truly is: an aspiration that has never been fully realized. Best argues that sociologists "hate" (63) the American dream because they are too invested in inequality research. Sociologists overlook that the full meaning of the American dream, from James Truslow Adams to the present, "is rarely invoked with complacency; it is almost always framed in terms of anxiety or critique. Sociologists often seem blind to this subtlety: they seem to equate the American dream with bombastic optimism that ignores the problems in American society" (63).

It should be noted that this critique is not germane to all sociological research, but rather is focused on studies that idealize the past relative to the present, thus failing to set forth a balanced accounting of society and its evolution. In this sense Best equates the targeted researchers with populist muckraking that engages American consciousness at a superficial level, promoting populist discourse where middle-class dreams of economic stability and moral uprightness are at risk.

A second limitation of sociological research is its politically correct and liberal bias, leading toward a homogeneous professional attitude. Consequently, "sociologists run the danger of being viewed as activists rather than analysts. Even worse, they may seem to be scolds" (181). This perspective is built out of the idea that much sociological research is predictable and gratuitously critical of American values and institutions. This is in contrast to economics that embodies (Best argues) greater diversity and debate, and whose profession is held in higher esteem by policymakers and by the public. One of the chapter titles is "Economization, or Why Economists Get More Respect Than Sociologists."

American Nightmares presents applications of the social arenas model, and poses a critique of sociological research and its assumptions. The applications are creative and worthwhile (in particular I appreciated the chapter on "Memories as Problems"); however, I have some doubts about the critique.

I'm not sure sociologists are to blame for their lack of vision and positive attitude toward inequality research. It strikes me that social vision will (or will not) arise from civil society, and that sociologists' role would then be to debate and clarify the meaning and...