BiblioVault - Books about Weinberg, Darin

Contemporary Social Constructionism

Key Themes

Darin Weinberg

Temple University Press, 2015

In Contemporary Social Constructionism, Darin Weinberg provides a detailed, critical overview of the key themes of this school of thought, which explains how phenomena and ways of thinking develop in their social contexts. Weinberg traces the multiple roots of social constructionism, and shows how it has been used, critiqued, and refined within the social and human sciences.

Contemporary Social Constructionism illuminates how constructionist social science developed in relation to positivism, critical and hermeneutic philosophy, and feminism and then goes on to distinguish the concept from postmodernism and deconstructionism. In addition, Weinberg shows how social constructionists have contributed to our understanding of biology, the body, self-knowledge, and social problems.

The result is a contemporary statement of social constructionism that shores up its scientific veracity and demonstrates its analytic power, promise, and influence. The book concludes with a look toward the future of the concept and its use.

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Of Others Inside

Insanity, Addiction And Belonging in America

Darin Weinberg, foreword by Bryan S. Turner

Temple University Press, 2005

There is little doubt among scientists and the general public that homelessness, mental illness, and addiction are inter-related. In Of Others Inside, Darin Weinberg examines how these inter-relations have taken form in the United States. He links the establishment of these connections to the movement of mental health and addiction treatment from redemptive processes to punitive ones and back again, and explores the connection between social welfare, rehabilitation, and the criminal justice system.

Seeking to offer a new sociological understanding of the relationship between social exclusion and mental disability, Of Others Inside considers the general social conditions of homelessness, poverty, and social marginality in the U.S. Weinberg also explores questions about American perceptions of these conditions, and examines in great detail the social reality of mental disability and drug addiction without reducing people's suffering to simple notions of biological fate or social disorder.

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On Addiction

Insights from History, Ethnography, and Critical Theory

Darin Weinberg

Duke University Press, 2024

Mainstream addiction science either sees addiction as a biomedical disease that renders one incapable of self-control, or as a voluntary practice engaged in freely. In On Addiction, Darin Weinberg shows how this dynamic is deeply influenced by a series of binaries (free will/determinism, mind/body, objectivity/subjectivity) that hinder our understanding of addiction. Here, he offers a new theorization of addiction in which he breaks down these contradictions and incompatibilities, calling into question the taken-for-granted distinction between the “biological” and the “social”. To the extent that it is understood as a loss of self-control over one’s behavior, addiction, Weinberg contends, requires a supple theoretical framework that provides for movements into and out of self-control, the social and natural processes that influence these movements, the historical contexts within which they occur and the ethical ramifications of taking them seriously. To create this framework, Weinberg brings together history, ethnography, and critical theory as well as the clinical and social sciences. In this way, Weinberg takes a more holistic approach to examining the fundamental nature and ethics of addiction.

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