Date: Friday, August 7

Time: 4:30 PM - 6:10 PM

Session 028: The Problem Pipeline: How Social Problems Become Research Agendas - Special Issue of Global Discourse
Room: Minskoff

Sponsor: Program Committee

Organizer &

Discussant: Michael O. Johnston, William Penn University

Co-Presiders: Glenn Muschert, Khalifa University
Michael O. Johnston, William Penn University

Description: 

This session examines how social problems come to be defined, prioritized, and legitimized within academic research. It asks how scholarly agendas are shaped by institutional incentives, funding structures, publication economies, and disciplinary traditions. In dialogue with the 2026 Society for the Study of Social Problems theme, Resisting Colonization of Lifeworlds, the session treats the “problem pipeline” as a site where academic knowledge production can either reproduce extractive logics or defend lifeworlds as spaces of meaning, care, and solidarity. We invite theoretical, empirical, methodological, and reflexive contributions that interrogate how special issues, edited volumes, and other gatekeeping mechanisms shape research priorities, distribute scholarly attention, and influence justice, equity, and public engagement within the social sciences.

Panelists:

Joel Best, University of Delaware

Jarrett Robert Rose, SUNY Polytechnic Institute

Virginia Berndt, McDaniel College

Glenn Muschert, Khalifa University

Douglas V. Porpora, Drexel University

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