Social Problems

Community, Policy, and Social Action

Empower your students to become part of the solution.

The new Sixth Edition of Anna Leon-Guerrero’s Social Problems: Community, Policy, and Social Action goes beyond the typical presentation of contemporary social problems and their consequences by emphasizing the importance and effectiveness of community involvement to achieve real solutions. With a clear and upbeat tone, this thought-provoking text challenges readers to see the social and structural forces that determine our social problems; to consider various policies and programs that attempt to address these problems; and to recognize and learn how they can be part of the solution to social problems in their own community.

New to This Edition

• Many of the social policy discussions (including immigration, LGBTQ rights, the Affordable Care Act, and Internet neutrality) have been updated to reflect the most recent government actions and debates.
• More recent data, and new data sources, have been incorporated throughout, both in the main narrative and in the "Exploring Social Problems" features.
• New “Voices in the Community” subjects on gender, work and the economy, and war and terrorism appear in several chapters.
• New “In Focus” topics include Black Lives Matters, assault weapons, and college drug problems.
• The chapter on gender has been substantially updated with new or expanded coverage of binary/cisgender/transgender identification, gender nonconformity discrimination, sexual misconduct on college campuses, and the rights of trans and intersex individuals.
• Other new or expanded coverage elsewhere includes economic anxiety, robotization in the workplace, white nationalists, feminist theories about race, “fake” news, net neutrality, community policing, gentrification and segregation in U.S. cities, and the immigration and environmental policies of the Trump administration.