This definition draws on Joan Kemp's Women's Work (Check title and citation.) Kemp does an excellent analysis of sociological theories in terms of where we see the source of a social problem, and where we believe the solution lies, in the individual or in the social structure. Kemp, Chapters 3 and 4.

A fascinating continuum for comparing social theories is Kemp's individualistic vs. structural. She provides a simple test, one that yields some surprises.

• Define the problem. Say, gender harassment in the workplace.

• Where do you see the problem as located?

  • In men who harass women?
  • In women who harass men?
  • In men who harass other men?
  • In women who harass other women?

  Note that in each of the above cases we have in mind individuals who are behaving badly toward other individuals. So Kemp would say that we see the problem as located in individuals.

• Where do you see the solution as located?
  In the individual or in the social structure?

  • Hold workshops to teach those who engage in gender harassment how to recognize it and not to do it? That locates the solution in the individual.

  • Provide supervision to identify and retrain or dismiss those individuals who engage in gender harassment? That locates the solution in the individual; it merely assumes a need for policing individuals by other individuals. But it does begin to identify some part of the solution in the social structure, by altering the social structure to include this policing element.

  • Announce regulations with reprimands for engaging in gender harassment? That locates the solution in the individual, since reprimands are aimed at individuals, but it also begins to identify part of the solution in the social structure, by altering the institutional environment to create regulations that will become part of that structure. Nevertheless, we still see the solution here as changing the behavior of the deviant individual.

  • Begin to portray the social structure as no longer making it socially acceptable for gender harassment to occur? In films? In videos? That more clearly locates the solution in the social structure. Instead of addressing our efforts to individuals who deviate from the norm we have agreed to enforce, we address our efforts to altering the social context in which those norms occur. Of course, I just slipped in a consensual approach there, claiming that we have agreed to this norm of no gender harassment, when in fact many people do not. They are simply coerced into compliance because our laws currently are opposed to gender harassment. Those laws render illegal those who deviate from them, and we aren't always too clear on the line at which actions clearly become harassment. We are defining a new crime, and labelling a new group as deviant, if not criminal, in this process.