Naming the problem

Everyone, even the most die-hard defender of the established order recognizes that we face serious social and environmental problems. The news media regularly circulate the latest figures on the latest social problems. The country with the worst pollution, highest infant mortality, lowest life expectancy, epidemic rates of drug abuse, poverty, anti-social behaviour. But the mainstream media, popular debate and elite discussion treat these - at best- as a procession of seemingly unrelated and inexplicable facts and events. At worst the tendency is to suggest that whatever the problem - racism, obesity, unemployment, famine, war - that the people affected are in some way culpable. If in doubt, blame the victim. Either way, the context necessary to understand the problem and how it is caused is invariably missing. To paint in the context requires that we show how apparently isolated facts are linked causally to other social facts; that they are not so isolated after all.