Publication (142 pages).

sional organizer’ draws attention to the way in which society
has legitimated certain forms of cleanliness over others, making
people with small messes feel obligated to change. And the
plethora of unregulated self-help literature draws attention to
the ways in which moral regulation can be inserted into society
so that people regulate themselves without having direct
access to claimants. These forms of dissemination are important
in understanding the progression of the moral ideology of
hoarding behaviour. The subjective claims made by various
claimants about hoarding demonstrate that it can be considered
a morally regulated behaviour. The ideologies of cleanliness
and organization that are conveyed through the media,
self -proclaimed experts, and self-help books suggest that moral
claimants have disseminated their claims in an effective way.
Moral regulation also mirrors a social problem construction;
claimants use subjective ideas to construct a discourse of harm
around the presentation of household items. This construction
of harm suggests that hoarding is a destructive behaviour that
must be stopped and aided through intervention. The objective
conditions of accumulation and lack of discard are not inherently
harmful, but this construction of hoarding suggests
that they are by creating a moral ideology about cleanliness and
organization. The dissemination of moral ideologies must be
identified when discussing social problems because they often
greatly influence individual and social expectations. In the case
of hoarding, moral regulation is a reality, but the ideologies
are constructions that exist due to particular claimants. Hoarding
is once again presented to society as wrong or bad due to
the imposition of subjective claims. This type of presentation
is important to consider when understanding social problem
constructions.
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