Functionalism
Durkheim: - crime and deviance were central to any understanding of how society functions. There are two different sides of crime and deviance for the functioning of society, a positive and negative side. The positive side which helped society change and remain dynamic, and the negative side which saw too much crime leading to social disruption.
Positive side:
§ A limited amount of crime is necessary for a society
§ Basis of society was a set of shared values that guide our actions, which he called the collective conscience
§ The collective conscience provides a framework with boundaries, which sets apart the actions that are acceptable and those that are not
§ The boundaries are not clear and are shown in 3 elements:
(1) Re-affirming the values/boundaries
(2) Changing values
(3) Social cohesion
Negative side
§ Anomie – in times of stress the collective conscience would be freed from its control and be used in selfish ways
Criticism: - Merton argued that anomie was a situation where socially approved goals were not available to people.
Hirschi: - bonds of attachment
§ There are 4 crucial bonds that attach society together:
(1) Attachment
(2) Commitment
(3) Involvement
(4) Belief
§ The greater a person’s attachment to society the less crime that is committed.
Lombroso: - researched and developed the theory of biological deviance, which states that some people are genetically predisposed to criminal behaviour
§ Influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
§ Many criminals shared similar physical characteristics (skinny, dark-skinned, big nose, etc.)
Criticism: - accused of being racist to criminals and people were from a poor background, diet could explain their deformities
Merton: - strain theory (is developed from Durkheim’s anomie concept)
§ Stressed the importance of the American dream
§ Society internalises the idea that materialism, status, and success are crucial for status worth
§ Not everyone has an equal chance – which creates STRAIN
§ Those at the bottom of the class system stand the least chance to succeed are still living the dream
§ This forces people to react to the pressure to succeed
Parsons: - consider age to be important in the past
§ Since industrialisation people have become more socially mobile and age groups have become more important
§ They provide role sets – a group sharing the same set of roles expected
§ Age is like a mechanism – allows people to evolve from one age group to the other
Criticisms: - functionalists tend to focus more on youth groups than the elderly and the elderly disengage with society to an extent to make room for the younger group
Functionalist – sub cultural approaches
Cohen: - status frustration
§ Offending behaviour was for the thrill of the act not economically motivated
§ Lower class boys strove to follow middle class values but lacked the means to attain success
§ This led to status frustration – a sense of personal failure
§ Rejected patterns of ‘acceptable’ behaviour
Criticisms: - no mention of females and fails to prove that school is the key place where failure and success are demonstrated
Miller: - focal concerns and WC life
§ Argued WC possess a separate culture from the rest of the society – value different things and behave differently
§ They possess a range of focal concerns which frame their social engagement
§ MC value achievement and WC their focal concerns:
Feast
Excitement
Autonomy
Smartness
Trouble
Toughness
Because of these factors WC culture was a ‘generating milieu’ for gang delinquency.
Matza: - criticised Marxist and functionalist subculture theory
§ Believed the assumptions of different values was wrong
§ We all have
(1) conventional values – typical values
(2) Subterranean values – beneath the surface
§ we use the techniques of neutralisation to justify our deviant acts
(1) denial of responsibility
(2) denial of victim
(3) denial of injury
(4) condemnations of condemns
(5) appeal to higher loyalties
Friday 4 April 2008
Environmental Theory by Hardeep + Preeya - please comment and feedback
The City as a crime producing area
Ÿ A common theme in sociological writing about crime, is the corrupting effect of city life.
Ÿ that inner cities have reputations as major locations for, and causes of, criminal activity.
Ÿ In Europe, during the 19th century, writers such as Durkheim and Tonnies had stressed the breakdown of community under the pressures of urbanisation and industrialisation.
Ÿ People, it was argued, felt less bonded to others and were more likely to become selfish.
Ÿ This selfishness is linked not just to urban living, but to the rise of individualism.
Ÿ In this approach, the explanation for deviance was first sought, not within the individual, but outside the person, in society as a whole. The causes of deviance can thus be found in society.
Ÿ Such an idea was put forward by George Simmel (1969)
Chicago Sociology
Ÿ In the USA, urbanisation occurred later than in Europe and also took a different form to European urbanisation, in that cities developed as a result of massive waves of immigration from Europe.
Ÿ Chicago, for example, grew from a population of 10,000 in 1860 to one of 2,000,000 by 1910.
Ÿ sociologists at the University of Chicago between 1914-1940 carried out the original urban studies.
Ÿ The most famous of these researchers are Robert Park and Ernest Burgess.
Ÿ Chicago sociology was characterised by two quite distinct elements: the biological and the sociological
The biological analogy that stressed the natural and innate
Ÿ Park were strongly influenced by ideas of natural selection, and the struggle for space - concepts that were biologically based and drawing on versions of the Darwinian theory of evolution.
Ÿ Park argued that cities were characterised by a biotic balance and that this was disturbed by new waves of immigrants, and conflicts occurred.
Ÿ The struggle for space was a part of this.
Ÿ Individuals compete for the best habitats and those that lose out remain in the area of minimum choice - slums (inner cities).
Ÿ Park extended this work to offer an explanation of the different types of behaviour found in urban areas, he suggested the existence of moral regions within a city.
Social disorganisation that stressed the generation of meaning through interaction
Ÿ Park's work gave rise to the writings of Shaw and McKay and was an extension of the work of Burgess who claimed that Chicago (and other large cities) was divided into distinctive zones.
Zone 1: central business district very few occupants, the centre of banking and business
Zone 2: zone of transition. cheapest zone for housing, the first one settled by new immigrants.
Zone 3: The respectable working class district.
Zone 4: Suburbia. The pleasanter middle class districts further out of the city.
Zone 5: outer fringe of the city where the wealthy live.
Ÿ Shaw and McKay suggested that as each successive wave of immigrants arrived in the city, they were forced into the cheapest zone. As they settled and some were successful, they moved outward. Their places were taken by new arrivals.
Ÿ Shaw and McKay thought that the high population turn-over produced a state of social disorganisation defined by Thomas and Znaniecki
Ÿ This appears to mean that informal methods of social control, that usually restrain people from deviant activity were weak or absent, and this released people to commit criminal act
Criticism
· If disorganisation results from high population turnover, then this seems appropriate only in the early years of settlement, but less appropriate in explaining patterns of crime that follow initial settlement.
· Labelling theory would criticise the use of official statistics. Higher rates of crime in the zone of transition might not be a result of different behaviour patterns, but of different enforcement and reaction patterns.
· This approach cannot, indeed, does not seem to comprehend or explain white-collar crime.
· The next shift in the Chicago school approach came in the later writing of Shaw and McKay and was then taken up by Sutherland. The meaning of social disorganisation changed. In the early writing the stress was on disorganisation, resulting from a lack of coherent values, the later writing stressed a distinctive, but coherent, set of values providing alternative values to those of mainstream society. This new version became the starting point for sub-cultural theory.
Ÿ A common theme in sociological writing about crime, is the corrupting effect of city life.
Ÿ that inner cities have reputations as major locations for, and causes of, criminal activity.
Ÿ In Europe, during the 19th century, writers such as Durkheim and Tonnies had stressed the breakdown of community under the pressures of urbanisation and industrialisation.
Ÿ People, it was argued, felt less bonded to others and were more likely to become selfish.
Ÿ This selfishness is linked not just to urban living, but to the rise of individualism.
Ÿ In this approach, the explanation for deviance was first sought, not within the individual, but outside the person, in society as a whole. The causes of deviance can thus be found in society.
Ÿ Such an idea was put forward by George Simmel (1969)
Chicago Sociology
Ÿ In the USA, urbanisation occurred later than in Europe and also took a different form to European urbanisation, in that cities developed as a result of massive waves of immigration from Europe.
Ÿ Chicago, for example, grew from a population of 10,000 in 1860 to one of 2,000,000 by 1910.
Ÿ sociologists at the University of Chicago between 1914-1940 carried out the original urban studies.
Ÿ The most famous of these researchers are Robert Park and Ernest Burgess.
Ÿ Chicago sociology was characterised by two quite distinct elements: the biological and the sociological
The biological analogy that stressed the natural and innate
Ÿ Park were strongly influenced by ideas of natural selection, and the struggle for space - concepts that were biologically based and drawing on versions of the Darwinian theory of evolution.
Ÿ Park argued that cities were characterised by a biotic balance and that this was disturbed by new waves of immigrants, and conflicts occurred.
Ÿ The struggle for space was a part of this.
Ÿ Individuals compete for the best habitats and those that lose out remain in the area of minimum choice - slums (inner cities).
Ÿ Park extended this work to offer an explanation of the different types of behaviour found in urban areas, he suggested the existence of moral regions within a city.
Social disorganisation that stressed the generation of meaning through interaction
Ÿ Park's work gave rise to the writings of Shaw and McKay and was an extension of the work of Burgess who claimed that Chicago (and other large cities) was divided into distinctive zones.
Zone 1: central business district very few occupants, the centre of banking and business
Zone 2: zone of transition. cheapest zone for housing, the first one settled by new immigrants.
Zone 3: The respectable working class district.
Zone 4: Suburbia. The pleasanter middle class districts further out of the city.
Zone 5: outer fringe of the city where the wealthy live.
Ÿ Shaw and McKay suggested that as each successive wave of immigrants arrived in the city, they were forced into the cheapest zone. As they settled and some were successful, they moved outward. Their places were taken by new arrivals.
Ÿ Shaw and McKay thought that the high population turn-over produced a state of social disorganisation defined by Thomas and Znaniecki
Ÿ This appears to mean that informal methods of social control, that usually restrain people from deviant activity were weak or absent, and this released people to commit criminal act
Criticism
· If disorganisation results from high population turnover, then this seems appropriate only in the early years of settlement, but less appropriate in explaining patterns of crime that follow initial settlement.
· Labelling theory would criticise the use of official statistics. Higher rates of crime in the zone of transition might not be a result of different behaviour patterns, but of different enforcement and reaction patterns.
· This approach cannot, indeed, does not seem to comprehend or explain white-collar crime.
· The next shift in the Chicago school approach came in the later writing of Shaw and McKay and was then taken up by Sutherland. The meaning of social disorganisation changed. In the early writing the stress was on disorganisation, resulting from a lack of coherent values, the later writing stressed a distinctive, but coherent, set of values providing alternative values to those of mainstream society. This new version became the starting point for sub-cultural theory.
Left Realism by Chuko - please give me feedback or comment
Left Realism
Emerged in 1980’s as a reaction to left idealist and right realist approaches to crime in modern society.
Jock young was the key thinker and the view was expressed in ‘What is to be done about law & order’ - Lea & young.
They tried to focus on the reality of crime especially street crime which they see as ‘the most transparent of all injustices’.
For Left realists crime requires an examination of the following:
1. The victims – They look at public’s fear of crime through victim surveys as it ‘allows us to give voice to the experience of people’. It is disadvantaged groups living in inner city areas that are more at risk of street crime and are more affected by petty theft as they live in relative poverty.
2. The offenders – accept the picture of offenders created by official statistics.
Relative deprivation- people see themselves as deprived in comparison to other people. 1970’s = growth in relative deprivation. This causes discontent which CAN be expressed through crime along with many other ways.
Marginalisation – individuals or certain groups of people feel separate from wider society. They feel as thought they have no importance and don’t count for much
Subcultures – a group of people who have a culture that is different from that of the wider society to which they belong
3. The State and formal control – good policing can play an important role in reducing crime.
4. The public and informal control – Multi-agency intervention is needed. Local authorities must coordinate their various departments; housing, education and social services to rebuild disintegrating communities.
Criticism
Positive –
It has highlighted the causes and problems of street crime that affect the weaker members of society
It includes other concepts such as relative deprivation and marginalisation
Has had effect on institutions, police in particular, therefore it must be useful
Negative –
The idea that society has a collective conscience can be questioned
It focuses too much on street crime and doesn’t explain such crimes as murder and rape
Disregards female crime
Fails to explain the causes of street crime
Emerged in 1980’s as a reaction to left idealist and right realist approaches to crime in modern society.
Jock young was the key thinker and the view was expressed in ‘What is to be done about law & order’ - Lea & young.
They tried to focus on the reality of crime especially street crime which they see as ‘the most transparent of all injustices’.
For Left realists crime requires an examination of the following:
1. The victims – They look at public’s fear of crime through victim surveys as it ‘allows us to give voice to the experience of people’. It is disadvantaged groups living in inner city areas that are more at risk of street crime and are more affected by petty theft as they live in relative poverty.
2. The offenders – accept the picture of offenders created by official statistics.
Relative deprivation- people see themselves as deprived in comparison to other people. 1970’s = growth in relative deprivation. This causes discontent which CAN be expressed through crime along with many other ways.
Marginalisation – individuals or certain groups of people feel separate from wider society. They feel as thought they have no importance and don’t count for much
Subcultures – a group of people who have a culture that is different from that of the wider society to which they belong
3. The State and formal control – good policing can play an important role in reducing crime.
4. The public and informal control – Multi-agency intervention is needed. Local authorities must coordinate their various departments; housing, education and social services to rebuild disintegrating communities.
Criticism
Positive –
It has highlighted the causes and problems of street crime that affect the weaker members of society
It includes other concepts such as relative deprivation and marginalisation
Has had effect on institutions, police in particular, therefore it must be useful
Negative –
The idea that society has a collective conscience can be questioned
It focuses too much on street crime and doesn’t explain such crimes as murder and rape
Disregards female crime
Fails to explain the causes of street crime
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