Chapter 9

Question 1

Subcultural Theories

Answer 1

Explains deviance as behaviour or ideas that are produced in subcultures and transmitted by learning

Question 2

Argot

Answer 2

This subculture is frequently characterized by the use of an insider language. (The invention of words unique to the group is both a sign of insider status)

Question 3

Vocaularies of motive

Answer 3

Subculture that may include justifications and excuses for behaviour that serve to neutralize the demands of the dominant culture. (delinquent seeing gang behaviour as brave, heroic, etc)

Question 4

Notes on subculture

Answer 4

• Distinctive clothing and body language often mark subcultures
• Subcultures may be characterized by beliefs and norms that diverge from the mainstream.
• Subcultures are developed through repeated contacts and maintained in mutually supporting networks.

Question 5

(Youth Subcultures) Punk

Answer 5

• A subculture that appears to result from strain in the educational and employment system.
• Two forms in Canada
  - Original generic punk rockers for whom punk is mainly a fashion
  - “gutter punks” (street kids). Who are involved in panhandling, squatting, dumpster diving, etc.

Question 6

Straight -Edgers

Answer 6

• Emerged in the 1980s within the punk rock movement on the eact Coast United States
• Militant opposition to drug use and casual sex.
• Challenged by the darker side (goth and grunge)

Question 7

Graffiti

Answer 7

• Tagging and Piecing
• Tagging is the writing of a stylized version of the individual’s subcultural nickname or tag.
  
  • Tag is used to claim territory or dominance and can lead to intergroup violence
• Piecing is an elite form of graffiti, the painting of large murals.

Question 8

(Lower Class Six Focal Concerns) Trouble

Answer 8

-Individuals in the lower-class milieu are evaluated in terms of their actual and potential involvement in troublemaking activities.

Question 9

Toughness

Answer 9

-Importance to prowess, skill, fearlessness, and daring

Question 10

Smartness

Answer 10

-Not academic intelligence but rather street smarts. i.e: manipulate others.

Question 11

Excitement

Answer 11

• High run-ins with police or high-risk and high-reward projects

Question 12

Autonomy

Answer 12

-Lower class subculture people express ambivalent feelings towards autonomy. Self-discipline is rejected in favour of superordinate discipline.

Question 13

Subculture of violence

Answer 13

-Rates of violent crime, particularly homicide will be high in regions where little value is given to human life.

Question 14

Differential association

Answer 14

• Concept that explains why some people become criminals while others do not.

Question 15

(Differential association) notes

Answer 15

• Sutherland presented nine propositions on this theory.
  These nine are:
  -Criminal behaviour is learned
• An individual learns criminality through interaction and communication with others.
• The kind of interaction that matters most takes place within small, intimate groups.
• What is learned in intimate interaction includes both the techniques of crime and the motives for crime.
• The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of the legal codes as favourable or unfavourable.
• The ratio of favourable to unfavourable “definitions” of the law as communicated withing the group is a determinant of criminal behaviour
• Certain variables affect the impact of favourable and unfavourable definitions.
  1. ) Frequency + Duration: self explanatory
  2. ) Priority: assumes that associations formed early in life are more fundamental than those formed later.
  3. ) Intensity: strength of the association

-Learning criminal behaviour is just like any other
kind of learning.

• The criminal is not exceptional in what he or she wants.

Question 16

Social Structure + social learning Theory (SSSL)

Answer 16

• Ronald Aker
• Social behaviour is acquired through psychological processes of operant conditioning and through imitation and modelling.
• Deviance is more likely to result if the indicidual associates with deviants who commit deviant acts, model them, and support the behavious.
• small, intimate groups in which learning takes place are important because people we like, respect, and spend time with control out most important supply of reinforcement.

Question 17

Differential reinforcement

Answer 17

• Specific process by which deviant behaviour becomes dominant in specific situations.

Question 18

neutralization theory.(techniques Sykes and Matza)

Answer 18

• used to justify or excuse their participation in the subterranean norms of the delinquent subculture
• Five techniques
  1. ) denial of responsibility
  2. ) denial of injury
  3. ) denial of or blaming the victim
  4. ) condemnation of the condemners
  5. ) appeal to higher loyalties

6. ) necessity
7. ) everybody does it