Exam #2 Names & Theories Flashcards
Emile Durkheim
1) Focused on Macro-level issues regarding “Anomie”
2) Anomie: a state of normlessness during rapid social change
“A relative absence or confusion of norms and rules. For Durkheim, anomie explained deviance in times of war and rapid industrialization and urbanization
“Durheim anomie theory predicts increases in crime and other social disturbances as significant social, economic, or political changes occurs in a country”
Robert K. Merton:
1) Strain Theory: The Americanization of anomie. Anomie for Merton: disjunction between goals and means
2) Anomie (strain) is a permanent fixture in the United States for the lower classes
3) Deviance Typology:
Conformity
Ritualists
Innovators
Retreatists
Rebels
Steven F. Messner & Richard Rosenfeld
1) Institutional anomie
2) American dream has balloon the importance of the economic institution
3) Inflation of economic system IS the root cause of crime in america
4) Elements of the American Dream (society):
Economics (inflated!)
Education
Politics
Religion
Family
Robert Agnew
1) General Strain Theory
Strain:
*Failure to achieve goals
*Loss of positive stimulus
*Presentation of noxious stimulus
(These can be actual strain or perceived strain
Negative effect:
Anger
Frustration
Fear
Depression
Coping strategies:
*Cognitive (reconcile what has happened to reduce its impact)
*Emotional (can be positive or negative—such as working out to relieve stress)
*Behavioral (make my strain, someone else’s strain.
Agnew’s top Strains:
Abuse
Parental rejection (neglect, abandonment, death of a parent?).
Victimization
Discrimination
Reason: longer in duration, most intense, more recent more impactful than
Harold Garfinkel
Labeling: Master Degradation ceremonies
Howard Becker
labeling: Master Status is defining social position
Edwin M. Lemert
1) labeling theories, primary and secondary deviance
2) What matters in this theory (labeling theories) is not the behavior of the other person, but the response of others in response to deviant behaviors
3) Labeling theories focus on the role of the community in creating “criminals”
Master status
(the main defining characteristic that defines us into our place in society—
Primary Deviance (deviance that people engage in before they are labeled by society as an offender. NO INTEREST IN TRYING TO EXPLAIN WHY DEVIANCE HAPPENS. What matters is if people get caught and what the response to society is).
Status degradation ceremony (court process. This is an official process, gaining the label of offender. From their, self fulfilling prophecy
Secondary deviance – (self-fulfilling prophecy initiated this continued re offending. Caused by the official LABEL that happened to them)
Policy implication of Labeling theory:
Sealing public records
Victim offender mediation—break a fence, you must fix it, not serve time for it
Diversion programs also applies to labeling theory
Reintegrative shaming is a sentencing alternative for minor offenses that aims to reintegrate the offender back into society without permanently stigmatizing them.
Gresham Sykes and David Matza
1) Techniques of neutralization
Denial of responsibility
It was not my fault
Denial of injury
They could afford it
Denial of victim
They had it coming
Condemning the condemners
You’ve done worse
Appeal to higher loyalties
My family needed me. OR my friend needed me
2) Neutralizing criminal behavior allows people to engage in “subcultural drift”
Edwin Sutherland
1) Differential Association theory.
2) started this theory to ask “why do people commit white collar crimes?
3) Who does a person spend time around and what do they learn from each other.
4)Principles of Differential Association
*Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other people in a process of communication
*The learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups
*The learning process includes the techniques of committing a crime, but also the direction of motives, drives,rationalization, and attitudes
*The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of legal codes as favorable and unfavorable
*A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law. Differential association may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity
*The process of learning criminal behavioral incorporates all the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning
*Although criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those needs and values because noncriminal behavior is an expression of the same needs and values
(this means strain theory is garbage. We can’t say these strainfull experiences cause crime, because most people who grow up in these environments do NOT abuse. Something else is going on besides the strain—their definitions (learned by the peeps around them) are the key).
Bandera
1) created social learning theory
Social learning theory:
*Differential association
*Definitions
*Imitation
*Differential reinforcement (some people will reward our behavior and some will chastise us for it).
*Social structure was added later (see chart): demographics, men, women, age, gender, occupation
Walter Miller & Albert Cohen
1) Cultural deviance theory – Subcultural tradition
Cohen—
Kids that grow up in an environment that has no lessons on measuring rods
Kids adjust to this by:
College boy.
Make it on his own, pull up his bootstraps
Corner boy:
Mediocre, blue collar, graduate highschool, he will be fine
Delinquent adjustment
They look at the middle class measuring rod, and flip the values on its head, change it into something that is attainable to them
Miller—
Miller’s Focal Concern — youth in these deprived environments have adjusted to that deprived environment over these focal concerns
Lower class (poor) focal concerns:
Trouble
Toughness
Autonomy (you are your own person, ur own boss)
Smartness (ur ability to get over on other people, i can con but not gonna be conned
Excitement (life as a party)
Fatalism (develops the belief that things just happen to you, and it is not uncommon for someone to be killed. You learn to expect that out of your life).
This is how miller talks about the focal concerns. This is his explanation of the reason why there is crime in these neighborhoods
Elijah Anderson
1) code of the streets
2) code of the streets is an elaboration of this work by cohen and miller
Akers and Skinner
social learning theory elements
John Bainthwith
Reintegrative shaming is a sentencing alternative for minor offenses that aims to reintegrate the offender back into society without permanently stigmatizing them.
