Social Structure Flashcards
Sociological Theories
A group perspective that focus on the nature of the power relationship that exist between social groups and on the the influences that various social phenomena bring to bear on the types of behaviors that tend to characterize groups of people.
What are the major sociological approaches to crime causation?
- Social Structure
- Social Process
- Social Conflict
Social Structure Theories
- Explain crime by reference to some aspect of the social fabric.
- See various formal and informal arrangements between social groups as the root causes of crime and deviance
- Predict the negative aspects of societal structures such as disorganization within family, poverty, or income inequality.
Social Disorganization Theory
- A perspective on crime and deviance that highlights the role that breakdown of social institutions, such as the family, the economy,education, and religion.
- Crime was a normal part of all societies and that law was a symbol of social solidarity.
The Chicago School
An ecological approach to explaining crime that examined how social disorganization contributes to social pathology.
Social Ecology (Park and Burgess)
An approach to criminological theorizing that attempts to link structure and organization of a human community to interactions with its localized environment.
Social Pathology (Park and Burgess)
A concept that compares society to a physical organism and that sees criminality as an illness or disease that may produce deviant behavior among individuals and groups who love under or are exposed to such social conditions.
Social Disorganization may arise when?
A groups is faced with social change, uneven development of culture, maladapatation, disharmony, conflict and lack of conscience.
Parks and Burgess viewed cities in terms of what?
Concentric zones
What is Concentric Zones (5)
Each zone had its unique chariacteristics wherein unique populations and typical forms of behavior could be found.
The 5 Concentric Zones are?
- Loop
- Factory Zone
- Zone in Transition
- Zone in Working-Class Homes
- Residential Zones
Cultural Transmission (Shaw and Mckay)
Through a process of social communication, the transmission of delinquency through successive generations of people living in the same area.
Cultural Transmission concluded what?
That delinquency was caused by the nature of the environment in which immigrants lived rather than by some characteristics of the immigrant group themselves.
Chicago school formalized the use of two sources of information.
- Official crime and population statistics
2. Ethnographic Data
Official crime and population statistics
Population statistics when combined with crime information, provided material that gave scientific weight to ecological investigations.
Ethnographic data
Gathered in the form of life stories, or ethnographies, described the lives of city inhabitants.
Criminology of Place
- Modern rebirth of ecological theories
- Perspective that emphasizes the importance of geographic location and architectural features as they are associated with the prevalence of victimization.
- Hot spots
Broken Windows Thesis states what?
*Physical deterioration in an area leads to increased concern for personal safety among area residents and to higher crime rates in that area.
What is Strain Theory
Anomie- a french word meaning normlessness.
Who founded the Original Anomie
Emile Durkeim
