...believed that a certain amount of c+d could be positive for society. -Necessary to generate social change – innovation only arises when old ideas are challenged. -Helps to clarify the boundaries of acceptable behaviour following social reactions to deviance eg drugs. -Creates social integration as it bonds society together against criminals eg 9/11 and 7/7. 2. C+D is dysfunctional Durkheim believed that crime and deviance also acts as a threat to society. This is because the norms and values that ‘unite’ society are being challenged, thus threatening consensus, social order and stability. 3. Cause of C+D Durkheim believed that C+D occurred as a result of anomie (normlessness). He believed that this could occur during periods of rapid social change eg revolutions when people become unsure of what society’s norms and values are. 4. Social order and social control Durkheim believed that there’s an agreement/consensus over norms and values, resulting in social order and stable societies. He believed that this was due to social control, a positive thing, creating social cohesion. He believed social control was achieved by agencies who socialise individuals into norms and values by integrating them into school, instilling core norms and values. Religion binds people together during times of happiness and sadness, and regulates behaviour. Parsons argued that sickness may be deviant as it can de-stabilise society. He thus sees the medical profession as performing important...
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...Katie Sun Geers 11H English/ Per 5 October 6, 2014 Kennan Rewrite Compulsions for Conformity In the United States, the element of power exists in institutions outside of courts of law and police establishments, such as in the economic system, in settings lacking a forceful, dominant organization, and especially in the compulsions of social life that influence compliance to the norm. Kennan’s most compelling observation is that Americans place extraordinary obligations of group conformity upon themselves (Kennan, 18-20), which can be seen in America’s education system and the media. The education system preys on people’s intrinsic desire to fit in to evade societal judgment, therefore limiting individuality but adhering to the communal rules...
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...Discipline and Punish This book, published in 1975, is a genealogical study of the development of the “gentler” modern way of imprisoning criminals rather than torturing or killing them. While recognizing the element of genuinely enlightened reform, Foucault particularly emphasizes how such reform also becomes a vehicle of more effective control: “to punish less, perhaps; but certainly to punish better”. He further argues that the new mode of punishment becomes the model for control of an entire society, with factories, hospitals, and schools modeled on the modern prison. We should not, however, think that the deployment of this model was due to the explicit decisions of some central controlling agency. In typically genealogical fashion, Foucault's analysis shows how techniques and institutions, developed for different and often quite innocuous purposes, converged to create the modern system of disciplinary power. At the core of Foucault's picture of modern “disciplinary” society are three primary techniques of control: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and the examination. To a great extent, control over people (power) can be achieved merely by observing them. So, for example, the tiered rows of seats in a stadium not only makes it easy for spectators to see but also for guards or security cameras to scan the audience. A perfect system of observation would allow one “guard” to see everything (a situation approximated, as we shall see, in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon)...
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...& Krohn, (2009) note that sociology appreciates the fact that social norms vary in description across societies. This implies that an action that is deviant to one community may be morally acceptable to another. Moreover, sociology recognizes that while societies play a more important role than individuals do in creating and imposing norms and rules. This means that views on deviant acts existing in individuals more likely relate to their society’s responses to the behavior (Kubrin, Stucky, & Krohn, 2009). Norms are rules and expectations by which members of society are conventionally guided. Deviance is a failure to conform to these norms. Social norms differ from culture to culture. For example, a deviant act can be committed in one society that breaks a social norm there, but may be normal for another society. Over the years, sociologists have come up with numerous theories and concepts that help explain the causes, effects, and solutions to deviance. For instance, originally studied at the Chicago School, the social disorganization theory owes its application to deviance as a social issue to Roger Miller and Larry Gainer. The theory identifies social environments as the determinants of social deviance. Therefore, unlike their organized counterparts, societies with disorganized social structures are more than likely experience high rates of deviance. This theory assumes that such societies have poor social institutions, high levels of unemployment, and abandoned...
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...Shaming: to publicly humiliate or shame for being or doing something dishonorable or disrespectful. Historically shaming has been all about control and social norms. The society responds to misbehavior by publically shaming the person in order to each him a moral lesson and lead him to repentance. It is about imposing hardship on the offender that closely mirrors his wrongdoing. We can see through out history, cultures have resorted to publically criticizing, flaying, branding, egregious form of punishment like chopping body, stoning etc., in response to violation of social norms. Intention of public shaming is to humiliate a person and has been integral to the legal system during its evolutionary stage. Shaming was primary means of restoring...
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...THE CONCEPT OF A LEGAL SYSTEM An Introduction to the Theory of Legal System SECOND EDITION JOSEPH RAZ CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD -iiiOxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxfordis a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United Statesby Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 1970, 1980 First published 1970 Second edition 1980 Reprinted 1990, 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise...
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...Consultation: Destiny Gove Mediation and Ethics Consultation: “The orchestration of moral collaboration [required in ethics consultation] will be complex. Parties will share morally problematic situations but may have different senses of what is relevant and understandably different personal stakes. The ethicist has special responsibility to enliven a process in which these common moral concerns stay in focus while differences are recognized and, ideally, mediated.” —Margaret Walker, 1993, p. 39. Abstract Mediation has received considerable attention in the bioethics literature on ethics consultation. The recent consensus report Core Competencies for Health Care Ethics Consultation issued by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities acknowledges positive benefits of mediation training. In times when moral consensus in the most intractable of cases is not possible, mediation or other conflict resolution strategies might help the parties reach a resolution. Moreover, mediation training can help ethics consultants achieve mastery of the interpersonal elements of ethics consultation. However, to argue that mediation can be appropriately adapted as an ethics consultation modality is a more controversial matter. This paper surveys the bioethics literature regarding the role of mediation as a consultation modality and presents criticisms levied against bioethics mediation. The strongest criticisms concern the supposed neutral or impartial stance...
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...What Causes Crime? Crime has existed in societies across the world since the term crime has been implemented. The standard definition of crime, if one can use the term standard, is any action that is prohibited, prosecuted, and punished by criminal law. Therefore, crime cannot exist without some form of legal system to label criminal behavior. The mandatory existence of a legal system for criminal behavior to occur can be easily confused with actions that violate socially constructed norms, or deviant behaviors. It is with that premise that I propose crime is caused by a conflict of interest. This conflict of interest is not limited to the interactions between classes, groups, or individuals; the conflict of interest is intentionally vague so as to not cause further damage to criminological understanding by imposing misleading specificities. Crime is a conflict of interest between two or more variables, with at least one variable involving one or more humans. I propose crime is a conflict of interest because the term interest can encompass the two key aspects of profit and loss that is the rational basis for creating legal systems. However, as so many have noted, illegality is at the end of the day typically decided by those who create the laws rather than those most affected by the laws. Conflicts occur when there lacks a unanimous consensus among all parties considered in a given situation. When countries consist of millions of people, one can note how even the most well...
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...Ansley Haskard Coach Allen Comp III 16 January 2018 Conventional Wisdom The term conventional wisdom is one that has raised a flurry of social indecisions in the past and the present. It refers to the belief that is now being propagated amongst the society until it is now believed to be true by the society or around certain domains. This term refers to beliefs, rumors that have for a long time been propagated around the society. This is true until now because as we can see it today, reports that are being flouted it the public domain about certain individuals or certain issues that affect the society stay on so long that that people tend to believe more in the rumors than concentrate on the issues that affect the society. Therefore it means that the rumors can change as time goes by depending on the keepers of the outdated information.. This term might be true or not true, but regardless of the real meaning of the story, one may be mesmerized by the kind of reception that the information is given by the society. The big question that begs is, “how does conventional wisdom make its way in our society?” The conventional wisdoms are deposed, phased out by new ideas, and the new conventional wisdom is treated in the same breadth in place of the preceding one,...
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...ant It is of an inevitable reality that cultures differ around the world every place and context has their own unique set of norms, beliefs and practices. These set of norms, beliefs and practices make up the identity of a culture. These make up the whole of their system . A particular culture produces a pattern of actions that a group of people will manifest as they live in this world. Because of the diversity of cultures of people from different places around the world, there exist conflicts due to differences if one culture is imposing its will to the other The Btsisi are considered a horticultural society. Horticultural societies were those that produced food. Unlike the Foraging society who collected wild grains and animals as their first stage of food production, “horticulturalists differ from foragers in their dependence on domesticated plants for most of their food energy. Horticulturalists may still collect wild foods and hunt even as they cultivate, but by and large their sustenance depends on domesticated plants.” (Nowak & Laird, 2010). “Btsisi' traditionally practice village exogamy; in other words, the bride and groom come from different villages” (Nowak & Laird, 2010).They do not practice polygamy or the marrying of kin. “Btsisi' say that upon marriage a newly married couple should first live matrilocally and then patrilocally” (Nowak & Laird, 2010).This is to provide the parents of the bride and groom some self assurance that the marriage...
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...Can we be good without God? There is no doubt that some valuable moral insights have been spread by religion. Religion seems to be a good place to start thinking of morality, but we cannot rely on God to tell us what is right morally and what is wrong. We should recognize that morality is based on human needs and interests, and not on God’s commands because they cannot be regarded as imposing moral obligations unless we already possess a sense of right and wrong independent of his commands. The claim that we need God to provide morality does not withstand analysis because it is the circumstances under which we live that influence the content of our norms, not divine commands. Morality is a human institution serving human needs, and the norms of the common morality will persist as long as there are humans around. (Lindsay.) God’s moral nature is expressed to us in the form of divine commands which compose our moral duties or obligations and holds all persons morally accountable for their actions .But on the atheistic view there is no divine lawgiver. But...
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...focus of the bourgeoisie imposing their values onto the proletariat as they are in the powerful positions. The factors include the law creation. The law and laws are created by the government. People in the government are typically either part of the bourgeoisie or they are influenced by them. This means that the bourgeoisie re more likely to put in place laws that will benefit them and oppress the proletariat. The values of the bourgeoisie are passed through a number of agencies, including education, religion, and the mass media. These values are commonly referred to as Hegemony. These values are based within the democracy. However they are initially ‘forced’ on people. It is the beliefs of the ruling elite. Despite the laws favouring the ruling classes they actually favour the majority if enforced properly. However even the interpretation and enforcement of law is biased and the police tend to arrest and punish the working classes but not the ruling classes. However, Not all capitalist societies have high crime rates for example, Japan and Switzerland have lower than the USA. Justice systems sometime acts against the interests of the ruling class this can be seen in the prosecution of corporate crime. This view also ignores intra-class crime, where two of more classes are involved in the same crime against other classes. The new criminology or Neo-Marxists has a different view of the relationship between crime and social class. Capitalist society is based on exploitation...
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...to prophesies of his future – or more specifically, his soon-to-become titles. His prior knowledge of his new titles elicits the inconspicuous avarice within MacBeth, which in return envelops Scotland into disorder and disease. Had he never obtained the ambition to promote his own role as king, Scotland could have remained the way it was under Duncan’s gentle rule; the absence of malicious intent – which had caused the deaths of Duncan, Banquo, and MacDuff’s family – would have most certainly created a different, possibly peaceful, alternative in the direction of destiny. Perhaps Shakespeare may be attempting to demonstrate the importance of roles within a society, as is evident throughout the characters, embedded words, and motifs within the script. Titles and roles create identities for people and establish societal norms, and, in effect, ultimately balance the order of nature. A role defines the identity, and thus the actions and purpose, of an individual. Names and labels are essential in that they are used everyday to recognize other people and oneself. The roles indicate who said, did, and conversed with whom, fundamental to Shakespeare’s literature that involves the interaction of various characters. Most importantly, defining a person incites the effect of self-fulfillment and causes one to act according to who one is. “Dispute it like a man”: Malcolm reaffirms in MacDuff that, as a man, he is to show no weakness, even though his family had been murdered (4.3.259). Indeed...
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...SERVE AS A FORM OF SOCIAL CONTROL? Deviancy is considered any behaviour to violate cultural norms and it is essentially split between two formations; formal deviancy (crime) and informal deviancy (social). Social control is a product of social learning via labeling strategies, it is composed of both informal and formal mechanisms and maintains that the exploitation of socialization and social learning contributes to the individual building of self-control, and in the reduction divergent behaviour. Both controls enforce labeling as a sanction to shame the supposedly deviant character; it infers that the individual has earned disapproval from society due to failed expectations of behaviour. Labeling theorists propose that criminality comes from the response to behaviour as an alternative to actual violation of the law (Wellford, 1975), this is evident in society’s acceptance of illegal downloading despite the sanctions and group in powers values. Durkheim views this defiance as a necessity to an ever changing society where deviance is of use to maintaining functionality, social constancy and collective consciousness, when this is absent anomie is said to arise. Labelling theory holds much of the same stance as conflict theory in emphasising the power of social groups and social control in expectations and stigmatisation. Where the delegation of labels creates sub-groups within society each group is anticipated to fulfil certain normative behaviours, in violating these they become...
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...Thanks to Edward Albee’s skill as a writer, Alan Schneider’s superb staging and directing and the brilliant performance by the cast, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” provides a thrilling and spectacular evening at the Billy Rose Theatre. You may struggle to fully understand Albee’s characters. You may feel that a pillar of the plot is too paltry to support the climax. You may feel that this play goes against social norms. You may also feel that this is just another play. Yet, in spite of all that, you are encouraged to visit Broadway, where Albee’s new play opened Saturday night. Making his debut on Broadway, Albee brings the fervor and exasperation that helped him so brilliantly write “The Zoo Story” and “The American Dream.” He has created a play that runs over three hours long yet there is never a dull moment. Although Albee’s thoughts are uninviting and satirical, he is never imposing. With the unmatched, natural talent of Albee that has been seasoned through the years of writing plays for the theatre, Albee is able to fill the stage with constant excitement for the audience, who will be on the edge of their seats for almost the full duration of the play. In “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Albee is focused on Martha and George, a couple...
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