Functionalism



|Functionalism |Durkheim – “anomie prevails in which effective forms of social control are disrupted and people’s normal expectations are disrupted.” |

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| |Durkheim – “anomie highlights the significance of thwarted aspirations on individual behaviour” |

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| |Durkheim – “crime is a normal aspect of society for it is a product of modern Western societies.” |

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| |Durkheim – “crime and punishment performs a useful function for society because it helps maintain social solidarity by |

| |creating moral boundaries which providing a consensus for society” |

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| |Durkheim – “the apparent individualistic decision to take one’s own life is dependent on broader social and economic conditions which are particular to that society rather than an|

| |individual psychology” |

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| |Durkheim – “because society encourages individualism and unlimited aspirations, situations arise when such aspirations cannot be realistically achieved. Unless society imposes new|

| |regulations on aspirations, then a social state of anomie or normlessness will occur, resulting in personal crises and a higher tendency for suicide.” |

|Merton’s ‘strain’ theory |Merton – “anomie is caused by people trying to achieve the American Dream – rather the failure of people reaching these cultural goals because the social structures prevent |

| |everyone achieving such dreams and so deviations are inevitable.” |

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| |Merton – “because aspirations are encouraged to be endless, but in reality are blocked by what the social structure makes possible, large sections of the US population find they |

| |cannot achieve their goals through conventional means, in this way intense pressure for deviation is production.” |

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| |Merton – “In order to respond to the restricted aspirations people have five methods of adaptation: conformity; innovation; ritualism; retreatism and rebellion.” |

| |PLEASE NOTE THE THEORY OF ANOMIE PROPOSED BY DURKHEIM AND MERTON PROVIDE THE DEVELOPMENT OF ‘SUBCULTURAL THEORIES’ OF DELINQUENCY |

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| |Albert Cohen –“ I am critical of Merton’s view that people’s adaptations to social strain were rational, as I have discovered most delinquents steal items of minor value or petty |

|Subcultural theories of |vandalism, which is an irrational act.” |

|delinquency |Cohen – “gangs work as a subculture, therefore collectively working together within a value system that was different to the main US culture; such gangs arise out of status |

| |frustration” |

|Please note: subcultural | |

|theory has been used |Note: on this basis Cohen had developed the idea of status frustration as being better than anomie as gangs operated collectively (as opposed to individually with anomie) within a|

|relatively recently to explain|different value system from that which Merton said operated within the whole of US society |

|middle-class crime. Many | |

|corporations have a subculture|Cloward and Ohlin – “explain working class deviancy as a collective rather than individual act so the delinquent can get a higher status within their working-class culture and |

|which emphasizes the pursuit |this is known as a conflict subculture” |

|of wealth and profit. For | |

|some, the pressure to succeed,|Cloward and Ohlin – “conflict subcultures are created because there is a lack of legitimate opportunities for material success” |

|in terms of this subculture, | |

|leads to criminal acts! |Note: Similarly to Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin – account for working-class deviancy as a collective rather than individual act, and in this version of strain theory the problem for |

| |the delinquent is to achieve a higher status within their working-class status as opposed to trying to become middle-class through more ‘normal’ methods like work, promotion etc |

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| |Matza – “existing subcultural theories are gender and class biased, as most self-report studies show that all social classes commit deviant acts, therefore I question the way |

| |these explanations see behaviour as determined by social class.” |

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| |Matza – “the delinquent, rather than forming a subculture which goes against the dominant values of society, drifts in and out of crime/deviant behaviour. This happens because |

| |unlike functionalists I believe there is no consensus in society, but rather a plurality of behaviours.” |

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| |Note: Matza’s views paved the way for Interactionist perspectives. This is because Matza’s ideas talk about society being pluralist rather than consensual and how subcultural |

| |behaviour comes from the interaction between people in social groups rather than the deterministic standpoint of functionalist and subculturalists (Cohen, CLoward & Ohlin) |

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|Interactionism and Labelling |Note: remember interactionism presents a view of the world which emphasizes an individuals responses to social situations, eg remember the two men in the café holding hands!!! |

| |This links back to the social theory of Herebert Mead and Herbert Blumer – you need to know this!! |

|Note: social control, this is | |

|applicable to all sociology as|Becker – “deviance is no longer about people breaking consensual norms, but is something defined as deviant/criminal through the process of social interaction.” |

|an individuals behaviour is | |

|controlled by for example the |Becker – “deviance is the outcome of a social process, whereby some people who commit deviant acts become known as deviants whereas others do not.” |

|police, the courts, teachers, | |

|and the media. There are two |Becker – “deviance only arises through the imposition of social judgments. This process is socially constructed because what is deviant is relative to the time and culture where |

|distinct types of social |that act is committed. From the process certain groups and acts become labelled as deviant through agents of social control.” |

|control FORMAL & INFORMAL | |

| |Note: Interactionism and labeling focuses on the process of criminalization rather than criminal act and this was a massive change in emphasis which occurred in the 1960s |

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|Marxist |Box – “crime is ideological censure, this is how capitalism allows the wealthy to determine what is a crime and so some groups get penalised more than others” |

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| |Chamblis – those people who are arrested tend to be the most economically vulnerable members of society as they are able to offer least resistance to the legal system (what he |

| |means is, if you’re rich you can higher a lawyer who will fight on your behalf whereas a poor person can’t especially now as Legal Aid is difficult to get) |

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| |Christie – “government legislation creates new laws (721 since Labour came to power in 1979) these laws are more likely to penalise the poorer member of society than the rich” |

| |Bonger – “acts are defined as criminal because it’s in the interests of the ruling class to define them as such; the ruling class will violate laws with impunity while the working|

| |classes are punished; crime is a reaction/expression to class conflict in capitalist societies; crime diverts the working-classes’ attention away from the exploitation they |

| |experience |

|Neo-Marxist sometimes known as|Taylor, Walton and Young in the 1970s tried to merge Marxist and Interactionist perspectives together by looking at how crime is about social control but not control of |

|The New Criminology |institutions or capital but social control conducted by the state! So the creation of laws to control people becomes a political act |

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| |Hall – “crimes like mugging happen when the state becomes frightened of there is a ‘crisis of capitalism’, so the state creates criminals like black muggers to help gain social |

| |consensus in order to divert people’s attention away from societies ills like low pay” |

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| |Gilroy – “there ain’t no black in the Union Jack, was my attempt to show that the 1980s riots in inner city London were political rather than criminal, as black people had no |

| |voice, and the riots were their only means of getting the media, publics attention to the way black people were being ignored by society” |

|Realist – Left and Right |Right Realism |

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| |Wilson – “Right realism is about taking crime seriously as we recognize there are real victims of crime and the only remedy for society is the creation of more laws and building |

| |of more prisons.” |

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| |Wilson – “crime is best controlled by increasing the deterrent and the impact of punishment” |

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| |Wilson – “crime is an individuals choice, a lack of self-control and individual responsibility. The search for the causes of crime through anomie, deprivation, low income etc is |

| |misguided, people choose to be criminals” |

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| |Charles Murray – “crimes originate from the underclasses, their poor methods of socialization, single parents, absent fathers, unemployment creates a moral vacuum in which their |

| |young fail to recognize their behaviour is criminal” |

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| |Margaret Thatcher – “crime is a massive issue for people the only way to solve it through the introduction of ‘Victorian Values’, this means more police and more prisons as people|

| |choose to be criminals.” |

| |Left-Realism |

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| |Note: this came from a reaction to the rise in Right-Realism, and the failure of previous left-wing ‘conflict’ perspectives to address the serious issue of crime which affects |

| |victims of crime. |

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| |Jock Young – “my research from the Islington Crime Survey (a victim study otherwise known as the British Crime Survey) found a high percentage of people had been a victim of a |

| |crime.” |

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| |Lea and Young – “crime is a real problem especially for women and working class communities; more victim surveys need to be done to highlight the problem; fear of crime is a |

| |‘real’ expression otherwise found in victim surveys.” |

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| |Lea and Young – “ it’s the perception of being deprived that causes resentment in people, namely ethnic minorities in poor inner city areas, this resentment of social inequalities|

| |creates feelings of injustice which creates a criminal subculture” |

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| |Lea and Young – the causes of crime are not as simple as other perspectives suggest, it is more complicated as it arises out of the local job opportunities, local housing, local |

| |policing, local schooling. Only by providing localized responses between multiple agencies can the crime problem be solved.” |

|Feminist | |

| |Smart – “dominant stereotypes of women as passive, domestic and maternal means women are not considered to be potential criminals.” |

|Note, like Marxist, | |

|Interactionist and some |Klein – “women are doubly deviant, for when they commit an offence they are seen as mad as well as bad and so they tend to get harsher sentences.” |

|subcultural explanations, | |

|feminist perspectives are |Smart – “women are subject to more forms of social control than men, they have to remain at home to look after children etc, and this leads to them being seen as less predisposed|

|CONFLICT perspectives |to criminal behaviour.” |

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| |Chadwick and Little – “the state acts to criminalize women who move out of, or threaten, traditionally conceived boundaries for women, for example prostitutes or protesters, and |

| |such behaviour is criminalized as it threatens the traditional image of the nuclear family.” |

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| |Heidensohn – “societies expectations of what women should be and do is what creates female criminals. Therefore society needs to look at how any abnormal conformity in society is |

| |criminalized. By doing this we will recognize how all forms of criminal acts are about non-conformity to established social roles for all genders.” |

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| |Smart – “patriarchy is about relations of power, men control women and children. Thus rape is an expression of male dominance in society, because it is often seen as an acceptable|

| |part of masculinity and this accounts for the way the courts have low conviction rates for rape. The courts themselves reflect our patriarchal society.” |

|Post-modern |For this focus on Foucault and the work you did with him in the power and politics module. Discourses construct the way we discuss certain crimes. So for example sex crimes are |

| |confined to a discourse of criminality and therefore wrong doing. A new discourse might look at sex crimes as being a product of a sexually obsessed society. |

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| |CCTV for Foucault is an expression of the power of the state to try and regulate or manage our behaviour rather than being something to catch criminals with – CCTV conviction |

| |rates are low. So CCTV is an extension of the way schools monitor your behaviour when you’re little; how employers monitor your behaviour at work and CCTV allows the state to |

| |monitor your behaviour when you’re having fun. |

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| |So for post-modernists crime isn’t about who does wrong and catching them, it’s more about regulation of people and to stop them doing deviant things. |

Don’t forget about Biological/Physiological in the other revision grid!!!!

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