Transcript Lecture 3 - College of the Canyons

Part 1: Ch. 4
 According to the sin-based model society
is founded on consensus with most people
agreeing about right & wrong
 Example: 9-11 terrorists considered deranged
but not evil (Said)
Part 1: Ch. 4
Part 1: Ch. 4
 From 19th-Century to 1960s: social
stability founded on moral order – a
common world view that binds people to
their families, communities, and to larger
economic and political institutions
 Today: few sociologists hold such views
Part 1: Ch. 4
 Globalization has increased societies
based on shared culture rather than on
narrow calculations of individual selfinterest
 A commitment to common moral order
more difficult within a culture of strong
individualism
Part 1: Ch. 4
Part 1: Ch. 4
 Testing the boundaries of established norms
can be positive as well as negative
 Type of alienation occurs when social
regulators begin to splinter, and controlling
moral authority of society no longer effective
(T.S. Eliot)
Part 1: Ch. 4
 Positive: 1950s & 1960s: identifying racism &
bigotry as deviance led to social change in
which discrimination was stigmatized and
censured in legal system
 Negative: fail to acknowledge as deviant the
increase in out-of-wedlock births and
resulting in detrimental effect on black
community (Moynihan)
Part 1: Ch. 4
 When an individual is caught between
loosening moral norms regulating behavior
and individual’s own moral misgivings
 Identification and stigmatization of deviant
behavior functional for society, because it
can produce certainty for individuals, and
solidarity for group
 Dramatic social change through rapid
redefinition of deviance can be dysfunctional
for society
 The door is open for moral panics
Part 1: Ch. 4
 Example
 An individual who does not recognize
an extramarital affair as sinful but sees
himself or herself as afflicted with a
mental illness
 The loosening of moral codes of
conduct on college campuses
Part 1: Ch. 4
 Interviews with over 200 middle-class people
 Results: people unified by their increasing
reluctance to judge the behavior of others
 Wolfe identified this as “Eleventh
Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Judge”
 Originally predicted 30 years ago by Rieff,
who stated that “psychological man” was
replacing “Christian man,” where former
rejected idea of sin and need for salvation
Part 1: Ch. 4
 Hard principles of moral consensus must be
constructed
 Re-moralization of public discourse
necessary in these difficult times where evil
abounds
 Refusal to acknowledge and negatively
sanction deviance exemplifies lost capacity
to confront evil and dehumanize us all
 What are the implications of (re)defining
deviance as disease or “psychologizing” it?
 How does anomie lead to moral panics?
Part I
Chapter 5
Part 1: Ch. 5
 Crime is a legal definition created by the
agents of the dominant class in power
 Crime is not inherent in behavior but a
judgment made by some about others
 The greater the number of definitions of
crime formulated and applied, the greater
the amount of crime
Part 1: Ch. 5
Part 1: Ch. 5
 Definitions of crime are composed of
behaviors that conflict with the interests of
the dominant class, and include legal
policies for the treatment of criminals
 Definitions of crime change as the interests
of the dominant class change
Part 1: Ch. 5
Part 1: Ch. 5
 Definitions of crime are applied by the class
that has the power to shape the enforcement
and administration of criminal law
 Criminal law is not applied directly by those in
power, but its enforcement is delegated to legal
agents;
 This results in some variation in how definitions
will be applied
 Application of the law is also affected by
communities’ expectations of law enforcement
and administration
Part 1: Ch. 5
Part 1: Ch. 5
 Behavior patterns are structured in relation to
definitions of crime, and people engage in
actions that have a probability of being defined
as criminal
 Since it is not the quality of the conduct but the
action taken against it that makes it criminal,
the dominant class tends to exclude its own
behaviors from such definitions
 Those who have been defined as criminal begin
to think of themselves as criminal, increasing
the likelihood they will continue to be defined
as criminal
Part 1: Ch. 5
Part 1: Ch. 5
 An ideology of crime is constructed and
diffused by the dominant class to secure its
hegemony
 The ideas about crime held by the dominant
class are incorporated into the social views
of crime and criminals
Part 1: Ch. 5
Part 1: Ch. 5
 The social reality of crime is constructed
by:
 the formulation and application of definitions
of crime
 the development of behavior patterns in
relation to these definitions
 the construction of an ideology of crime
Part 1: Ch. 5
Part 1: Ch. 5
 What is meant by the idea that crime is
socially constructed?
 At what point is crime recognized as
behavior that violates norms and laws?
Part 1: Ch. 5