SOCA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Social Control Theory, Differential Association, Informal Social Control
Document Summary
Deviance is non- compliance with social norms that provokes a negative social reaction, and an attempt to control the behaviour and/or punish the perpetrator. Objective and subjective concepts of deviance: moral status accorded thoughts, actions, characteristics, and persons. Social diversions: harmless non-compliance to social norms; it does not elicit sanction. Social deviations: non-compliance to social norms that elicits an informal sanction. Conflict crimes: non-compliance to law; members of society disagree its seriousness and the appropriate sanction. Consensus crimes: most members of society agree on their seriousness. Structural functionalist theories: strain, cultural support, differential association. Post-modernist: discourse as means of social control normalized by the powerful; minority views are unheard. Lack of fit between the accepted cultural goals and socially acceptable means available to achieve these goals. This strain creates four types of coping strategies: innovation (crime), ritualism, retreatism and rebellion. Critique: fails to account for middle-class and upper-class crime and deviance.
