SOC212H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Moral Authority, List Of Sovereign States By Suicide Rate, Social Order
1. Sociology of Crime and Deviance Lecture 3 Social
Disorganization and the Chicago School
What impact did the search for external source of crime have on the development of
criminology? The Chicago school, social disorganization theory, think of Durkheim as not
a simple positivist.
Tierney: Social disorganization and anomie:
- The sociology and criminology of Emilie Durkheim first to push the ideas to macro
level explanations, not just important ideas but necessary ideas.
-Was interested in developing objective study of society
-Was against ideas of people as being society governed by psychological or biological
impulses, still saw important rate in these factors, however but as stemming from
society in bulk.
-Ultimately saw crime as normal, but dysfunctional amount of crime as the
consequence of faults in social organizations.
-He was speaking to the idea that people were being pushed and pulled around to
psychological or biological impulses.
-Because of his view of the self, he was interested in complex aspect of humanity.
Saw crime and deviance as normal statically, you can expect that there will crime
because you can expect that people will have problems conforming to norms.
How did Durkheim come to see things this way:?
-He took issue with existing explanation on one sort of behavior, in legal government
documents and in academic explanations and public discourse.
-Suicide rate as first entry to study of society’s impact on individual behaviour: he
saw suicides as patterned, saw rates changed based on social changed- external
social realm as cause
-E.g. societies with too much individualism have higher rates of egotistic or self-
driven suicide: not getting what I want not feeling right.
-Societies with too much collectivism may have higher rates of altruistic suicide: little
sense of self will die for the benefit of the community.
-Came up with four core typologies for suicide, found societies that were either two
individualistic where too much pressure from society to live a lone, and also highly
collectivistic societies in where people had to conform to the group in both of these
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groups he found suicide rates to be higher. The one with extreme suicide rates is
totalitarian where the state is in constant fear.
-Durkheim opened the door for seeing deviation from general going against society
to crime.
-Egoistic and anomic
Mechanical and organic solidarity:
-Saw societies as analogous to biological organisms, where all of its parts should align
with one another. Influential for criminology enabled you to understand what are
the guiding forces and the subcomponents do they align with what the society is
really about?
- Humans adapt to environment by developing appropriate social institutions
-those that adopt this was as health
-those that did not adopt this way as pathological
-thus Durkheim advocates for social intervention, natural selection to ensure proper
adaptation
Mechanical solidarity:
-Pre industrial , its in a state of being where labour has not been specifically divided
-Simple societies and relationships, narrow range of occupations
-All encompassing norms and values
-Collective conscience
-Morals in coercive social facts, socialized into members
-His main point is that these societies were less differentiated and therefore
produced less norms, he essentially saw coercive social facts as being implanted in
the individual in a much easier way, much easier to influence an individual and was
demonstrated in the uniformity of behaviour.
-Social fact every way of acting, fixed or not capable of excersing on the individual
influence or external constraint, it exists beyond whether many individuals engage in
or few people engage in it, still something that shapes our thought. Would it still
exist if people stopped doing it right now? Not everyone has to be doing something
for it to exist?
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Document Summary
Sociology of crime and deviance lecture 3 social. The chicago school, social disorganization theory, think of durkheim as not a simple positivist. The sociology and criminology of emilie durkheim first to push the ideas to macro level explanations, not just important ideas but necessary ideas. Was interested in developing objective study of society. Was against ideas of people as being society governed by psychological or biological impulses, still saw important rate in these factors, however but as stemming from society in bulk. Ultimately saw crime as normal, but dysfunctional amount of crime as the consequence of faults in social organizations. He was speaking to the idea that people were being pushed and pulled around to psychological or biological impulses. Because of his view of the self, he was interested in complex aspect of humanity. Saw crime and deviance as normal statically, you can expect that there will crime because you can expect that people will have problems conforming to norms.
