SOCA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Laud Humphreys, Social Control Theory, 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 ( fads ) Social deviations: non-compliance to social norms that elicits an informal sanction. Conflict crimes: non-compliance to law; members of society disagree about its seriousness and the appropriate sanction. Consensus crimes: most members of society agree on their seriousness. 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 copying strategies: innovation (crime), ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion. Critique: fails to account for middle-class and upper-class crime and deviance.
