SOC 2070 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Informal Social Control, Internal Revenue Service, Social Control

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 2070
• Professor: Norman Dubeski

Document Summary

Constructionism focuses on the creation of social categories, the imputation of deviance to those categories, why certain rules exist, how they work, what their consequences are and what the dynamics of enforcement are. Constructionists focus on how members in society think and talk about and react to behaviour, beliefs, and conditions they regard as unacceptable. How deviance is defined, conceptualized, and represented and how those definitions conceptualizations and representations are enacted. The social constructionist approach permits inquiry into false accusations; it is secondary that the caused person didn"t do it. The constructionist is very comfortable about asking why things such as the witch- craze arose and why mainly women were accused and punished for a nonexistent crime. For positivists, the fact that crime was non-existent is crucial because you can"t offer an explanation for the enactment of a behaviour that somebody didn"t do.