SOC 2760 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Conflict Theories, Middle Ages, Mens Rea
2 Jul 2016
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Social structure: how society is organized in terms of social relationships and social interactions. Horizontal is the social and physical characteristics of the community that an individual belongs to. Vertical is often called social inequality - how society ranks different groups of people. Society has a set of norms, formal and informal. In the middle ages, deviance was blamed on the devil. Classical criminologists say that crime was committed because there was a reward that outweighed the risks. Emile durkheim said that deviance will always exist because social norms are never storng enough to prevent all rule breaking. Some say that social conditions lead to crime rather than biological problems. 1970s, a new social control/social bonding theory of criminal behavior rose to prominence. Conflict was rooted in the haves and haves-nots in society labelling and conflict theories emphasis bias and discrimination, applying criminal labels. Crime is behaviour that is considered so harmful that it is banned by criminal law.
