Sociology 1020 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Uniform Crime Reports, Environmental Criminology, Criminology
28 Apr 2013
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Document Summary
The study of crime and deviance is not a single coherent field of study. Instead, it is a mixed endeavour that brings together assorted methodological, theoretical and political orientations to the study of crime. Getting agreement on a behaviour that is and always has been deviant is more difficult a task than it might first appear. Historians point out that many acts we now see as reprehensible were previously accepted. Different social groups often embrace very unique rules about proper and improper behaviour, which can clash with dominant social standards. The notion that standards of right and wrong, deviant and normal, depend on context. Relativism: orientation that recognizes that what counts as deviance varies across cultures and through history and therefore does not judge whether such acts are right or wrong. Such relativism is typically a purely academic orientation- a way for sociologists to examine deviance in as disinterested a manner as possible.
