Sociology Exam 2 - Prohaska

Anomie

A situation in which social norms lose their hold over individual behavior.

Conformists

Accept generally held values and the conventional means of realizing them, regardless of whether they meet with success.

Conflict Theory

Argues that crime and deviance ultimately preserve power for the ruling class.

Why might community policing be an effective approach to reducing crime?

Community policing can help improve social order, lowering incentives for crime.

Identify the likely applications of the broken windows theory of social deviance

1. A crackdown on petty crime, such as drinking in public. The broken windows theory supports the idea that major crimes can be reduced by fighting minor ones.

Which of the following statements mot accurately compares a crime to a deviant act?

A crime is a particular type of deviant act that breaks the law.

Stigma

A label the alters self concept and social identity

Robert Merton

Developed strain theory as a functionalist account of social deviance. Mertons strain theory explains how society gives us certain templates for acting correctly or incorrectly.

Secondary Deviance

Deviance prompted by a label

Retreatists

Have abandoned the competitive outlook, rejecting both the dominant values and the approved means of achieving them.

Example - Metrons deviance: A woman becomes wealthy by cheating her taxes for many years.

Innovator

Police roles are changing rapidly with the introduction of technology, making a police officer a new kind of

Knowledge worker.

According to Moloch, which of the following measures would make us safer from terrorist attacks than racial and physical profiling would?

Moloch notes that the norms of decency and the ties that form among neighbors is the most effective-and most common- means of protecting individuals within society. Design security measures that align with decency norms.

Control Theory

Posits that crime results from an imbalance between impulses toward criminal activity and the social or physical controls that deter it.

Chivalry thesis

Proposes that police and court officials react more leniently to female offenders because they feel chivalrously toward women.

If a principal used the broken windows theory to inform his high schools discipline policy, which action might he take?

Punish small infractions, such as dress code violations, in order to deter larger violations.

Rebels

Reject both existing values and the means of achieving them but work to substitute new ones and reconstruct the social system.

Example - Mertons deviance: Disgusted by modern life, a young man drops out of college to live as a survivalist in the alaskan wilderness.

Retreatist

Example - Mertons deviance: Despite there being no hope of promotion, a man works at a low-level job in an unhappy company for his entire career, because he believes working hard is always the right thing to do

Ritualist

In Labeling theory, what is the difference between primary deviance and secondary deviance?

Secondary deviance is an eventual effect of primary deviance, where deviance begins.

Primary Deviance

The first act of rule breaking

Wilsion and Kelling

argued that signs of neighborhood disorder, such as broken windows, encourages more serious crime and thus became a theory known as broken windows.

Howard S Becker

argued that social groups create deviance first by setting rules for what is right and wrong and second by labeling rule breakers.

Socialization theory

argues that differences in how men and women are raised explain many of the differences in crime rates between men and women.

Ritualists

conform to socially accepted standards, though they have lost sight of their underlying values.

Femininity Norms

entail the expectation that women act "ladylike" and demure. When women break these norms, particularly by seeming promiscuous, their punishments may be harsher.

Durkheim

offered a functionalist theory of the causes of suicide.

Control theory

suggests that the woman would give into the social controls- that of caring for a child- rather than continuing the crime spree. women are less likely to engage in crime, because they possess and are responsible for maintaining more close social ties, particularly to family members.

Innovator

wants to achieve cultural goals but uses illegitimate methods