1.Why do you think stereotypes are so easily interchanged between groups? Do you believe that our society is becoming more or less racist? How effective were previous movements to attain equality?

Ch. 7 Deviance and Crime

Deviance - behavior that is recognized as violating expected rules and norms.
1. Formal deviance is behavior that breaks laws or official rules.
2. Informal deviance is behavior that violates customary norms.
3. Social movements, which are networks of groups that organize to support or resist changes in society.
4. Deviance is socially constructed
5. medicalization of deviance -attributes deviant behavior to a “sick” state of mind, which is “cured’ through psychological treatment.
  1. Ignores the effects of social structures
Theory on Deviance
1. Functionalist- creates social cohesion by providing contrast for “normal” behavior
  1. Anomie, as defined by Durkheim, is the condition that exists when social regulations in a society break down.
  2. Structural strain theory traces the origins of deviance to the tensions caused by the gap between cultural goals and the means people have available to achieve those goals.
    1. Retreatism, Ritualism and Rebellion
  3. Social control theory, a type of functionalist theory, suggests that deviance occurs when a person’s (or group’s) attachment to social bonds is weakened.
2. Conflict Theory-dominant class as controlling the resources of society and using its power to create the institutional rules and belief systems that support its power.
  1. Elite deviance refers to the wrongdoing of wealthy and powerful individuals and organizations.
  2. Social control is the process by which groups and individuals within those groups are brought into conformity with dominant social expectations.
    1. Social control agents are those who regulate and administer the response to deviance, such as the police and mental health workers.
3. Symbolic interaction theory holds that people behave as they do because of the meanings people attribute to situations.
  1. Differential association theory, a type of symbolic interaction theory, interprets deviance, including criminal behavior, as behavior one learns through interaction with others.
  2. Labeling theory- label is the assignment or attachment of a deviant identity to a person by others.
    1. Stigma is not from action but from label
  3. Deviant identity is the definition a person has of himself or herself as a deviant.
  4. Stigma is an attribute that is socially devalued and discredited.
  5. deviant career—a direct outgrowth of the labeling process—is the sequence of movements people make through a particular subculture of deviance.
Crime
1. Crime is one form of deviance, specifically, behavior that violates particular criminal laws.
2. Criminology is the study of crime from a scientific perspective.
3. hate crime as a criminal offense that is motivated in whole or part by bias against a “race, religion, disability, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation”.
4. Gender-based violence is the term used to describe the various forms of violence that are associated with unequal power relationships between men and women.
5. Racial profiling is the use of race alone as the criterion for deciding whether to stop and detain someone on suspicion of having committed a crime.