Sociology Ch 8 Voc
Terms
undefined, object
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- cultural goals
- the legitimate objectives held out to the members of a society
- recidivism rate
- the proportion of people who are rearrested
- crime
- the violation of norms that are written into law
- strain theory
- robert merton's term for the strain engendered when a society socializes large numbers of people to desire a cultural goal (such as success) but withholds from many the approved means to reach that goal; one adaptation to the strain is crime, the choice of an innovative means (one outside the approved system) to attain the cultural goal
- serial murder
- the killing of several victims in three or more separate events
- white-collar crime
- edwin sutherland's term for nonviolent crimes committed by people of respectable and high social status in the course of their occupations; for example, bribery of public officials, securities violations, embezzlement, false advertising, and price fixing
- working class
- those who sell their labor to the capitalist class
- corporate crime
- crimes committed by executives in order to benefit their corporation
- personality disorders
- the view that a personality disturbance of some sort causes an individual to violate social norms. an example is anti-social personality disorder
- capital punishment
- the death penalty
- control theory
- the theory developed by Walter Reckless that two control systems-inner controls and outer controls-work against our tendencies to deviate
- differential association
- edwin sutherland's term to indicate that associating with some groups results in learning an "excess of definitions" of deviance and, by extension, in a greater likelihood that one will become deviant
- negative sanction
- a punishment or negative reaction for disapproved behavior, for deviance
- marginal working class
- the most desperate members of the working class, who have few skills, little job security, and are often unemployed
- criminal justice system
- the system of police, courts, and prisons set up to deal with people who are accused of having committed a crime
- capitalist class
- the wealthy who own the means of production and buy the labor of the working class
- medicalization of deviance
- to make deviance a medical matter, a symptom of some underlying illness that needs to be treated by physicians
- labeling theory
- the view, developed by symbolic interactionists, that the labels people are given affect their own and others' perceptions of them, thus channeling their behavior either into deviance or into conformity
- social control
- a group's formal and informal means of enforcing its norms
- stigma
- "blemishes" that discredit a person's claim to a "normal" identity
- positive sanction
- a reward or positive reaction for approved behavior, for conformity
- institutionalized means
- legitimate and accepted ways of reaching cultural goals
- social order
- a group's usual and customary social arrangements, on which its members depend and on which they base their lives
- street crime
- crimes such as mugging, rape, and burglary
- police discretion
- the practice of the police, in the normal course of their duties,to either arrest someone for an offense or to overlook the matter
- deviance
- the violation of rules or norms
- degradation ceremonies
- rituals designed to strip an individual of his or her identity as a group member and resocialize an individual; for example, a military boot camp
- illegitimate opportunity structures
- opportunities for crimes that are woven into the texture of life
- hate-crime
- crimes to which more severe punishments are attached because they are motivated by hatred (dislike, animosity) of someone's race-ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or national origin
- generic predisposition
- inborn tendencies, in this context, to commit deviant acts
- techniques of neutralization
- explanations given by people as a way of rationalizing their deviant/criminal behavior