Led by Robert K. Merton Simulacrum
About this course
The second detailed study in the "Understanding Social Structures" component — crime and deviance studied through the question of order and control, the patterns of who offends, the great theoretical explanations, and the problem of how crime is counted.
Your host is the Robert K. Merton Simulacrum, whose strain theory explains crime through the gap between the goals a society holds out and the means available to reach them. The theories unit is led by the Albert Cohen Simulacrum (subcultural theory), and the interactionist account draws on the Howard Becker Simulacrum (labelling). The conversation hands over by name between them.
Led by Robert K. Merton Simulacrum
The question
What counts as a crime, and who decides? You will study the social construction of crime and deviance (historical and cultural variation), informal and formal social control and their agencies (family, peers, media; police, courts), and the patterns of offending by class, ethnicity, age, and gender.
Outcome
You can show why what counts as crime is not fixed but socially defined.
Sub-units
Led by Albert Cohen Simulacrum
The question
Why does crime happen? You will study the functionalist account (Merton's anomie and strain), the subcultural account (Albert Cohen, status frustration), the Marxist account (Chambliss, differential enforcement and white-collar crime), the interactionist account (labelling and the deviant career, Becker; moral panics), and the feminist accounts (Heidensohn, Carlen, the chivalry thesis), with ethnicity and racism.
Outcome
You can argue the structural, subcultural, interactionist, and feminist theories of crime against one another.
Sub-units
Led by Robert K. Merton Simulacrum
The question
How much crime is there really? You will study the sources of crime data — official statistics, victim studies, self-report studies — and the reasons they are partial: the dark figure of crime, unreported and unrecorded crime, police bias and labelling, moral panics, and invisible crime.
Outcome
You can judge what a given crime statistic does and does not reveal.
Sub-units