Differential Social Organization Research Articles

What effect did the mob have on Chicago neighborhoods? Explicating the relationship between racket subcultures and informal social control

This paper examines the relationship between racket subcultures and informal social control. Specifically, this paper examines the influence of traditional organized crime on informal social control in community areas while controlling for satisfaction with the police, tolerance of deviance, neighborhood and organizational ties, and neighborhood attachment. The data used in this analysis comes from the Community Survey of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. They were obtained from the Inter University Consortium of Political and Social Science Research. Ordered logistic regression was used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that racket areas reported higher levels of informal social control when compared to similar non racket areas in the city of Chicago. These findings have important implications for the study of deviance. Not only do they suggest that criminals can play an important role in controlling street crime, the findings also support differential social organization theory.

A Cross-Cultural Test of Social Structure and Social Learning: Alcohol Use among South Korean Adolescents

The main purpose of this study is to test the validity and cross-cultural generalizability of Akers’ Social Structure and Social Learning (SSSL) model of crime and deviance. The test is done with data on substance use behavior among adolescents in South Korea utilizing a sample of 1,021 high school students. The data are taken from (1) a self-report survey of 1,021 high school students in Busan, South Korea and (2) district (Gu) level census reports of Busan. We consider this a test of the full SSSL model because we have at least one measure of all of the four main explanatory concepts found in social learning theory (differential association, definition, differential reinforcement, and imitation) and of all four of the social structural components of SSSL (differential social organization, differential location in the social structure, theoretically defined structural causes of crime, and differential social location in groups). The principal hypothesis is that the effects of the measures of social structure on adolescent deviance (substance use) will be substantially mediated by the measures of the social learning variables. To test this hypothesis multi-level data are analyzed in several Hierarchal Linear Models. The social learning variables are found to substantially mediate the effects of social structural components on adolescents’ alcohol use. Therefore, the study provides additional evidence supportive of SSSL and evidence that it applies not only in the United States but also is generalizable to a non-Western society. The contributions, limitations, and implications of the study for future research are presented.

Neighborhood Social Capital as Differential Social Organization

This article treats social capital as a multidimensional phenomenon along which neighborhoods are differentially organized. The authors assess this notion by linking two original surveys carried out in Chicago based on community residents ( N = 8,782) and positional leaders ( N = 2,822) representing six organizational dimensions. These data are used to examine both the dimensionality and structural predictors of neighborhood social organization. Results show that the social capital of Chicago communities encapsulates four distinct dimensions at the residential level and two at the leadership level. Moreover, dimensions of leadership-based social capital are for the most part inversely related to resident-based social capital and differentially predicted by concentrated disadvantage, residential stability, and racial/ethnic diversity. Based on multidimensional scaling and clustering of the communities, the authors derive a conceptual typology highlighted by four distinct groups—Cosmopolitan Efficacy, Urban Villages, Institutional Alienation, and Conduct Norms. The authors discuss implications and suggest new directions for exploration of community differentiation.

Differential social organization, collective action, and crime

This article elaborates and extends Sutherland’s [Principles of criminology (4th ed.), Lippincott, Philadelphia, Sutherland (1947)] concept of differential social organization, the sociological counterpart to his social psychological theory of differential association. Differential social organization contains a static structural component, which explains crime rates across groups, as well as a dynamic collective action component, which explains changes in crime rates over time. I argue that by drawing on George Herbert Mead’s [Mind, self, and society. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Mead (1934)] theories of symbolic interaction and social control, we can conceptualize organization in favor of, and against, crime as collective behavior. We can then integrate theoretical mechanisms of models of collective behavior, including social network ties, collective action frames, and threshold models of collective action. I illustrate the integrated theory using examples of social movements against crime, neighborhood collective efficacy, and the code of the street.

An Extension and Test of Sutherland's Concept of Differential Social Organization: The Geographic Clustering of Japanese Suicide and Homicide Rates

In an effort to explain the spatial patterning of violence, we expanded Sutherland's (1947) concept of differential social organization to include the level of deviance exhibited by neighboring areas. To test the value of this extension, the geographic clustering of Japanese suicide and homicide rates is assessed using 1985 and 1995 data for prefectures. Univariate results show that both types of violence cluster significantly in space. Inconsistent with the proposed expansion of differential social organization, multivariate results show that proximity to homicide does not increase the risk of homicide in Japan. Results for suicide are supportive and suggest that proximity to higher rates of suicide exposes residents to cultural values that support suicide and to role models who have committed suicide.

Social Organization and Differential Association: A Research Note from a Longitudinal Study of Violent Juvenile Offenders

Social-structural dimensions of the work of Sutherland and Cressey are typically neglected in favor of the social-psychology of differential association, which attempts to explain individual crime and delinquency in terms of socialization and learning. In this article we follow a lead from Don Cressey's article, “Epidemiology and Individual Conduct,” and explore how differential social organization may be related to differential association. Using data from a 3-year follow-up study of 130 serious juvenile offenders, we attempt to assess whether the effects of differential association variables (and others from competing theories) vary according to the social-class characteristics of the delinquents' social areas. While differential association variables were found to be the strongest predictors of delinquency, we were unable to demonstrate that their predictive efficacy varied significantly by the social class of the delinquents' social areas.