Sociology Of Deviance Research Articles

Criminology and identity: A theoretical review

This article is a literature review describing and analysing the main theoretical and empirical developments that have addressed the concept of identity and its role in crime based on criminology and other disciplines. The literature review was based on a search both in Spanish and English in the Web of Knowledge, Scopus, and Scielo databases. The exposition of theoretical proposals follows a chronological and disciplinary field order, including identity perspective, the sociology of deviance, developmental criminology, and several of the leading contemporary approaches. It highlights the dissemination and importance of identity perspective between the 1950s and 1970s and the subsequent criticism that it was reductionist, lacking theoretical support, and not in dialogue with other criminological proposals. Thereupon, emphasis is placed on the subsequent contributions and proposals, which demonstrate the consistency of the concept, as well as its versatility and articulation with different disciplinary approaches to the understanding of the criminal phenomenon. The conclusion highlights the richness of the concept, its projections, and the importance of its revitalisation.

Possibilities and Potentialities of Coalescing Processed Produced Survey data and Elicited data in Sociology of Deviance

Processed produced data has always been criticized for its limitations and inability to address certain kinds of research questions because it is data not produced for research purposes. Process produced data such as administrative data collected by government ministries and organizations, constitute an important data source that can be useful in research, yet often not sufficient alone to answer different kinds of research questions, especially when they are used in isolation. Whilst these limitations are evident and indisputable, it is equally clear that such data can be effectively harnessed to answer specific types of research questions, and this paper offers an example of the usefulness of process produced data in studying juvenile delinquency. This paper intends to use the Botswana Youth Risk Behavioral and Biological Surveillance Survey (BYRBBSS II) by the Ministry of Basic Education as a form of process produced data set, to analyze the factors associated with juvenile delinquency in Botswana. Whilst this report provides a basis from which to launch the study, it cannot answer other uniquely qualitative research questions that would require thorough descriptions from the juveniles involved in these acts of deviance. This paper, therefore, uses this argument as a starting point to explore the possibilities and potentialities associated with combining process produced data with research elicited data, with the ultimate aim being to demonstrate how doing so offers more satisficing research results. Mixing Processed Produced Data and Research Elicited Data (interviews) is a methodological approach that has not yet been extensively applied in the context of Botswana, and therefore the paper will open discussions on the possibilities of conducting research in this manner, especially where process produced data sets are publicly accessible and available.

Analiza povezanosti progona kršćana i kristijanizacije Rimskoga Carstva kroz vizuru fenomena otpadništva u ranom kršćanstvu

In spite of more than a century of historical research, the question of Christianization of the Roman Empire still poses a challenge to scholars. Numerous theories have been proposed as a way of explaining how the marginal religious community of several hundred persons managed to become, by the end of the 4th century, the dominant religion in the Roman Empire. In the first part of this paper, the author presents the most common theories put forward by scholars going back to Adolf von Harnack, with their critical evaluation. Special emphasis is placed on a specific theory, summarized already by Tertullian, who stated in one of his works: Semen est sanguis Christianorum. In the second part of the article, the author presents the standard criticism of Tertullian’s notion offered by contemporary scholars, as well as some new arguments related to the phenomenon of early Christian apostasy. Thus, the basic argument of the paper is as follows: The crucial problem of any “Semen est sanguis Christianorum theory” is the existence of apostates who, despite claims made by several early Church leaders, were not an imperceptible minority in the early Christian period. Approaching the subject of apostates from a historical and sociological (sociology of deviance) point, the author concludes that the apostates posed a serious problem to the stability and security of the new religion. Therefore, any hypothesis that martyrdom as such helped the process of Christianization has to account for the problem of apostasy, which is hardly taken into the consideration in discussions of the triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

Девиантология постмодерна

The article examines the main ideas of deviantology (sociology of deviance) of postmodern society. The features of the postmodern society, in which modern humanity lives, affect all social processes, including deviant manifestations (crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, suicide, etc.). Accordingly, the social sciences, including deviantology, are largely correcting the previously established beliefs.

Frame Analysis and Deviance Scholarship: Exploring Links through Drugs and Guns

ABSTRACT Deviance scholarship and social movement scholarship share similar substantive interests such as changes to rules and laws, identity-based movements, and a focus on social change. This article contends that social movement scholarship, particularly frame analysis, offers conceptual tools that may reinvigorate deviance scholarship and address some areas of concern raised by critics. Furthermore, this article explores the utility of the sociology of deviance for social movement scholarship by way of its focus on social control. It examines political action around two issues, opioid use and overdose deaths and gun-related deaths, highlighting the frames in each movement as either medicalizing or criminalizing (and sometimes both). Through these examples, this article considers the unique vantage point of deviance scholarship when considering social movement frames and discusses the potential harms of hybridized medical-legal discourses.

“Can Normalization Save Society–or at Least the Sociology of Deviance?”

One of the critiques of the sociology of deviance has come from what Kitsuse (1980) called “tertiary deviants”–individuals and movements objecting to their classification as deviants. In the forty ...

Deviant Leisure: A Critical Criminological Perspective for the Twenty-First Century

This article argues that the time has arrived for leisure and consumerism to become key objects of study for a twenty-first century critical criminology. As global capitalism struggles to sustain itself, it is creating myriad crises in areas such as climate change, mental health, personal debt, and unemployment. Using a zemiological lens, we argue that it is on the field of commodified leisure and consumerism that criminologists can see these meta-crises of liberal capitalism unfold. Therefore, this article positions the burgeoning deviant leisure perspective as a new and distinct form of twenty-first critical criminology—one that departs from traditional criminological approaches to leisure rooted in the sociology of deviance in favor of critical criminology’s recent zemiological turn to social harm. In doing so, this article outlines how the deviant leisure perspective’s emergence at the intersection of zemiology, green criminology and ultra-realist criminological theory enables it to address some of the realities of our times, as well as how the deviant leisure perspective can help explain the normalized harms that emanate from the relationship between commodified leisure and consumer capitalism.

Unsettling appearances: Diane Arbus, Erving Goffman and the sociological eye

Both the photographer Diane Arbus and sociologist Erving Goffman were fascinated by the way we present ourselves to others and this article sets out how each understood the drama of human interaction. It begins by exploring how their work parallels some developments in the sociology of deviance, and notes how Goffman was one of the earliest critics of this field, before briefly sketching out Arbus’s controversial career and then turning to a more detailed look at three of her images. It concentrates on how the gap between intention and effect, or what Goffman terms the difference between the impressions we ‘give’ and those we actually ‘give off’, are at the core of her work and this sociological insight animates her compositions. The article then describes how their work unsettles ‘normal appearances’ and provides rich resources for understanding human conduct.

Towards a Realist Criminology: Review of Roger Matthews (Editor) What Is to Done about Crime and Punishment? Towards a “Public Criminology”. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

This review of the 11 chapters in this overview of a “realistic” approach to criminology, recommends this book as a text for use in graduate courses in criminology, public policy and the sociology of deviance. We focus in particular on chapters which advocate legal reforms on behalf of women forced to work in prostitution, and which elaborate the approach of Critical Realism as a model of social research for the emancipation of oppressed minorities.

Boredom and Social Deviant Behavior: An Empirical Study

The purpose of this paper was the analysis of the relationship between boredom and deviance behavior; this is a field not completely explored by the sociology of deviance, despite the increase in alarm due to the increase in: deviant behavior by young people and crimes committed by groups. After a brief presentation of the most important contribution in literature, to deepen this issue, we use data collected from a survey using as principal instrument, the Boredom Proneness Scale, BPS, (Farmer & Sundberg, 1986) to identify the possible forms of prevention to be adopted in family, social and institutional context, in order to not compromise, immediately or in the long term, social, physical and psychological young person well-being. To test the evidence, it was decided to implement a model, in order to describe and analyze empirical phenomena, introducing a statistical relationship, since it is not possible to know an exact relationship between variables. The model results allow to observe a direct relationship between the BPS and variables analyzed.

Howard Becker, Drug Use and the Sociology of Deviance

Outsiders, a sandwich book comprised of two previouslypublished articles on marijuana use and two on dance musicians, a two-chapter introduction, and a three-chapter conclusion (and, in the 1973 edition, the author’s reappraisal of labeling theory), has been, by far, Howard S. Becker’s most-read and most-cited work. It was remarkable and influential in several ways, including the fact that the author was a participant in the behavior he described and analyzed. But in his reflections on his own work, Becker expressed unease about being identified by this book, arguing that his writings in other areas are more emblematic of his contributions to sociology. Indeed, Becker even argues that, conceptually, the book wasn’t even about deviance as such, but occupations and the professions. The fact remains, authors do not render the most authoritative judgment about their work-their readers and commentators do.

Institutional deviance in TV news: BBC, ITV and the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal

This article is an empirical study of how institutional scandal is covered in TV news, using the BBC and ITV coverage of the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal as a case study. It draws on sociology of deviance as well as Greer and McLaughlin’s model of institutional scandal and the different phases they go through. As such, the study examines how the coverage of the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal moved through activations, reactions, amplification and accountability phases, although the progression was messy and complex. The study examines both verbal and visual elements of how TV news engaged in emotional accounts of suffering and attacks on figures of authority and public institutions. The article argues that institutional scandal and the media coverage of the NHS reflect both the politically disputed status of the NHS as well as a neoliberal drive to undermine public institutions.

Contemporary Issues and the Possibilities to Inquiry into Them in the Sociology of Deviance:

Contemporary Issues and the Possibilities to Inquiry into Them in the Sociology of Deviance:

The visibility of scientific misconduct: A review of the literature on retracted journal articles.

Retractions of scientific articles are becoming the most relevant institution for making sense of scientific misconduct. An increasing number of retracted articles, mainly attributed to misconduct, is currently providing a new empirical basis for research about scientific misconduct. This article reviews the relevant research literature from an interdisciplinary context. Furthermore, the results from these studies are contextualized sociologically by asking how scientific misconduct is made visible through retractions. This study treats retractions as an emerging institution that renders scientific misconduct visible, thus, following up on the sociology of deviance and its focus on visibility. The article shows that retractions, by highlighting individual cases of misconduct and general policies for preventing misconduct while obscuring the actors and processes through which retractions are effected, produce highly fragmented patterns of visibility. These patterns resemble the bifurcation in current justice systems.

On the Origin of the Concept of “Deviant Subculture” in Criminology: W. I. Thomas and the Chicago School of Sociology

ABSTRACT“Deviant subculture” has been a key concept in sociology of deviance and crime for a long time. It has often been argued that Albert K. Cohen was the person who first developed the concept. However, this article argues that the concept first emerged in the work of the Chicago School of Sociology and that W. I. Thomas’ notion of “the definition of the situation” was at the core of it. The notion allowed Thomas to redefine the problem of deviance and crime from one caused by psychological and physiological defects to one caused by normative disorganization.

Insecurity and the sociology of deviance: Jock Young against Talcott Parsons and the long shadow of C. Wright Mills – a comparative appreciation

In The Criminological Imagination, Jock Young praises Charles Mills for his sociological imagination and refutes Talcott Parsons as an abstract theorist. This article focuses on a key concept of contemporary criminology and in the work of Parsons, the concept of insecurity and its relationship with deviance. Three facts have to be kept in mind: (1) Parsons’ work is based in methodology in which conceptual schemes and empirical facts are distinguished. (2) Modern society is pluralised and differentiated and so are the sciences of human action. (3) Since the 1930s, Parsons conceptualised the co-existence of pluralised and differentiated democracy in America and monolithic and totalitarian dictatorship in Germany. It shall be shown how Young’s understanding of insecurity as cause of crime and criminalisation converges with Parsons’ ideas and how some of Young’s psychological assumptions have an equivalent in Parsons’ uses of psychoanalysis. Finally, Young and Parsons address the problem of emotion and expressive action, the pleasures of deviance as well as the origins of punitive reaction formations.

Desvio e estigma: caminhos para uma análise discursiva

The present paper offers a theoretical literature review of Goffman’s concept of stigma, which has been extensively relied upon in discursive and educational studies in Brazil, by highlighting its relation to H. Becker’s Sociology of Deviance and its roots in the Chicago School. The paper aims at approaching such sociological notions from a discursive and interactional standpoint. It is specifi cally argued that certain analytical categories drawn from work in both interactional sociolinguistics and narrative analysis can be productively employed to provide a better understanding of the notions of deviance and stigma.Keywords: deviance, stigma, face, narrative.

See also Young, 1971: Marshall McLuhan, moral panics and moral indignation

Despite the fact that he introduced the concept into the sociology of deviance, Jock Young never claimed ownership of ‘moral panic’. There is little to no evidence suggest that he felt the need to keep up with the burgeoning literature on ‘moral panics studies’; rather, in much of this literature, his name is all but invisible, reduced to ‘See also Young, 1971’. This essay begins with a review of Jock Young’s original use of ‘moral panic’ before discussing how he subsequently rejected the term, and then reflecting on why and how he re-engaged with it. My position is that Jock Young was ambivalent about how the term was subsequently developed and transformed into what he viewed as: an incredulous ‘left idealist’ reaction to morally challenging issues; a mechanical sociological model used to decide on whether something was or was not a ‘boil-in-the-bag’ moral panic; and finally a dismissive journalistic judgement. In all these ‘moral panic for dummies’ usages, for Young, the volatile energizing moral dynamics of ‘action + reaction’ have been lost as has his nuanced appreciation of the shifting cultural significance of moral panic. Perhaps most significantly, the core dynamic of ‘moral indignation’ and its channelling—concerns that are present in all of Jock Young’s work—have likewise been lost in common usage of moral panic.

Social strain, couple dynamics and gender differences in gambling problems: Evidence from Chinese married couples

Knowledge of the influence of couple dynamics on gender differences in gambling behavior remains meager. Building on general strain theory from the sociology of deviance and stress crossover theory from social psychology, we argue that the strain encountered by one partner in a social setting may affect his or her spouse. For instance, the wife of a man under more social strain may experience more strain in turn and thus be at a higher risk of developing disordered gambling than the wife of a man under less social strain. Using community survey data of 1620 Chinese married couples, we performed multilevel dyad analyses to address social strain and couple dynamics, in addition to their roles as predictors of gambling behavior in both spouses. This was a community survey of Hong Kong and therefore was not representative of China. Based on the DSM-IV screen, the rates of probable problem gambling and pathological gambling among male partners (12.8% vs. 2.5%) were twice those among female partners (5.2% vs. 0.3%). We also found that the social strain experienced by a male partner significantly predicted both his and his wife's likelihood of developing gambling problems. Although a female partner's exposure to social strain was a significant correlate of her gambling problem, it had no significant association with her husband's gambling behavior. These results suggest that the cross-spouse transference of social strain may be a gendered process.

Articulating the "Counter" in Subculture Studies

Articulating the "Counter" in Subculture Studies