UNIT 6

CONFORMITY, DEVIANCE, AND CRIME

I. This time you have to find the Russian equivalents for the following key concepts and terms

II. You have to read and translate the verbs

To accept, to determine, to discourage, to encourage, to approximate, to regard, to approve, to socialize, to consider, to report, to determine, to accuse, to analyze, to argue, to deal, to link, to introduce, to explain, to consider, to mean, to emphasize, to describe, to uphold, to invoke, to refer, to characterize, to stress, to define, to create, to suggest.

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III. This time you have to read and translate the following English text

The concept of deviance generally means nonconformity to a given norm which is accepted by the majority of society. But deviance is not easy to pin down: all of us are rule breakers as well as conformists, and how serious our nonconformity is depends largely on circumstances. "Reckless driving" may mean one thing in European countries and something else in the United States.

In studying deviance, we quickly encounter issues of power, and must consider the influence of social class (divisions between rich and poor). When discussing norms and rules, we must always consider whose rules they are.

The concept of deviance has a wide scope. Groups as well as individuals may be considered deviant. The homeless are an example of a deviant subculture; Hare Krishna cult members are another example.

Norms and Sanctions

We are socialized to follow rules, many of which are as unconscious as the rules of grammar and speech, or the use of tact in conversations with friends. Other rules are more conscious, such as traffic laws. All social norms involve sanctions against nonconformity. Sanctions may be positive (rewards) or negative (punishments). In modern societies, the police and the courts administer formal sanctions; while family, friends, and others provide informal sanctions.

Laws are formal sanctions defined by governments. Wherever laws exist, so does crime (behavior that breaks a law).

Theories of Deviance

The Biological View: Early attempts to explain crime were crudely biological, and tried to link criminality to body type or the shape of one's skull. Amore recent suggestion is that genetic makeup inclines people toward aggressiveness, but there is no decisive evidence for this, and any link to criminality would be at most very weak and indirect.

The Psychological View: Some theorists try to link criminality to psychopathic personality traits, but the same characteristics that describe psychopathology could also describe explorers, gamblers, and heroes.

What counts as crime is determined socially, so even if biological or psychological factors are significant, a good explanation of crime must be, above all, sociological.

According to Edwin Sutherland, criminal behavior is learned primarily within peer groups, just as law-abiding behavior is. Criminals form a particular subculture through their association with one another.

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Anomie as a Cause of Crime: Durkheim introduced the term anomie, to refer to a feeling of anxiety and disorientation that comes with the breakdown of traditional life in modern society. Robert Merton extended the concept to include the strain felt by individuals whenever norms conflict with social reality, as when pressure to get a job conflicts with the lack of employment opportunities. Merton distinguished five typical reactions, characterizing people as:

•Conformists: Most people just accept the norms anyway.

•Innovators: Some people accept norms and values, but use illegal

means to achieve them.

•Ritualists: Some people ignore values altogether and follow rules for their own sake.

•Retreatists: Some people abandon or reject the values of the dominant society (an example would be a self-supporting commune).

•Rebels: Some people deal with anomie by substituting new values

and trying to reconstruct the social system (a radical political group would be an example).

Some theorists analyze deviance as a process of interaction between deviants and nondeviants. The idea is that socially powerful people decide whether to label certain acts as deviant or criminal and that such labeling is most effective if the "deviant" or "criminal" person can be made to accept this label.

Labeling theorists are sometimes accused of neglecting the processes that lead up to the acts that are labeled as deviant or criminal. It is also unclear whether labeling increases deviance.

Crime is such a broad category that one theory will probably never account for it completely. Biological and psychological explanations must be supplemented by sociological theories, which reveal how close and continuous criminal and respectable behavior often are. Labeling theory is widely used and is valuable for sensitizing us to the issues of power relations that determine what counts as deviance.

Gender and Crime

Most theories of deviance (such as Merton's anomie) simply disregard women altogether. Women represent only a tiny minority of criminals, and offenses committed by women are usually small-scale and almost never violent. The majority of violent crimes are carried out by men.

Boys are often members of gangs from an early age, partly because it is increasingly difficult for men in deprived areas to achieve status in the

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wider society. Beatrix Campbell suggests that this contradiction between values and opportunities may be producing a "crisis of masculinity."

Crimes of the Powerful

White-Collar Crime. Criminality is not concentrated among the poor. Sutherland introduced the term "white-collar crime" to refer to such things as tax fraud, embezzlement, and environmental pollution. Most such crimes do not show up in official statistics, but their cost to society is enormous. Organized crime, which is conducted as a massive business, is more widespread and entrenched in the United States than in other industrial countries. This may be due to its origins in conditions created by corrupt nineteenth century industrial empires. Activities of organized crime include illicit gambling, prostitution, and an increasing international narcotics trade.

There are no quick fixes to the problem of crime. The causes are numerous, including widespread poverty, the deterioration of inner cities, and the lack of opportunities for young men.

VI. This time you have to translate the following Russian sentences into the English language

1.Девиацию (отклонение) можно определить как несоответствие имеющейся норме или набору норм, принятых значительной частью людей в группе или обществе.

2.Первые попытки объяснения преступлений в основном носили биологический характер и пытались найти связь между криминальными наклонностями и строением его тела и формой черепа.

3.Все социальные нормы сопровождаются санкциями, защищающими от неконформности.

4.Санкции бывают позитивными (поощрение) или негативными (наказание).

5.Отклонение бывает не только в индивидуальном поведении, но и в групповом.

6.Где есть законы, там всегда найдутся и преступления, (поведение, нарушающее закон).

7.“Инноваторы” — те, кто придерживается социально принятых ценностей, но используют незаконные средства для их достижения.

8.Сторонники теории стигматизации интерпретируют отклонение как процесс взаимодействия между людьми с отклонениями и людьми без

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отклонений.

9.Организованная преступность в США, очень похожая на обычный бизнес, более масштабна и живуча, чем в других индустриальных странах.

10.Организованная преступность включает в себя такие сферы деятельности как азартные игры, проституция, все возрастающая международная торговля наркотиками.

V. In this exercise you have to cross out the incorrect one

1.Deviance/ Deviant subculture transgresses commonly held norms. When a group does not follow the societal norms, they constitute a Deviance/ Deviant subculture.

2.All norms involve Sanctions/ Gangs to protect against nonconformity.

3.When government defines norms, they are called Crimes/ Laws which define and attempt to prevent Crimes/ Laws.

4.Through this idea is contested by sociologists; seemingly emotionless individuals who delight in violence for its own sake are sometimes described by psychologists as having Anomie / Psychopathic personalities.

5.Edwin Sutherland proposed the idea of Gangs/ Differential association

to explain deviance, which says that criminals are members of a group, who share criminal norms.

6.Robert Merton developing Durkheim’s concept of Anomie / Deviance, highlighted the strain between accepted norms and the reality.

7.Deviant subculture / Gangs may arise in subcultures in which the chance

legitimate success is low.

8.Labeling theory / Organized crime stresses the process of interaction between deviants and nondeviants and notes that no act is intrinsically criminal.

9.Crimes committed by people in professional positions are often called

Organized crime / White-collar crimes.

10.Organized crime / Crime networks refers to businesslike enterprises of

criminal activities and may include Organized crime / Crime networks which span the globe.

VI. This time you have to read the sentences below and say whether they are true or false.

1.A deviant subculture is marked by its nonconformity to all social norms.

2.All social norms involve sanctions.

3.There is no decisive evidence that aggressiveness can be inherited

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