Deck 12: Social Explanations

Question 1

Giddens (1990) identifies two forms of risk.What are they?

Answer 1

Responses should include:
-External risks that are posed by the world around us
-Manufactured risk that are created by human beings themselves

Question 2

What are some of the issues of using conflict theory to account for crime?

Answer 2

Responses could include:
-Simplistic view of power
-Distribution power is dependent on class, gender, ethnicity or age.However, individuals experience power in all groups they are part of and the hierarchy of power can be different in each group experienced by that individual (e.g.a lecturer might have power when presenting to students but not have power when they are meeting with the Head of School)
-Many Marxists have been criticised for conspiratorial perspectives (e.g.mining magnates influencing politicians in relation to mining tax laws)
-However, conflict theory does stress the relationship between social background and social processes and the propensity to commit crime (e.g.the poor commit street crimes, the rich commit suit crimes) as do other theories

Question 3

Garland describes how agencies of the state have relied less and less on the idea of risk as a guiding principle of government.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Sociological theories of crime focus on:

A)Social factors
B)Biological factors
C)Psychological factors
D)All of the above

Question 5

Giddens and Beck proposed that race, gender, and class no longer shape a person's social opportunities or identity in the way they did in the past.

Question 6

How can feminist theory be applied to provide an understanding of domestic violence?

Question 7

The phrase 'the rich get richer and the poor go to prison' is a reflection of which of the following theories?

A)Pluralist
B)Marxist
C)Feminist
D)Consensus

Question 8

Who is regarded as the founder of functionalism?

A)Cesare Lombroso
B)Cesare Beccaria
C)Jeremy Bentham
D)Emile Durkheim

Question 9

Compare and contrast consensus and conflict theories of criminal behaviour.

Question 10

How does Merton's concept of anomie differ to Durkheim's?

Question 11

Which of the following is generally not committed by poorer people?

A)Burglary
B)Robbery
C)Assault
D)Bribery

Question 12

Provide an explanation of Durkheim's concept of 'anomie'.

Question 13

Which of the following was developed in the 1970s, since it was largely ignored in the 1960s?

A)Anomie
B)Strain thoery
C)Conflict theory
D)Feminist criminologies

Question 14

Who was interested in the way in which the successive waves of immigration were linked to the incidence of crime in US cities?

A)Durkheim
B)Shaw and McKay
C)Merton
D)Marx

Question 15

What are the two factors of crucial importance, according to Durkheim, in understanding how people behave?

Question 16

Which of the following is not one of the 'modes of adaptation' to anomie or strain identified by Merton?

A)Aspiration
B)Innovation
C)Rebellion
D)Retreatism
E)Conformity

Question 17

Which theory is based on the ideal that social institutions work together harmoniously to achieve justice?

A)Conflict
B)Functionalism
C)Consensus
D)Routine Activities

Question 18

Merton believed that more crime was committed by white-collar criminals than lower class criminals.