670 Midterm

Question 1

Definition of race

Answer 1

• socially constructed concept that categorizes people based on physical differences, which are then used to imply visible differences between racial groups
  meaning
• benefits the oppressor and allowsracial hierarchies to form
• changes over time in concept and significance

Question 2

Ethnicity

Answer 2

• reflects cultural differences
• ethnic group is a people who share historical and cultural heritage (and often a sense of group identity)
• national itentity is key
• may or may not overlap with race
• ethnicity is more fluid and race is more stable

Question 3

Race as central organizing principle

Answer 3

• race intersects with social instiututions
• organizing principle of inequality: race is used to identify, position, and categorize individuals and groups along a social hierarchy
• race and racism is embedded in how we understand patterns, sources, and consequences of crime in our society

Question 4

What does it mean to “center race” (Peterson, 2012)?

Answer 4

• spotlight race as crucuial for understanding crime and criminal legal system treatment
• rather than relegating race to the periphery, it must be forefront to our understanding of crime and criminal legal system outcomes
• acknowledge how individuals and groups are percieved relative to their position in the racial hierarchy
• thoughtfully engage with race not merely as an identity, but as a proxy for how people are differntially treated
• this interrograting the role of racism (as a dyanamic process of subjagation) is critical

Question 5

Peterson (2012): Timeline of calls for broad contextual approaches to crime and justice

Answer 5

• 1899 Du Bois: Seek to identify “deeper the social roots” of overrepresentation of Black individuals in arrest, court, and prison stats
• 1974 John Hagan: Need to consider court and community settings to fully investigate questions about sentencing outcomes
• 1983 Peterson’s dissertation: meaning of race varies across settings and over time
• 1995 Sampson and Wilson:
  1. noted an array of problems in existing studies of violence that limits and confuses understanding of connection between crime and race
  2. Called for approach that would integrate Wilson’s (1987) structural transformation perspective with traditional social disorg theoies
  3. racial invariance hypothesis

Question 6

How Peterson & Krivo addressed race

Answer 6

• examined neighborhoods
• argued that racial segregation is one of the central mechanisms through which the racialized social order is maintained
• placed race/ethnicity at center of work on neighborhood crime, not just as constructs representing the demographic distribution of levels of crime across neighborhoods of different colors, but assumed race is a central organizing principle of society that itself conditions the structures and processes for which they attempt to study

Question 7

Krivo and Peterson 1996

Answer 7

• compare patterns for racially distinct neighborhoods that were structurally similar.
• Found rates of violent crime rise across levels of disadvantage from low to high to extrem.
• Levels of increase across disadvantage were quite similar for Black and White communities (i.e., disadvantage had the same effect on violent crime for Black and White neighborhoods)
• violence rates similar across racially distinct communities that have similar levels of disadvantage

Question 8

Krivo & Peterson (2010) book: Divergent Social Worlds

Answer 8

• posited that inequality in neighborhood crime is outgrowth of a racialized social structure organized to produce, reproduce, and sustain the privilege of Whites over other groups and to position Blacks at the bottom of the social hierarchy
• residential segregation is important because it links patterns of inequality in important social conditions across neighborhoods
• Used NNCS data
• findings:
• very few neighborhoods have average levels of disadvantage
• substantial share of White neighborhoods have very low levels of disadvantage; great many Black neighborhoods have high levels of disadvantage
• graph have a V shape appearance, largest share of White neighborhoods have low disadvanatge where as largest share of Black have high disadvantage

Question 9

Krivo, Peterson, Kuhl (2009)

Answer 9

** NNCS data
* violent crime rates for neighborhoods show that the rates are higher in more highly segretgates cities

Question 10

Peterson (2016): ASC Presidential Address

Answer 10

• Suggestions to crimininologists:
• take stock ow how race/ethnicity and crime/justice are related: think about changes in time; if implicit bias is constant, what makes turn into action?
• undertake directed research to answer looming general questions (after taking stock):
• the process through which race/ethnic disparities are achieved
• the extent to which disparities reflect an uber system of discrimination, making it more difficult for those subject to this system to overcome obstacles to achievement and social mobility
• attend to data limitations by collection data and encouraging data collection
• be inclusive

Question 11

Palmer, Rajahmm & Wilson (2022): transtheoretical model of behavior change and anti-racist action

Answer 11

• pre-contemplation: person is not ready, not interested, or not intending to take anti-racist action due to a lack of awareness or a lack of concern for the issue
• contemplation: person is aware racism is a problem, but is considering pros and cons of taking anti-racist actions or changing behavior. person is willing to learn more about what role they can play to interrupt racism
• preparation: person has decided to take anti-racist action and is actively preparing to do so by learning more and asking questions.
• Action: person actively engages in anti-racist actions
• maintenance: maintains a commitment to engaging in anti-racist actions and does not return to old patterns of behavior

Question 12

Palmer, Rajahmm & Wilson (2022)

Answer 12

• Construction of criminality: what we study tends to adhere to government’s social construction of certain beahviros as deviant, unwelcome, etc
• ethical imperative of “unpacking race and crime” in criminology

Question 13

Palmer, Rajahmm & Wilson (2022): definition of anti-racism

Answer 13

• active process of identifying and challenging racism and redistributing power in an equitable manner, by changing policies and practices within systems and organizations, as well as individual beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors”

Question 14

Ward (2014)

Answer 14

• state organized race crime “slow violence”
• harms are more attritional, dispersed, and hidden
• red records: Ida B. Wells-Barnett A Red Record looked at lynching, in 1951: The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) updated red records looking at racial violence including police and KKK
• dark figure of crime: racist untones, should also use “light figure of crime”: class of missing perpetrators whose whiteness contributes to the reduced likelihood of policing or punishment
• “legal variables”: using this term allows for the “objective” means to assert race differences and rationalize social, economic, and political exclusion
• criminology’s complicity: not mandating race education (only offering as elective)

Question 15

Histon & Cook (2021): Timeline

Answer 15

• After the Civil War: Black Codes enacted to restrict the freedoms of newly emancipated slaves; controlled their movements, economic activities, and social interactions
• 1964: “social dynamite”, a lot of unrest
• 1968: Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act” allocated $300 million to War on Crime, lead to creation of LEAA which administer funding to crime control policies, lead to increased police contact and longer criminel records
• 1970s: Black and Latinx groups approahced majority of people incarcerated
• 1970s and 1980s: proactive policing strategies; maximized patrol and surveillance of low-income communities
• 1994 Crime Bill which redistributed millions of dollars via COPS program

Question 16

Skogan (1977)

Answer 16

• effects of dark figure of crime: misallocation of resources, shapes police role (they select where to police based on crime rates), shapes socialized costs of crime (private insurance premiums and public cost of victim compensation programs are affected by crime rates)
• anonymous self reporting of offending indiates that arrest data is unduly skewed towards minorities and poor people
• “doubly dark”: reported neither to police or surveys
• methods: used NCVS
• findings:
  1. non-reporting varied wildely by crime type
  2. race was not related to reporting crime
  3. nonreporting household offenses were more common among whites
  4. Unreported crimes are largely not serious
  5. substantial number of unreported robberies did not include a weapon

Question 17

McNulty (2001): Previous research

Answer 17

• most previous empirical research on racial invariance was at the macro level
• restrictive distributions: Blacks tend to predominate within the high range and whites within the low range of distributions of disadvantage measures
• restricted distributions and city-level analysis: mixed evidence of the racial invariance assumption; because Black communities are in the higher range and white communities are in the lower range, any change in white measures would produce a larger increase in homicide rates compared to blacks
• restricted distributions and neighborhood-level analysis (Krivo and Peterson, 1996): found effect of disadvantgae on violent crimes that did not differ significantly by race; but based on a few black and white tracts

Question 18

McNulty (2001) Additive v Interactive effects in reference to racial invariance

Answer 18

• Additive: root causes of violence are the same for all groups, and racial differneces in rates of violence stem from sharp dispartities in levels of crime producing social conditions in black and white communities
• Interactive higher rates of violence observed in Blacks compares to Whites are not solely due to racial disparities in levels of disadvantage and raise the possibility that unique causes linked to race also play a role

Question 19

McNulty (2001)

Answer 19

• Atlanda
• Measures of structural disadvantage: percent of persons below poverty line, percent of female headed households, percent of civilian noninstitutionalized males who are unemployed or not in labor force
• put 400 block groups into three categories: less than or equal to the citywide mean, between the mean and 1 SD above, greater than of equal to 1 SD above the citywide mean
• argues that they did not have to disaggregate by black/white as its about disadvantage not about race
  *** Findings: **
• Predominantely Black block groups are distributes in sufficient numbers across levels of disadvantage. but there are few white or racially mixed areas with high (or moderate) disadvantgae with which to contrast them
• findings indicate that variation in violence by racial composition may be a function of more than simple disparities in levels of SES disadvantage in black and white neighborhoods

Possible solutions:
* running separate regressions for Black and White neighborhoods and then conducting tests for differences in equations across equations
* Because race and class are so conflated in US, may be hard to parse out different effects with macro level data

Question 20

Dupont (2008)

Answer 20

• much of the conversation in crim is about avoiding unethical treatment of research participants
• argued that instead there should be an emphasis on investing in communities and have an “ethic of empowerment”
• PAR
• Knowledge is gained through the “systematic testing of theory in live-action”
• PAR challenges the view that reality can be captured objectively
• There is no one truth to be learned
• PAR researchers are encouraged to be invested in outcomes and policy implementation
• PAR: all participants work collaboratively with the researcher at all stages of the project
• Empowerment has to be an essential part of the goal
• Hard to identify “oppressed groups” because many people within the CJS are both oppressed and oppress others
  “action” can include community education to political activism to setting up needed services

Question 21

Leimbach & Bögelein: Social Question

Answer 21

• socio-political concept which addresses specific strains and burdens that affect the lower classes who depend on earnings
• looks for an answer (i.e., a solution for those specific problems)

Question 22

Leimbach & Bögelein: Dahrendorf

Answer 22

• The origin of social inequality is norms and sanctions
• There are an infinite number of values and the elite select some of them and turn them into norms

Question 23

Leimbach & Bögelein: Gramsci

Answer 23

• when those norms become acknowledged as a common interest, they become hegemonic
• Conformity to norms is rewarded and ability to conform depends on social position
• Deviation from norms is defined as crimes and sanctioned by “conforming” people

Question 24

Leimbach & Bögelein: Doing social problems

Answer 24

• multistage process that describes the application of rules, techniques, and knowledge to individual problems and difficult situations in institutions of social control and social assistance
• Social problems: social situations, conditions, and social behaviors that are perceived as negative or that challenge societal standards
• **Two distinct research styles studying social problems: **
• Etiological approach: explores causes, conditions, and epidemiology of societal problems and its best practice processing methods (social problems are seen as harms
• Interactionist and constructivist approach sees social problems as the result if interactionist definition processes, by which certain behavior is defined as something deviant in relation to social values and norms

Question 25

Leimbach & Bögelein: Doing social problems: Gronenemeyer:

Answer 25

* four interdependent levels of problematization that can be integrated into criminological research: * Discursive knowledge of crime, formed by the media, academia, offenders, and police officers * Institutions that are dealing with delinquency in different ways (i.e., social assistance and control) * **Authors argue that criminological institutions should be added to this level** * Practices of delinquency (any act that is interpreted as deviant) * Experiences of deviant people with their interpretation of their own deviant lifestyles

Question 26

Leimbach & Bögelein: Sociology of knowledge (Heuristic approach and Keller)

Answer 26

* Heuristic approach (practice approach) consisting of discursive (characterized by reason) production of knowledge and reality, with simultaneous consideration of power structures * Keller (2010): discursive knowledge is a systematic supply of socially constructed knowledge, which is solidified, objectified, and institutionalized to a certain degree

Question 27

Leimbach & Bögelein: Reconstructive Sociology

Answer 27

* Only way to overcome reproduction of stereotypical knowledge * Takes social reality as constructed by acts of interpretation * Researchers state the subjectivity of social realities and understand that both interacting research partners have diverging backgrounds when it comes to sense making * Symbolic interactionism: understands the reciprocity of actions and how actors are never isolated beings but entangles in intersubjective relations and contexts

Question 28

Leimbach & Bögelein: How Specific Criminological Knowledge is Produced and Future Directions

Answer 28

* Lower-class men: This happens because researchers will seek out participants who have been tagged as “criminal” by CJS actors * Female criminality if often studied in comparison to male criminality: Violence is seen in line with masculinity whereas violence is seen as in opposition to femininity * Researchers often research what policy makes determine are hot topics, creating a body of literature which then can be used as “proof” to co-create the reality * **Future Directions** * Impossible to fully eliminate the promotion of stigmatization through criminological research * Important to include in the discussion those that have been labeled as deviant

Question 29

Sandberg & Copes (2012) Overiew

Answer 29

* Methodological issues ethnographically researching drug dealers and offenders * Fieldwork is often thought of as the ideal ethnographic approach as researchers get access to a multitude of data and interact with members of a community over an extended period and in different settings * Studies with interviews as the primary source of data typically have higher number of participants than do studies using fieldwork * Leading method in qualitative drug research is to interview participants where are permanently stuck of have plenty of time to space (i.e., prisons, treatment centers, etc.) * Many researchers will use recruiters or insiders to recruit participants

Question 30

Sandberg & Copes (2012): Challenges in ethnographic research on offenders

Answer 30

* **Approaching participants: ** *Approaching participants * Skills for approaching participants and convincing them to participate are not easy to learn * Have to get interview the moment they agree * Ethnographic research is learned mainly by doing * Using recruiters can help, but its hard to find a good recruiter * **Enticing Consent** * Important to pay participants * Money also was s symbolic importance of the research and of respect for the participants’ time and insight * Some paid different participants different amounts of money (either paying some nothing or paying some more than others) **Drug use of participants and researchers** * Much of what is learned about drug dealers from from those who are intoxicated * Those doing fieldwork believed it was important to be something more than a researcher, necessary to establish social bonds, and consuming drugs signaled distance to social workers and police and closeness with research participants * **Recording Interviews** * Decision to record fell along methodological lines: those who became friends with interviewees typically avoided recording because it disrupted rapport and creates and overall formal setting * Others argued recording allowed them to be more present in the interview and that transcripts are invaluable **Physical and Legal Security** * Ethnographers downplay the risk of victimization in this type of research * They still did put safety measures in place * Have to hide your fear * Researchers often ask participants not to give specific details about events, give out real names or discuss future events, which could lead them having to share information with the police or have participants regret sharing * No examples of going to the police, rare for them to even report their own victimization * **Potential Ethnical Dilemmas** * Interviewers did not like open drug use during interviews *Felt it hard not to indicate some sort of disapproval when talking about brutal violence *Their reaction make have an actual reaction, including violent reactions * Fieldwork has more ethical dilemmas **IRBS** * Countries vary tremendously regarding research ethic committees * Having ethnographers on the IRB is helpful * Signing consents jeopardized the safety and anonymity of participants * Had a problem with the standardization of methodological approaches * Gaining approval takes a lot of time

Question 31

Xie & Baumer (2020): Theoretical Considerations

Answer 31

**How victimization risk may differ between the foreign born and US natives** *SES and demographics differences *Criminogenic characteristics: lower levels of educational attainment, lower earnings, higher rates of poverty * Protective factors: older, work more hours, more likely to be employed, have families *Selective migration *A lot of behaviors that promote victimization (i.e., alcohol and drugs) are less likely to foreign born individuals *Community externalities *Tend to settle in extended family and community settings with serve as a protective factor **How citizenship status may affect victimization risk among the foreign born** *Citizenship status and stratification by demographics and socioeconomic factors *Immigrants have many different attributes because they have many different reasons for migrating and have different experiences of incorporating into the US *Citizenship status and stratification by demographics and socioeconomic factors *Immigrants have many different attributes because they have many different reasons for migrating and have different experiences of incorporating into the US * Citizenship status and implications for life circumstances in the US  Citizenship status and implications for life circumstances in the US *Citizenship status and differential access to the law *Noncitizens avoid the police because of fear of being deported *Use mostly routine activities theory

Question 32

Xie & Baumer (2020): Hypotheses

Answer 32

* Within foreign born individuals, naturalized citizens have lower risk of victimization than their noncitizen peers * Ambiguous-status group have higher victimization compared to naturalized citizens or non-citizens

Question 33

Xie & Baumer (2020): Method

Answer 33

* Used a binary for victimization within property and violent crime categories instead of frequency (rare for respondents to indicate more than one occurrence within time period) * Ambiguous group: those who refused to answer or said “I don’t know” *Excluded individuals who changed their answer to citizen in following interviews * Looked at answers from other people in the household and took out individuals who were most likely citizens based on those answers * Those residing in the sample unit before 1982 * Respondents within the armed forces

Question 34

Xie & Baumer (2020): Results

Answer 34

* **Bivariate results** *Violent crime *Victimization rate of foreign born is significantly lower than that of US born citizens * Within foreign born population, victimization rate is lowest among naturalized citizens followed by rate for noncitizens and both of these groups are significantly lower than ambiguous group * Ambiguous group is not significantly different than US born citizen group *Property Crime *Overall similar findings, but ambiguous group is not statistically different than other foreign-born groups (although the rate is higher) **Multivariable results** * Show support for lower victimization risk for foreign born as a whole compared to US natives * No significant difference between naturalized citizens and noncitizens after incorporating controls * Ambiguous citizenship status group has significantly higher risk of victimization by violence but not property when compared with naturalized and known noncitizens **Conclusion: cannot determine the mechanism**

Question 35

Merton

Answer 35

* "noncomfority is rooted in original nature" * cultural goals and institutional normas (operate jointly) *five main groups: 1. Conformity: both cultural goals and institutionalized means; most common and widely diffused 2. Innovation: Cultural goals, no institutionalized means; comes from inadequate socialization 3. ritualism: no cultural goals, but institutional means 4. retreatism: no cultural goals or institutional means; least common, in society but not "of it" 5. rebellion * certain common symbols of succes

Question 36

Kubrin: two key questions of interest for social disorg theorists

Answer 36

1.Why is crime higher in some neighborhoods than others? 2.Is there something about the characteristics of these neighborhoods themselves (above and beyond the people that live there) that fosters crime?

Question 37

Kubrin: History of Social Disorganization

Answer 37

* 1920s-1930s * Park and Burgess (1925) studies how drastic changes (urbanization, industrialization, and immigration) affected the city * Concluded that there is a social ecology where humans compete for scarce and desirable space * Led to concentric zone theory, emphasizing a process of invasion, dominance, and succession * Crime did not become a focus until Shaw and McKay (1942), applied zone theory to study of delinquency * Two key findings *Co-occurrence of crime and social ills such as low SES status * Persistence of high-crime areas

Question 38

Kubrin: Basic Tenets of Social Disorg Theory

Answer 38

* Communities can be characterized along a dimension of organization * Causal model: *Exogenous neighborhood characteristics -> social ties -> informal social control -> crime * Social disorganization is a property of neighborhoods, not individuals * Community characteristics are only indirectly related to crime through social disorganization and social ties

Question 39

Kubrin: Ongoing challenges facing social disorganization theory (Bursik 1988 & Kubrin & Weitzer (2003)

Answer 39

* Measurement of social disorganization *Shaw and McKay did not clearly differentiate the presumed outcome of social disorganization from disorganization itself * Resolved when theorists attempted to clarify the unique conceptual status of social disorganization by defining it in terms of the capacity of a neighborhood to regulate itself through formal and informal processes of social control *What is a neighborhood? *Both in terms of conceptualization and operationalization * Most officially designated units are meaningless to residents *Reliance on official data *Police may have different behavior depending on the neighborhood, altering official statistics * Unable to test mediating concepts with official data *Kubrin and Weitzer (2003) *Question the mediating concept, bringing up collective efficacy and social capital *Concepts are fuzzy which make it hard to study

Question 40

Kubrin: New Challenges and Future Directions

Answer 40

***Role of neighborhood subcultures in social disorganization theory** * Shaw and McKay found the values differed across communities (A lot to do with social controls) * Over time this concept became less and less important within the theory * Recently, cultural explanations have been more emphasized in studies of social disorganization: *Subculture of violence in lower class communities; General consensus against crime but there is a degree of fatalism of moral cynicism about crime, viewing it as inevitable in their communities * Disadvantaged neighborhoods have diversity and conflict with respect to community values, beliefs, and ideas (even concerning crime) * **Immigration patterns in the US ** * Studies show that immigration and crime do not go hand in hand (which is opposite what the theory posits) Immigration revitalization thesis * Immigration revitalizes poor areas and strengthens social control due to strong familial and neighborhood institutions and enhanced job opportunities associated enclave economies-the result being less crime

Question 41

Light & Ulmer: Prior research

Answer 41

* highlighted several structural features of community contexts that are likely to produce variation across metro-areas in the White-black-Hispanic gaps in violence and trends in these gaps in recent decades * Include indicators of disadvantage such as family structure and economic inequality, residential segregation, drug activity and gun availability and population composition

Question 42

Friedson & Sharkey (2015)

Answer 42

* Disadvantage tends to come bundled together *** Data and methods** *Neighborhood level analysis examining where the decline in violent crime was concentrated in cities *Calculate violent index crime rate for each city neighborhood for a quintile of the year * Amount of change in this rate from the data’s initial year to its final year is compares for each city’s most violent quintile and its remainder * look at changes in exposure to neighborhood violence * how crime decline affected the distribution of violence across the neighborhoods of each city ***Data** *Local data sources, US census and American community survey **Results** * Absolute declines in violent crime in each city’s most violent neighborhoods outstripped the changes in violent crime occurring in their remainders * Convergence in absolute levels of violent crime in each city’s most violent neighborhoods and the rest of its neighborhoods * Absolute difference in violent crime rates between each city’s majority white and majority black neighborhoods shrunk * Greatest beneficiaries of the crime decline in terms of reduced exposure to violent crime were poor and minority individuals * Violent crime dropped the most in the cities’ initially most violent and disadvantaged neighborhoods, but this decline has not amounted to a substantial redistribution of violent crime within these cities

Question 43

Light & Ulmer: Data and Method

Answer 43

* Measure of violence: geocoded homicide deaths from CDC Underlying Cause of Deaths 1989-2010 *Assess metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) that had minimum 5000 blacks and Hispanics *Census: socioeconomic and demographic characteristics * Used national prisoner stats to capture incarceration trends * Police employee data from UCR * **DV:** black/white homicidal gap, Hispanic-white homicide gap, black-Hispanic homicide gap * **Focal measures: ** *State level incarceration rates * Affluence index (combines measures of household incomes and people with postgrad degrees) * Immigration ***Other explanatory variables** *Structural disadvantage * Racial/ethnic segregation * Residential instability * Gun availability * Drug activity

Question 44

Light & Ulmer: Results

Answer 44

* Across all time periods, observe largest gaps for whites compared to blacks, followed by black-Hispanic *Smallest gap for hispanic-white homicide rates *For every comparison there has been a decrease in homicide disparities over the past two decades * Considerable convergence in homicide rates over the past two decades, with hispanic-white gap decreasing the most * Disadvantage and segregation strong predictors of the levels and changes in homicide rates between racial/ethnic groups, particularly black-white and black-Hispanic differences (align with racial invariance proposition) * Group level differences in gun and drug activity are related to racial/ethnic gaps in violent crime * No evidence that increases in immigration populations are associated with increased criminal activity * Find little evidence that affluence inequality is related to racial/ethnic differences in homicide * Results lend support to incapacitation/deterrence model-increasing racial disparities in incarceration are associated with significant reductions in black-white and black-Hispanic violence

Question 45

Sampson & Wilson (1995)

Answer 45

* * Basic thesis: macrosocial patterns of residential inequality give rise to the social isolation and ecological concentration of the truly disadvantages, which in turn leads to structural barriers and cultural adaptations that undermine social organization and hence the control of crime (i.e., importance of communities) * Argue that the causes of crime are invariant across races * The “worst” places that impoverished white people live are considerably better than the average context of black communities * “concentration effects” (W.J. Wilson): effects of living in a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly impoverished * Larger proportion of Blacks reside in extreme poverty areas o Vulnerable to structural economic changes o Exodus of middle- and upper-class black families o Housing policies * The most important determinant of the relationship between race and crime is the differential distribution of blacks in communities characterized by structural social disorganization and cultural social isolation, both of which stem from the concentration of poverty, family disruption, and residential instability * “materialistic fallacy”: that economic (or materialistic) causes necessarily produce economic motivations * The Structure of Social Disorganization o Structural dimensions refer to the prevalence and interdependence of social networks in a community (both formal and informal) and in the span of collective supervision that the community directs towards local problems o Further modifications  Incorporate political economy of a place, along with macrostructural transformations and historical forces  Suggests that macrosocial forces interact with community-level factors to impede social organization * Social Isolation and Community Culture o Cultural disorganization: the attenuation of societal cultural values o Suggests that reducing structural inequality would not only decrease the frequency of these practices, but it would also make their transmission by precept less efficient