Midterm 3: deck 2

Question 1

What was another name for social disorganization approach?

Answer 1

-ecology theory

Question 2

What does ecology theory state?

Answer 2

• urbanization processes generate criminal behaviour

- urban pressures cause them

Question 3

What was the Chicago School?

Answer 3

• Albion Small created the first sociology department in Chicago
• wanted to understand the natural laws of social existence
• because Chicago was out of control at the time

Question 4

At the time the Chicago school was being created, how did most people explain crime and deviance?

Answer 4

-individualistic explanations

Question 5

What did Chicago school theorists begin to notice?

Answer 5

• unique processes took place in communities

- they argued social space was responsible for crime and deviance

Question 6

What was the Chicago school influenced by?

Answer 6

• Durkheim’s mechanical and organic solidarity
• normative change
• WW1, crash of the stock market, industrialization etc.

Question 7

What is nativism?

Answer 7

-a collective action where hostility is used to preserve culture

Question 8

Why did nativism become a concept?

Answer 8

-some people embraced rapid change and some people wanted to go back to the good old days in White dominated America

Question 9

What did W.I Thomas do?

Answer 9

-found a diary from a Polish immigrant that said immigrating to Chicago during rapid change was hard

Question 10

What conclusion did W.I Thomas argue?

Answer 10

• constant, rapid social change erodes the existence of social norms
• and the normative order

Question 11

What three factors made it difficult for Polish immigrants to immigrate to Chicago according to Thomas?

Answer 11

• rural values did not work in the new world
• social controls were difficult to exert
• absence of normative order created an anything goes mentality

Question 12

What did Sellin say in his book?

Answer 12

-cultural conflicts are a natural outgrowth of processes of social differentiation

Question 13

What did Burgess and Park come up with?

Answer 13

-the concentric zone model

Question 14

What was the concentric zone model?

Answer 14

• many circles that describe where crime and deviance will be the worst
• transition zone is the worst and it lessens outwards

Question 15

What, according to Burgess and Park’s, described the growth of a city?

Answer 15

-the concentric zone model

Question 16

What was the transition zone?

Answer 16

• run down area of the city
• people leave this area when they have money
• no clear normative order or social rules

Question 17

What four conclusions did Shaw and McKay draw about the ecological model of deviance and crime?

Answer 17

• social problems were spatially produced
• transition zones had the highest level of social problems
• regardless of the ethnic group living there
• all types of social problems exist

Question 18

Why has the social disorganization model been heavily criticized?

Answer 18

-it does not apply well to cities

Question 19

Why might crime be under reported in commute zones?

Answer 19

-because it is easier to hide

Question 20

What is dilapidation?

Answer 20

-the city being run down

Question 21

What is disorganization?

Answer 21

• the inability of a community or individual to realize their values
• most people want the same thing but are unable to realize these values
• because of the disruptive forces of social life

Question 22

What are the disruptive forces of social life?

Answer 22

-mental disorder, prostitution, suicide, alcoholism, infant mortality, delinquency, crime, disease and poverty

Question 23

Are people in the transition zone innately evil?

Answer 23

• no
• they would behave as anyone would in that environment
• its the space, not individuals, that cause crime and deviance

Question 24

What does Stark say the transient zone in Chicago is characterized by?

Answer 24

• high density, poverty and transience

- moral cynicism increases crime

Question 25

What are Stark’s hypotheses?

Answer 25

-too many, in lecture slides tho

Question 26

What idea is the Chicago area project based on?

Answer 26

• if crimes caused by disorganization
• reorganization may be the solution
• Blockwatch, neighbourhood watch etc.

Question 27

What are the problems with social disorganization/eoclogy theory?

Answer 27

• didn’t operationalize disorganization
• isomorphism (cause and effect)
• not tested rigorously
• didn’t study corporate crime

Question 28

What is the problem with operationalizing disorganization?

Answer 28

• what is disorganization and what is difference/diversity?

- Indigenous norms and culture for example

Question 29

What is the problem isomorphism?

Answer 29

• how would you study disorganized behaviour in the real world
• because if you said it was deviance then deviance would be causing deviance