SA 150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Erving Goffman, Social Constructionism, Structural Functionalism

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SA 150
• Professor: Hilal Ozcetin

Document Summary

Recognized violaion of cultural norms that may or may not be against the crime. Does not mean bad, wrong, perverted, sick, or inferior in any way. Crime is the violaion of a society"s formally enacted criminal law. Usually never agreement within a culture about what is deviant. Essenialism argues that there is something natural", true", universal", and therefore objecively determined" about these elements of social life. Social construcionism proposes that elements of social life including deviance, as well as gender, race, and other elements are not natural but are established or created by society or culture. Lomborso came up with physical descripion of criminal. The social foundaion of deviance: deviance varies according to cultural norms, people become deviant as others deine them that way, both norms and the way in which people deine rule breaking involve social power. Early interest in criminality and deviance focused on the biological causes. They believed that biological factors completely determine a person"s behavior.