SOC 2700 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: White-Collar Crime, Social Control Theory, Meritocracy

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 2700
• Professor: Stephanie Howells

Document Summary

Durkheim functionalism: focus was on society as a whole and interrelationships within, biological analogy to explain how society operates, what constitutes a crime. We must not say that an action shocks the common conscience because it is criminal, but rather that it is criminal because it shocks the common conscience. Durkheim: reaction: the collective play a role in defining deviance, deviance is universal society of saints, whereby everyone is a law-abiding citizen so a minor thing is considered deviant or criminal. Durkheim anomie: sense of normlessness, deregulation (normlessness) means people don"t know how to relate to one another, suicide as example. Durkheim suicide: increase during times of serious economic change, trends: Protestant countries (netherlands, england) higher rates than in catholic countries (spain, france) perhaps because catholicism says suicide is a sin, protestantism more of an independent religion. Married with children have lowest rates of suicide overall.