SOC212H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Balance Theory, Travis Hirschi, Trait Theory
Document Summary
Rogers saw why we don"t commit crime as affirmations of connectedness, conscience, and respect for the rules. When social control works, it creates conformity; when it fails, it does not cause deviance but simply allows the individual to choose the deviant path. This approach is compatible with biological and psychiatric explanations but in control theory the emphasis is on barriers (or the lack of them), rather than the nature of the drives and needs. Control theories puts greater stress on the way socialization and supervision hold people to conventional paths. Social control theories are back in the realm of positivism; that is, the tools of objective empirical science take precedence over the tools of interpretative understanding. Main technique is statistical analysis of self-report data. Make the measurement of background variables (ex. family income, where they live) Containment was an early version of the social control perspective.
