CC100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Commodity Fetishism, Symbolic Power, Productive Forces
Chapter 8 - Sociological Perspectives
Radical and Critical Theories
Conflict Theory
● A social theory that sees crime as the product of social and / or economic disparities in
society and suggests that people resort to criminal activity in response to division and
competition (crime result of people being denied things that they want)
○ Objective: to explain crime within economic and social contexts including seeing:
■ The connections among class, crime, and control
■ How society creates criminogenic environments
■ How there is bias in the justice system
■ The relationship between capitalism and crime
Marxist Thought
● Karl Marx
● Focused on economic conditions under capitalism
● Society is product of economic production
○ Productive forces → technology, energy, resources
○ Productive relations → owner-worker, worker-worker
● Class is a power relationship (how is power imbalanced in society)
● Karl Marx 1818-1883 “There must be something rotten in the very core of a social
system which increases in wealth without diminishing its misery, and increases in crime
even more than its numbers.”
● A trip to London in 1848, what did Marx see? → cheap clothing, labour etc, but people
making these clothes are living in poverty
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Shifting World Views
● Social change and the industrial revolution → shifting life conditions → unbalanced power
→ voiceless masses
● We’re willing to give up power and rights for jobs for example (voiceless masses)
Core Concepts
● The dialectic of power
○ Authority and symbolic violence and social processes
○ We give up energy and productivity to buy things
● The alienation of freedom
○ Intangible barriers to happiness - the quest for power ($$$)
From Needing Work to Just Needing
● A few other core concepts (social error, commodity fetishism)
● Marx saw a transformation in the way people operated their lives
● Establish need → append value → normalize expectations, keep up with the joneses (at
any cost)
Calling for Reform (The Manifesto)
● Workers and employers agree to employment (mode of production)
● This agreement shapes the way we live life
● At some point, difference between two groups lead to conflict
● Opens up doors for revolution
● But we’re not at that stage - yet
● We would realize how much power we have and march against controllers
***Everyone was happy being middle class, didn’t mind “a little of this a little of that” e.g.
segregation, genocide… what does this model mean in terms of social control?
What Does This Have to do With Crime?
● Engels portrayed crime as a function of social demoralization
○ A collapse of people’s humanity reflecting a decline in society
● The brutality of the capitalist system turns workers into animal-like creatures
○ Without a will of their own
● Around same time as bloody coat in England where even small crimes could earn the
death penalty
Richard Quinney: Propositions of the Social Reality of Crime
1. Crime is a definition of human conduct created by politically authorized agents
2. Criminal definitions describe behaviours that conflict with the interests of those that have
the power to shape public policy
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Objective: to explain crime within economic and social contexts including seeing: The connections among class, crime, and control. How there is bias in the justice system. Class is a power relationship (how is power imbalanced in society) Karl marx 1818-1883 there must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases in wealth without diminishing its misery, and increases in crime even more than its numbers. Cheap clothing, labour etc, but people making these clothes are living in poverty. Social change and the industrial revolution shifting life conditions unbalanced power. We"re willing to give up power and rights for jobs for example (voiceless masses) Authority and symbolic violence and social processes. We give up energy and productivity to buy things. Intangible barriers to happiness - the quest for power (31137$) A few other core concepts (social error, commodity fetishism) Marx saw a transformation in the way people operated their lives.
