Heads Up Sociology

by DK

  WORK AS PAIN

  In 1844, at the age of 26, Karl Marx writes a series of essays that are known as the “Economic and Historical Manuscripts”. His ideas on what he called “alienation” are developed here. Marx believes humans gain satisfaction from work. However, the drive for profit in the workplace denies people that satisfaction, making work a miserable and harmful experience.

  THE LIVEABLE CITY

  Jane Jacobs publishes The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961. She explains that cities can be large but require small blocks of buildings that are a mix of residencies and shops to allow the community to interact. She advocates letting the residents and users decide on their own urban planning.

  SLUM LIFE

  The UN-Habitat programme estimates that by 2030, 3 billion people worldwide will be living in slums (or more correctly, informal settlements). Life in slums is highly contradictory. They can be places of dense poverty, poor health, and squalor, while also offering community, social solidarity, and innovation.

  URBAN PLANET

  In 2007, the world turns urban, meaning that now more than half the world’s population live in urban settings. Urban life offers exciting ways to live. New trends and ideas emerge in cities and people seek to make a new life for themselves. However, cities can also be lonely and isolating. It is easy to fall through the cracks and lose contact with other people.

  EDUCATION

  According to UNICEF there are 59 million children who are of primary-school age but who are not in education. These children are mainly living in sub-Saharan Africa (the area south of the Sahara Desert) where long-term poverty, inequality, and social unrest undermine their chances of receiving an education.

  PRECARIOUS WORK

  Guy Standing introduces the idea of precarious living in his 2011 book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. He outlines how work has become much more insecure. Workers today lack the employment rights of previous generations. There are no guarantees of regular hours or regular pay. As a result, life has become more precarious.

  In any society, people have to face all kinds of problems and challenges, such as crime, physical or mental illness, and stress. Sociology helps us to understand the social factors that can make bad things happen. By studying particular groups of people, it is also possible to explain why life is harder for some members of a community than for others.

  WHY do people commit CRIMES?

  BREAKING society’s RULES

  White-collar CRIME

  Are we all on CAMERA?

  WHODUNNIT?

  HEALTH and EQUALITY

  Not FITTING in

  It never occurs to most of us to take up a life of crime. However, When someone breaks the law, public focus tends to be on the nature of the crime, not the social reasons that may be behind it. to the general public, Criminals do not seem to have the moral conscience that we expect of ourselves and others.

  Social pressures

  Sociologists find it just as important to understand the social factors behind crimes as to analyse the criminal mindset. This means they try to explain how society can sometimes be the cause of a person’s turning to crime. Drawing on French sociologist Émile Durkheim’s ideas about how cultural values strongly affect the way people think and act, US sociologist Robert Merton developed his Strain Theory in the 1940s. It highlights the similarities, rather than the differences, between honest people and criminals.

  According to the theory, a lawbreaker’s motives are often influenced by the expectations of the surrounding culture. For example, in many societies, financial success is an acceptable goal, but while most people make a profit lawfully, others make it through crime. Such criminals are likely to be motivated by the same socially legitimate ideals as the rest of us. They want security and an affluent lifestyle.

  “Innovation”

  Most people conform to approved moral standards to achieve security and a comfortable life. They get an education, find a job, and try to advance their status within the social structure. According to Merton, where disadvantaged and marginalized people have no chance of realizing such ideals, there is more likehood of crime. Anyone living in an area of high unemployment, where access to education is limited, or ethnic and religious discrimination are widespread, could find it difficult to join mainstream society. When this happens, claims Merton, people face a choice. They must either accept life on the margins of society, or do what Merton calls “innovate”: that is, use illegal means to gain legal ends.

  Business world Apart from the unlawfulness of their “work”, some organized criminals can be compared to businessmen. More likely to carry a briefcase than a sack of loot, they follow their activities with an eye to market conditions.

  Criminals in context

  Merton does not see criminals as completely different from law-abiding members of society. He thinks that certain types, such as drug dealers for example, could be compared to entrepreneurs operating in the world of commerce. Like any other business people, criminals identify and source a product to sell in order to make money. This implies that there is a readymade market for their product. But if the market does not exist then they have to try and create one. In the case of drug dealing, this can involve encouraging people to try drugs until they become addicted and dependent on a continuing supply.

  By highlighting the innovative nature of such criminal activity, Merton does not condone it. His point is that crime often occurs because the wider social system fails to provide everyone with an equal opportunity for playing a legitimate role in society. Taking this view, attempts to reduce crime should move away from examining the natures of the offenders themselves. Rather, we should be concentrating more on the social reasons for which people turn to crime.

  Crime boss

  Al Capone was a notorious criminal born in a New York slum area in 1899. By his twenties, he had established a vast empire founded on supplying alcohol to the public at time when the sale of alcohol was banned throughout the US. At his trial in 1931, Capone claimed that, as any businessman, he was merely supplying what people wanted. He was sentenced to 11 years in jail.

  Worldwide, theft is by far the most commonly committed crime.

  See also: What role does RELIGION play in society? | PIERRE BOURDIEU | BREAKING society’s RULES | White-collar CRIME | HOWARD BECKER

  Émile Durkheim was born in Épinal, in eastern France, into a devout Jewish family. He chose not to become a rabbi like his father, and went to study philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 1887, he started teaching France’s first official sociology courses at the University of Bordeaux. Regarded as one of the founders of sociology, Durkheim is best known for his theories on the structure of society and his writings on religion, suicide, and education.

  a LIVING organism

  Durkheim is best known for his views on the structure of society. He saw society as a “living organism”, with different organs performing different functions. According to Durkheim, a successful society – like a healthy body – is a system of connected parts that work together. If one part is damaged, the rest of society cannot function properly. This approach to sociology became known as“functionalism”.

  ANOMIE

  Durkheim believed that society is held together by shared values and beliefs. In his book The Division of Labour in Society (1893), he argued that as society became more industrialized, people’s jobs became more specialized, and shared experiences in the workplace became less common. Durkheim used the word “anomie” to describe the sense of despair people felt as they became increasingly isolated in society.

  SOCIAL FACTS

  In his book The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Durkheim argued that any study of society should be based on “social facts”. These refer to institutions – such as religion, language, or education – that exist independently of people, but have power and control over their lives. Durkheim was interested in the way social facts hold society together and provide peop
le with moral guidance.

  the role of RELIGION

  Although he turned away from Judaism as a young man, Durkheim believed strongly that religion had an important role to play in society. He argued that religious faith, especially long-established faiths such as Judaism, gave people a sense of belonging and community. In his work Suicide (1897), Durkheim noted that suicide rates were much lower in communities where people shared strong religious beliefs.

  After his only son André was killed during the First World War, Durkheim’s health declined rapidly and he died in 1917, aged 59.

  in any type of society, wrongdoing usually incurs punishment. we learn early on that breaking the rules, depending on how serious the crime, can lead to anything from a parental “telling off” to a jail sentence, as well as strong public disapproval. Most of us don’t even take the chance.

  Living by rules

  We need rules. Without them life would be unpredictable and unsafe. From childhood on, we learn to be part of a group, such as a family, school, or workplace, and this means following the rules. In some situations, such as knowing how to behave in public, we may need guidance from our parents. Often, we understand for ourselves what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. Other types of rule are enforced by laws.

  When people break rules, they are usually punished. As society has changed over time, the nature of punishment has changed, too. According to leading British sociologist of crime and punishment David Garland, punishment is a “social institution”. He means that it is created by people in a society and serves a range of functions, like any other institution.

  How we punish people

  In his work The Division of Labour in Society (1893), French sociologist Émile Durkheim focused on how, over time, different forms of punishment have changed in line with changing society. In the past, people in organized communities were bound by what we call “mechanical solidarity”: they were held together by common beliefs in certain values and standards of behaviour.

  In such societies, lawbreaking caused outrage, and punishment was “repressive”; that is, the offender paid for the crime. A lawbreaker might be banished from the group or physically punished. By contrast, punishment in modern society is “restitutive”. Instead of making lawbreakers outcasts or physically punishing them, today we aim at restoring them to society and repairing the damage they do.

  Another difference, pointed out by German sociologist Norbert Elias, lies in who does the punishing. In much earlier ages, it was the victim, whether an individual or a community, who dealt with a wrongdoer. In modern society, the job of punishing people falls to members of a designated social group, such as the police and the criminal justice system.

  Good behaviour The dread of society’s disapproval, and our own sense of what is right, keeps most of us on the right side of the law.

  Fear of disapproval

  Émile Durkheim believed it is not primarily fear of punishment that prevents most people from committing crime. He suggested, rather, that people do not commit crime because the moral values they absorb from society have a powerful restraining influence. We learn at a young age that breaking rules does more than risk punishment. Wrongdoing evokes guilt, embarrassment, and self-blame, especially if the culprit is caught. Thoughts of public exposure and family shame, and living with a guilty conscience, often prevent someone from breaking the law in the first place.

  Following on from Durkheim’s ideas, David Garland notes that if prison numbers keep rising it is not because the criminal justice system does not “work”. It is because there are people who are too set apart from society to accept common codes of behaviour or care about disapproval and accusations.

  repaying society

  In the UK and US, offenders convicted of certain types of crime, such as drink driving, can assist their own rehabilitation by choosing to enrol in community-based schemes. They might become involved in working with young people to warn them of the risks they run through crime, as well as as helping to raise their aspirations for the future.

  The oldest-known law code was written by a Sumerian king, Ur-Nammu, c.2100–2050 bce.

  See also: ÉMILE DURKHEIM | HOWARD BECKER

  Not all serious crimes take place on the street. Some occur behind the respectable doors of major companies, hidden in computer files and buried amid complex data. These are the so-called “white-collar crimes”, which involve money going to the wrong people. Such crimes are hard to detect and expensive to investigate.

  Serious offences

  Some of the most serious offences in our societies are the “street crimes”, such as assault, theft, and vandalism, which get a lot of public attention and have a huge impact on the victims. Usually, those on the receiving end of such violence do not hesitate to go to the police.

  Just as serious, but less visible, are what sociologists call “white-collar crimes”: misappropriation of funds, tax evasion, and fraudulent expenses claims among others. Although white-collar crimes may not cause physical injury, they do a lot of damage to people and businesses. Yet, often, no one reports them.

  Expert knowledge

  Influential US sociologist Edwin Sutherland defines white-collar crimes as offences committed by what he calls “persons of respectability” who are often at the top of their careers. Historically, white-collar crime has received far less attention from sociologists, the media, politicians, and law enforcement agencies than street crime. There are a number of reasons for this. Compared to property damage and violence, white-collar crime can be far harder to detect. Very often, expert knowledge is required to identify that a crime has taken place at all. Anyone attempting to bring legal action needs expert knowledge of complex tax laws in a case of fraud, financial regulations and laws in the case of insider trading on the stock market, and computer coding in the case of hacking and cyber crime.

  Invisible theft

  White-collar crime can be concealed and stay unnoticed for months or even years. A person can rake back money in the form of false expense claims that appear genuine unless closely scrutinized. Small amounts of money can be “skimmed off” from business accounts. Unauthorized charges for services can be hidden among legitimate costs in a complex billing spreadsheet.

  Even if white-collar crimes are detected they often go unreported because bringing them out into the open can do further harm. Firms may not want to admit that they have been victims of theft, and so undermine the confidence of their customers. And admitting that a crime was carried out by “someone on the inside” may cast a shadow over the integrity of a company as a whole.

  The true price of crime

  US-based sociologist Joseph Martinez takes the view that white-collar crime is far less likely to be reported because many people think that compared to violent crime it is not such a serious offence. But white-collar crime comes at a high price. Research undertaken by US sociologist D. Stanley Eitzen shows that while the average cost to the US government per street crime is $35, for white-collar crimes such as tax evasion, embezzlement, and fraud the cost is a staggering $621,000.

  Drawing on Eitzen’s research, Martinez suggests that white-collar criminals should be subject to harsher punishments than street criminals because they cost society so much more. He believes that by handing out lesser punishments for white-collar crime than for street crime, law enforcement agencies appear to be trying to preserve social order at the expense of true justice.

  billion dollar fraud

  Occasionally, a high-profile case brings the cost of white-collar crimes to public attention. In a notorious financial case of the 1990s, English-born trader Nick Leeson hid losses to the value of $1.4 billion dollars from the Singapore financial trading company for whom he worked. Following police investigations, the company collapsed, making hundreds of people redundant. Leeson was jailed for three and a half years.

  The majority of white-collar criminals are typically white, male college graduates.

  See also: ÉMILE DURKHEIM
| HOWARD BECKER

  wherever we go in public places, we are probably on camera. surveillance systems track us in shops, on the roads, at airports and railway stations, on buses, and in subways. These so-called “spy cameras” are a proven method of reducing bad behaviour. but are they also a hidden form of mind control?

  Our surveillance society

  Big Brother is watching you! For many people, the catchphrase conjures up the world-wide reality television show in which a group of contestants sharing a house are filmed live every moment of the day. More famously, Big Brother is the all-seeing, and possibly non-existent, leader of the totalitarian state depicted by British writer George Orwell in his classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. First published in 1949, Orwell’s tale describes a future society, in the year 1984, in which people’s every word and action is watched by an all-seeing authority. According to French social theorist Michel Foucault, the surveillance society that Orwell chillingly predicted has become reality.