One Version Of The Structural Explanation example essay topic

... ls of achievement. It is a thesis that has appropriately been name strain theory (Hirschi). Sociologist R.K. Merton devised another theory dwelling in delinquency. This type of explanations see delinquency as adaptive as instrumental in the achievement of the same kind of things everyone wants. It sees crime crime, also as a party reactive generated by a sense of injustice on the part of the delinquents at having been deprived of the goof life they have been led to expect would be theirs. To be sure, it approaches the satisfaction of desires not directly, but indirectly through the provision of expanded opportunities for legitimate achievement (Hernstein).

In closing on the opportunity-structure thesis, this thesis as a whole sound plausible. With closer attention to its assumptions, lessens confidence in its explanatory power. Finally, the proposal that differences in the availability of legitimate opportunities affect crime rates is only one version of the structural explanation. The weaknesses of this particular hypothesis do not deny the validity of the structural notion in general. These are features of the structure of a society that seem clearly and directly antecedent to varying crime rates. Culture conflict is one such general aspect of a societies structure that seems to promote criminality.

This theme locates the source of crime in some sociological explanations, at bottom, assume culture conflict to be the source of crime. Durkheims's anomie, the deregulation of social life, may be another such feature. Yet inadequately applied to the explanation of crime. Merton's application of the idea of anomie to the production of criminality seems plausible in general, particularly if one avoids translating anomie into opportunity. This more general use of the notion of anomie predicts that serious crime rates will be higher in societies who's public codes and even mass media simultaneously stimulate consumer-ship and egalitarianism while denying differences and de legitimizing them (Herstein).

More concretely, the age distributions and sex ratios of societies or of localities can be interpreted as structural features and related to differences in crime rates. Thus it comes as little surprise to learn and comprehend that situations in which sex ration is greatly distorted result in different patterns of sexual offense. Homosexuality, including forcible rape, increase where men and women are kept apart from the opposite sex, as in prisons (Blumstein, 1979). Prostitution flourishes where numbers of men live without women but with the freedom to get out on occasion, as from mining camps or military bases (Blumstein).

These more concrete features of social structure seem at once more obvious and less interesting, however that the class structure of a society by the way in which its wealth and prestige are differentially achieved and rewarded. It is among these differentials that sociologist and may laymen continue to look for generators of crime. The opportunity structure hypothesis is one way of attending to class differences and attempting to show how they breed crime. IT views criminality as adaptive as utilitarianism, as the way deprived people can get what everyone wants and has been told he should have.

There is yet another type of explanation that look upon the pattern of reward in a society as causing crime. This theory differs from the opportunity structure theory in its emphasis. It interprets crime as more reactive than adaptive to social stratification. Reactive hypotheses are related to other structural schema in emphasizing the role of the status system of a society in producing crime an delinquency. As one kind of sociological explanation these formulations also partake of some of the subcultural ideas and may even speak of delinquent subcultures. The reactive hypothesis, however, described criminal subcultures a formed in response to status deprivation.

They see criminality as less traditional, less ethnic and more psycho dynamically generated (Ferrington). They interpret delinquency as a status seeking solution to straight societies denial of respect. The reactive hypotheses are then a type of structural theory that carries a heavy burden of psychological implication (Ferrington). The pure reactive hypothesis claims that the social structure produces a reaction formation in whom it rules disqualify for status.

Reaction formation, or reversal formation, is a psycho- analytic idea: that we may defend ourselves against forbidden desires by repressing them while expressing their opposites (Ferrington). In this tense, the behaviors of which the ego is conscious are psychoanalytically interpreted as a shield against admitting the true urges that have been frustrated. For example, if on says that if I cant have it, it must be no good. Thus, it is held if one cant play the middle-class game, or wont be let into it, he responds by breaking up the play (Ferrington).

The denial is proof of the desire and when put into the present topic, this results in an unlawful act of criminality. The subcultural theorists see delinquent behavior as real in its own right, as learned and valued by the actor. Where the social psychologists agree but emphasize the training processes that bring this about. The proponents of a reactive hypotheses interpret the defiant and contemptuous behavior of many delinquents as a compensating that fends them against the ego wounding they have received from the status system (Ferrington).

In scientific work there is a criterion, not pointy adhered to, which says that the simple explanation is preferable to the complex. That the hypothesis weigh few assumptions is preferable to the one with many. There are simpler explanations of criminal hostility than the reactive hypotheses. One such theory holds that violence comes naturally and that it will be expressed unless we are trained control it.

Another theory calls envy a universal and independent motive (Hernstein). Some social psychologists believe that children will grow up violent if they are not adequately nurtured. Adequate nurturing includes both appreciating the child and training him or her to acknowledge the rights of others. From this theoretical stance, the savagery of the urban gangster for example represents merely the natural outcome of a failure in child upbringing.

Similarly, on a simple level of explanation, many sociologists and anthropologists believe that hostile behavior can e learned as easily as passive behavior. Once learned, the codes of violence and impatient tendencies of the mind are their own positive values. Fighting and hating then become both duties and pleasures. For advocates of this socio-psychological point of view, it is not necessary to regard the barbarian who's words and deed laugh at goodness as having the same motives as more lawful persons.

It needs no radical vision to agree that the school systems of Western societies presently provide poor apprenticeship in adulthood for many adolescents. A poor apprenticeship for being grown up is. In this sense, the structure of modern countries encourages delinquency, for that structure lacks institutional procedures for moving people smoothly from protected childhood to autonomous adulthood. During adolescence, many youths in affluent societies are neither well guided by their parents nor happily engaged by their teachers. They are adult in body, but children in responsibility and their independence are compelled to attend schools that do not thoroughly stimulate the interests of all of them. In to many cases this provides the uninterested child with the experience of failure and the mirror denigration (Hernstein).

Educators are conceiving remedies. This engages a dilemma of the democratic educators. They want equality and individuality, objectives that thus far in history have eluded societal engineers. Meanwhile, the metropolitan schools of industrialized nations make it probable, but measurable, contribution to delinquency. Some crimes are rational. In such cases, the criminal way appears to be the more efficient way of satisfying ones wants.

When crime is regarded as rational, it can be given either a structural or socio-psychological explanation. The explanation is structural when it emphasizes the conditions that make crime rational. The socio-psychological explanation when it emphasizes the interpretations of the conditions that make crime rational, or when it stresses the training that legitimizes illegal activities. No one emphasis need be more correct or more useful than another. Conduct, lawful and criminal, always occur within some structure of possibilities and is among normal people, justified by that structure. Both the interpretation of and the adaptation to a structure of possibilities are largely learned.

It is only for convenience that we discuss the idea that crime may be rational as one of the structural, rather than socio-psychological explanations. The most obvious way in which a social structure produces crime is by providing chances to make illegal money (Herstein). Whether or not a structure elevates desires, it generates crime by bringing needs into the view of opportunities. This kind of explanation does not say that people behave criminally because they have been denied legitimate opportunities, but rather it says that people behave criminally because they have been denied legitimate definition of property. The idea of a rational crime is in accord with the common-sense assumption that most people will take money if they can do so without penalty. Obviously there are differences in personality that raise or lower resistance to temptation.

These differences are the concern of those socio-psychological explanations that emphasize the controlling functions of character. However, without attending to these personal variables, it is notable that the common human inclination to improve and maintain status will produce offenses against property when these tendencies meet the appropriate situation (Ferrington). In summary, the structuralist emphasis on the features of a stratified society that is both particular and persuasive. The employment of this type of explanation becomes political. If the anomie that generates crime lies in the gap between desires and their gratification, criminologist can urge that desires be modified, gratifications increased or that some compromise be reached between what people expect and what they are likely to get (Christiansen). The various political positions prescribe different remedies for our social difficulties.

Radial thinkers use the schema of anomie to strengthen their argument for classless or a less stratified society. Conservative thinkers use this schema to demonstrate the dangers of an egalitarian philosophy. At one political pole, the recommendation is to change the structure of power so to reduce the pressure toward criminality. However at the other pole, the prescription is to change the public's perception of life. Criminologists themselves are caught up in this debate. The major tradition in social psychology, as it has been developed from sociologists.

Thus emphasizing the ways in which perceptions and beliefs cause behaviors between how things are and how one responds to this world. The social psychologist places attitude, beliefs and definition of the situation. The crucial question becomes one of assessing how much of any actions is simply a response to a structure of the social word, and how much of any actions moved by differing interpretations of that reality (Sampson). Social psychologists of the symbolic interactions persuasion attempt to build a bridge between the structures of social relations and our interpretations of them and overall in this manner to describe how crime was produced.

Bibliography

Blumstein, Alfred. (1979).
An Analysis. Crime and Delinquency 29 (October): 546-60 Christiansen, K.O. (1977).
A review of Studies in Criminality. In bases of criminal behavior, (Eds)., S.A. Med nick and K.O. Christiansen, (pp. 641,654-669). New York: Gardner. Ferrington, David P. (1991).
Explaining the Beginning and Progress. In Advances in Criminological Theory, (Eds)., Joan McCord, vol 3, (pp, 191-199). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Freeman, Richard B. (1983).
The relationship between criminality and the disadvantaged... Ch. 6 In Crime and Public Policy, (Eds)., James Q. Wilson, (pp. 917-991). San Francisco: ICS Press. Herstein, Richard J. (1985).
Crime and Human Nature. pp. 359-374, New York: Simone and Schuster. Hirschi, Travis. (1969).
Causes of Delinquency. pp. 30-31, 89-102, Berkeley: University of California Press. Sampson, R.J. (1985).