Max Weber (1864-1920)

• Key Concepts

  • Ideal Types

  • Verstehen (interpretive understanding)

  • Rationality

  • Protestant Ethic

  • Authority

  • Bureaucracy

• “Labour must, on the contrary, be performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a calling. But such an attitude is by no means a product of nature”

Ideal Types

• analytical constructs against which real-life cases can be compared.

  • “pure categories” are not real

  • They are a conceptual yardstick for examining differences and similarities, as well as causal connections, between the social processes under investigation.

Bridging the Gap

• Between Marx/Durkheim/Weber and  the 1950s, what happened?

  • Chicago School

    • Focused on Urban Sociology

    • Interest in gangs, peasants, underclass, subcultures

    • Created foundations for symbolic interactionism

  • Frankfurt School

    • Critical Theorists

    • Rooted in Marxist theories

    • Created basis for conflict/postmodern theorists

Structural-Functionalism

• Parsons-General Theory of Social Action

  • General & universal laws of all behavior

  • All actions constrained by biology, environment, values and norms

  • Critiqued because of a bias toward conformity

    • E.g. women have to act in a certain way because that’s how families function best

• Merton

  • Student of Parsons, but proponent of mid-ranged theories [rejecting the all-encompassing Parsonian model]

  • Innovation to escape anomie

  • Manifest vs. Latent Functions

  • Strain theory: deviance occurs when a society does not give all its members equal ability to achieve social goals

Conflict Theory

• Follows from Frankfurt School

• Competition for limited resources

• Power differentials

• CW Mills: The Power Elite

  • Are American leaders really elected democratically?

    • Money controls an interconnected group of political, economic, and military leaders

Symbolic Interactionism

• Herbert Blumer

  • People’s Interactions Ultimately Determine their Behavior

    • Self-Image Based on Others’ Interactions

    • Predictability of Behavior

• Irving Goffman

  • Stigma

    • A negative social label that changes your behavior toward a person and also changes that person’s self-concept and social identity

    • Has serious consequences in terms of the opportunities made available—or not made available—to people in a stigmatized group

Feminist Theory

• Dorothy Smith- Standpoint Theory

  • authority is rooted in individuals' personal knowledge and perspectives, and the power that such authority exerts.

• Judith Butler-Queer Theory & the performance of gender

• We must challenge the ways that everything we know is experienced differently for men vs. women.

Postmodern Theory

• Knowledge is power, but also power is knowledge (Foucault)

  • Those with power control what, how, when we learn, and even in many cases who learns

  • Consider Abstinence Only Education

    • “sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth & you should save it for someone you love.”—Butch Hancock

Crime Through Different Perspectives

• Structural Functionalist

  • Crime is Functional for society

    • Solidarity

    • Social change

    • Strain theory

    • Subculture theory

  • How do we address crime in this theory?

    • Community ties

    • Clear sense of social order

• Conflict

  • Crime is inevitable when there are power differentials

    • Those in power define what is criminal

    • Law enforcement penalizes those without power

    • Further victimization of those without power

• Symbolic Interactionism

  • Labeling (Becker)

    • Person labeled as deviant is denied opportunities to engage in non-deviant behavior

    • Labeled person internalizes deviant label and acts accordingly

  • Differential Association (Sutherland)

    • People around criminals learn values, attitudes

    • People around criminals learn techniques