Exam01 2012
- Briefly recount the research in which babies punished the bad elephant, explain what it suggests about human nature, and how this interacts with Hobbes, Freud, and Durkheim's concept of where social order comes from.
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- Opening sentence:
- There are certain resemblances between Plato's charioteer metaphor and Freud's tripartite self. Briefly describe both and indicate what parts are analogous, and what distinguishes them. Be sure to consider the question of the sources of control.
- Mention list: chariot components; ego/id/SE; role of charioteer; role of ego; role of horses; what corresponds to what; diff/same for SC if P or F is right.
- Erikson's description of deviance and social control derives directly from Durkheim. Show how his centripetal/centrifugal force metaphor (forces of conformity and forces of individualization) map onto Durkheim's four types of suicide.
- Mention list: Altruistic,Anomic,Egoistic,Fatalistic,integration,regulation, conformity,individualization
- Consider either Katz or Anderson and find in their descriptions analogs to three causal theories we encountered. Use it as an opportunity to illustrate and explain these.
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- The 20th century causal theories follow a trajectory that starts with replacing psychological personality type or group type explanations with space/place/situation explanations and evolves over 40 or so years to social structural explanations rooted in economic inequality, segregation, and discrimination. Name and describe four distinct "theories" to illustrate and narrate this trajectory.
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- You have been asked to give a short lecture on the idea that "crime is normal" to a high school sociology class. Write out your lecture.
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- Explain what we mean by "deviance is relative" and what taking this seriously means for thinking about social control.
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- Use ideas from Erikson's essay (especially about groups and boundaries) to describe the kinds of deviance that might emerge in a student group dedicated to ethical food practices.
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- What is the difference between mal per se and mal prohibita? Pick three "theories" or perspectives and discuss how working through the difference helps to illuminate each one.
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- If, as Erikson writes, deviance is simply behavior that is so labeled, does that mean that a rule breaker could employ the "defense" of "there's nothing wrong with it, it's just an artificial rule!"? Illustrate your response with some well chosen examples.
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- Collins lays out three orientations toward deviance and crime. What are these (name and describe/give examples)? How do they serve him rhetorically as a "set up" for presenting Durkheim's idea that crime is normal.
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- A criticism of Anderson's "code of the street" analysis is that it "presumes precisely that which needs to be demonstrated: that these two sets families are properly differentiated by their moral values rather than by the distinct structural locations they occupy in local social space and the objective life chances and liabilities associated with these" (Wacquant 2002, 1489). His story becomes one of clashing subcultures to which people are subject rather than a dialectic of social positions and attitude/behavior dispositions. What do you think?