Sociology 2111: Outline--Week 10
KAI ERIKSON WAYWARD PURITANS
"The excitement generated by the crime quickens the tempo of interaction in a group and creates a climate in which the private sentiments of many people are fused into a common sense of morality."
I. CLOSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KINDS OF BOUNDARIES AND KINDS OF DEVIANCE
E.G. BOLSHEVIK SOCIETY, MODERN AMERICAN SOCIETY, PURITAN SOCIETY
"THE DEVIANT AND THE CONFORMIST ARE CREATURES OF THE SAME CULTURE, INVENTIONS OF THE SAME IMAGINATION."
II. CRIME WAVES AND BOUNDARY CRISES
WHEN THE MORAL ORDER IS CHALLENGED, WHEN THE ISSUE OF WHO IS A MEMBER IN GOOD STANDING IS DRAMATICALLY RAISED, CAN EXPECT CRIME WAVES.... (LIKE INFLAMMATION IN THE BODY... WAY OF DRAWING ATTENTION TO A PROBLEM AREA)
"TEST" OR AT LEAST EXEMPLIFY THESE THREE AREAS IN RELATION TO 3 SERIOUS CRIME WAVES IN THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY, 1600s. NOTICE THAT THESE AREN'T THE KINDS OF BEHAVIORS WE'D IDENTIFY AS SERIOUS CRIMES, BUT THEY WERE SO REGARDED IN THIS PERIOD AND PLACE.
A. ANN HUTCHISON AND THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY (DOES ANYONE KNOW WHO IS SAVED AND WHO IS DAMNED?)
B. THE QUAKER INVASION
C. THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS...Notice that the result of a boundary crisis and related crime wave is not necessarily the successful reaffirmation of the moral order.... this last crisis, in Erikson's view, really marked the end of Puritan society as God's kingdom on earth...
D. MODERN PARALLELS
1. SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY AND THE RED SCARE
2. WHO IS A PATRIOT AFTER SEPTEMBER 11?
CRISIS OF THE 1960S: CIVIL RIGHTS AND BLACK POWER, VIETNAM PROTESTS, FEMINISM, GAY AND LESBIAN MOVEMENT
a. Nixon/Reagan: "Law and Order"
b. War on Crime/War on Drugs
c. Race and the criminal justice system
IV. Durkheim: Individualism vs. the group, conformity and deviance
1. Historically, the individual was dominated by the community... collective conscience overwhelmingly strong and enforced by a religious order that blended with the political/economic order... individualism is sin and blasphemy
a. Durkheim's sociology of religion (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life): what is really being worshipped? what is symbolized by conscientious participation in religious rituals? "the sacred" = society itself
2. Individualism itself (and the pursuit of your own self-interest) a social product... a side effect of the divison of labor in modern society....the individual becomes in a sense sacred
3. But this process carries a major risk. Need for a balance of the social and the individual, or all kinds of pathologies increase rapidly.... quite clear that Durkheim would see contemporary American society as a place where self-interest and individualism have greatly overbalanced the social interest.
4. Durkheim not denying the impact of self-interest and the realm of the economists and psychologists, but saying that equally important is the realm of moral behavior and the impact of community.... remember his treatment of egoistic and anomic suicide
V. Major influences of Durkheimian theory in American sociology
A. Eventually, functionalism, which analyzes social arrangements in terms of their contribution to the overall health of society, becomes the dominant approach to American society in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s... emphasis on values and consensus... Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton... we'll pick up this thread in week 13
B. Social disorganization theory, created at the University of Chicago in the 1910s and 1920s...we'll pick up this thread after a brief look at the rise of Chicago sociology
1. Context: early 20th century, massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, rising public concern with crime and deviance, appeal of evolutionary, genetic, and racist theories... eugenics movement, Immigration restriction laws of 1921/1924
2. Polish immigrants to Chicago experience a two-fold disruption, from Polish to American culture and from rural to urban
3. Result: Loss of parental prestige and authority, particularly for boys
1. Majority of gangs organized on an ethnic basis. In order of prevalence: Polish, Italian, Irish, Negro, Jewish.
2. Definition of social disorganization emphasizing cultural conflict and isolation from middle class life
3. Areas in which many successive ethnic groups had battled for "turf," including groups that were by 1927 part of the dominant majorities... they in their turn had contributed disproportionate numbers of gang members
4. Connection of gangs and crime
1. Social organization: extent to which neighborhood residents are able to maintain social control and realize their common goals
2. Key causal factors creating social disorganiztion in the inner city
a. Deindustrialization
b. Concentrated poverty
c. Joblessness
d. Outmigration by middle class
3. Loss of jobs in Chicago's 3 poorest neighborhoods, 1950-1980
Mgrs/professionals: 5270 to 2225
Clerical/sales: 11,081 to 5164
Crafts/foremen: 6554 to1338
Operatives/laborers: 35,508 to 2150
Household/service: 25,182 to 52034. Drastic increase in the number of neighborhoods with 40% or even 50% of families below the official poverty line.