Sociology 2306: Outline--Week 11

I. Liazos: "The Poverty of the Sociology of Deviance: Nuts, Sluts, and Preverts"

An examination of 16 texts and readers in 1972

A. Shared themes, trends, concerns

1. A desire to humanize the deviant that is not always successful

Szasz: "Words have lives of their own. However much sociologists insist that the term 'deviant' does not diminish the worth of a person or group so categorized, the implication of inferiority adheres to the word."

2. An emphasis on dramatic deviance--identity and subculture

3. Lack of attention to powerful elites

"Little attention has been paid to the unethical, illegal, and destructive actions of powerful individuals, groups, and institutions in our society. Because these actions are carried out quietly in the normal course of events..."

B. Even where elite crime is considered, there is:

1. No "get tough" ideology

2. "These people are not really criminals."

3. Prison sentences are viewed as no solution.

C. His recommendation: that we banish the word "deviance" and speak of "oppression, conflict, persecution, and suffering."

II. Organizational Crime

A. Definitions

1. White collar crime: "crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation" (Sutherland)

2. Occupational crime: misusing a position of trust for your own gain

3. Organizational crime: crime committed with at least the implicit support of the organization and intended at least partly to further the goals of the org.

B. Examples of organization crime

1. Effort by General Motors, Greyhound, and Standard Oil to eliminate electric streetcars and replace them with diesel buses

a. Chronology

1) 1932: GM created subsidiary, United Cities Motor Transit, to buy electric streetcar companies, convert to diesel buses, and resell to local ownership

2). Dissolved this company in 1935, after being censured by American Transit Association for activities in Portland

3). Created Omnibus Corporation... chairman of GM bus division also chairman of Omnibus... converted New York City electric streetcar system

4) 1936: GM joined with Greyhound to create National City Lines

5) 1938: GM joined with Standard Oil to create Pacific City Lines

b. Cities involved: Portland, New York City, Los Angeles (electric system had reached 75 miles into surrounding area, with 3,000 trains, transporting 80 million people annually), Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City

c. Results: . 1936: 40,000 electric streetcars in U.S.; 1955: 5,000 left

d. Penalties: 1949: Federal Court in Chicago convicted GM under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of having criminally conspired with the others to replace electric transportation with gas or diesel and to monopolize the sale of buses and related products...GM fined $5000; GM Treasurer Harold Grossman fined $1

2. Minneapolis Star Tribune, 10/23,98: "Diesel Engine Makers Fined for Alleged Cheating"

a. Computer programs installed in 1.1 million engines allowing them to pass emissions tests, as much as tripling pollution once on the road

b. $1 billion settlement--largest environmental enforcement action ever taken

c. "Under the settlement, the engine makers continued to deny any violation of the clean air laws."

D. Sherman Anti-Trust Act--1890s--Provided for criminal penalties, aimed at so-called "robber barons," but applied more often in the early years to trade unions.

E. First attention by sociologists: Sutherland's 1939 address to the ASA on being elected president; 1949, White Collar Crime

Sutherland argued that neither the general public nor the law enforcers are inclined to put such people in the same category as general criminals.

1. Department of Justice anti-trust official: "Most of the defendants in the antitrust cases are not criminals in the usual sense. There is no inherent reason why antitrust enforcement requires branding them as such."

2. Similarity of class and educational backgrounds between violators and enforcers

3. Campaign contributions

F. Ermann and Lundman: Corporate and Governmental Deviance. First edition in 1978.

1. "Public opinion polls consistently reveal strong condemnation of organizationally deviant actions, especially when the behavior causes illness, injury, or death."

2. Organizational leaders/managers rarely found criminally liable, and their organizations not usually punished in a way that threatens their long-term liability.

3. "The reasons are several, but one is most important. Organizations are wealthy and powerful actors, and they use their resources well."

II. "Truth on Trial": video and groups

III. Reading: "Rely Tampons and Toxic Shock Syndrome"

How realistic is the scenario from Truth on Trial in which a company reaches settlements that in effect remove access to the evidence of their wrong-doing?

IV. Asbestos Exposure by Johns-Manville

Insidious injury: dfn

Asbestos: "the very qualities that render asbestos strong and fire-retardant make it very difficult for the body's defense mechanisms to dispose of."

Early 1900s: first suspicions of danger from asbestos

By 1930s: studies in UK strongly suggested a link between asbestos exposure and pulmonary disease

Industry response:

Repeatedly and successfully prevented publication of those findings in the trade journal, Asbestos

Interpreted problem as "individual susceptibilities"

As late as 1960s, workers still not being warned of dangers

Industry funded research to challenge British research beginning in the 1930s:

"We could determine from time to time after the findings are made whether we wish any publication or not."

What was published was sometimes carefully misleading... for example, studies in the 1950s emphasizing that asbestiosis did not cause cancer

1977: Plaintiff attorney discovered existence of the "Sumner Simpson Papers," including correpondence among industry executives as far back as the 1930s coordinating action to limit the spread of information about health hazards

1977: industry sought federal legislation to set up a fund for settlement of claims

1982: Johns Manville filed for bankrupcy and changed its name... assets then totaled $2.3 billion

"The most important point is not that Manville or its executives were distinctively bad, but that the scale of the company's operations and danger of its products made the bad actions of its executives distinctively efficacious."

Difficulty of successfully suing a large corporation... by the time this case reached the courts, most of the executives who formulated the original strategy long dead