Study Guide Final Exam Sociology 2306

I. Multiple choice. Be familiar with Sutherland's role in bringing white collar crime to the attention of sociology (and know his concepts of white collar crime, occupational crime, organizational crime). Know how and why Liazos argues against "deviance" as an academic specialty. Know about the Sherman Anti-trust Act and its application to General Motors in relation to electric streetcars. Be familiar with Mander's arguments about the basic characteristics of corporate decision-making and why he sees corporations as disloyal. Know the dynamics of groupthink, Be familiar with the ways in which your instructor applied cognitive dissonance theory and the justification of evil, as well as accounts (excuses and justifications) to corporate and government crime. Genocide. The Nuremberg trials. Milgram experiments. Police subculture. The power of the situation. Sanctioned massacres.

a. "Nicotine Wars." The conflict between David Kessler's FDA and the Big 7 tobacco companies. The executives testimony about tobacco and the way the case turned against them. The tobacco companies knowledge of addicting properties of tobacco and their research and manufacturing processes in relation to nicotine and government testing.

b. "Trade Secrets." The ways in which the chemical companies continued to protect profitability even if it jeopardized the health of their employees in the case of vinyl chloride; their response to the dangers of benzene and dbcp; how they managed to "capture" the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and how they defeated consumer initiatives about the public's "right to know" about chemical dangers.

c. "Facing the Truth." The background of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa; what they revealed about the apartheid regime; the "accounts" of the security force members who carried out torture and killings; the effect of the hearings on the family and friends of victims.

d . "One Survivor Remembers." Gerta Klein's experiences in the forced labor camps of Nazi Germany and also Hannah Arendt's more general perspective on the Nazi bureaucrats, typified by Adolf Eichman.

e. "Unfinished Business." Relocation camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Court challenges both at the time and in more recent years. Role of selected individuals in resisting this executive order.

f. "Rely Tampons and Toxic Shock Syndrome." How Proctor and Gamble responded to a developing health crisis relating to their rely tampons.

g. "The Heavy Electrical Equipment Antitrust Cases." How did these corporate criminals justify their behavior and what did the judge ultimately have to say about these justifications?

h. "Why Should My Conscience Bother Me?"How and why did the author come under such intense pressure to falsify records relating to the testing of aircraft breakes by Goodrich? How did his superiors justify their behavior?

i . "Why I Didn't Recognize the Pinto Fire Hazards?" How did Goia, who viewed himself as a reformer, end up carrying out business as ususal once he became head of Ford's recall department? How does he explain his own behavior? Social psychological impact of what he calls "scripts" and your instructor calls "judgment heuristics."

j. "The Nazi Holocaust" How did the Nazis carry out the bureaucratic organization of the extermination of the Jews and other categories they defined as undesirables. How did the people who were involved in that process manage to insulate themselves psychologically from the horrors of what they were doing? How did the Nazis try to justify their policies, and how did individuals within the German bureaucracies try to justify their behaviors?

k. "The My Lai Massacre." What was the context in which Lt. Calley ordered the killing of everyone in My Lai? On what basis did a jury of combat veterans decide that Calley was personally guilty of premeditated murder?

l. "Rodney King and the Use of Excessive Force." What is Fyfe and Skolnick's answer to their initial question: "How can police, who can be exemplary heroes, beat people and then even be prepared to lie about it?" How do incidents of excessive force arise out of a particular kind of social situation?

m. . "Ten Whistleblowers." What are the typical consequences for people who speak up against wrongdoing in their organizations? How does Glazer support her argument that in most cases, the postives outweigh the negatives for the subsequent lives of whistleblowers?

n. . "Chained Factory Fire Exits." Do the authors find any evidence that what they call a social movement against white collar and corporate crime affected coverage of this incident? In their analysis, why did the mass media's coverage put the blame mostly on lax government regulation and downplay the issue of criminal negligence by the corporation?

II. Essay questions. In answering l these questions, include a broad range of examples from the readings and videos in support of your arguments.

1. Use at least two of the theories we covered in the first half of the course to explain major features of corporate and governmental deviance. Or if you find that those theories are not helpful in understanding corporate deviance, choose two other sociological theories and use them.

2. Why is it that organizations and organizational actors are so infrequently held criminally liable for their deviant behavior? Give examples.

3. Why do individuals who are law-abiding in other areas of their lives break the law in their work lives and engage in cover-ups of wrongdoing of others?

4. Skolnick and Frye argue that it is not only the police subculture that discourages whistleblowers, but that this is a much broader feature of organizational life. Analyze the barriers and costs of whistleblowing, with examples. Draw on our theories of deviance to develop a realistic plan for an organization in which whistleblowing would not be stigmatized.

5. Why have both the society, in terms of its criminal justice system, and sociology, in relation to its basic theories of deviance, paid far more attention to so-called street crime than to corporate and governmental crime? What could be gained by shifting the focus more in the direction of corporate and governmental crime?