"Thinking Points" for Part 3 (by no means complete or all inclusive)
Some questions to consider concerning Crime, Violence,
and Deviant Organizations
- Are there acts that are
deviant but not criminal? Criminal, but not deviant? What are some differences
and similarities between deviance and crime?
- Is the taking of human
life is universally deviant and criminal everywhere and during all periods
of history?
- Why is it significant
that murders are overwhelmingly intra-racial?
- Why is it significant
that males are more likely to kill other males and women are more likely to
kill males rather than other women? And, that men are far more likely to be
victims of killings than women?
- Why is it that the more
intimate the relationship, the greater the likelihood, on a statistical basis,
that one person will kill another.
- The taboo against murder
is said to be a cultural universal, the one act that is universally deviant
everywhere and throughout history. Does this mean that it is not "relative"?
Be detailed and specific.
- What qualities or characteristics
does robbery possess that are to some degree unique and distinctive to itself?
- In the 1970s, many feminists
argued that "rape isn't about sex, it's about violence." But by
the 1990s, many feminists began to argue that rape is often about sex as well
as about violence. Why this change in orientation?
- Why are people more likely
to be concerned about street-crime than white collar crime?
- What can we discern from
the fact that women are more likely to engage in shoplifting than other forms
of theft?
- Although most people
recognize that theft is improper and problematic, why are crimes like shoplifting
and employee pilferage so widespread in the population?
Some questions to consider concerning Mental Disorder:
- What
are the differences between mental "illness" and mental "disorder?" Contrast the essentialist and the constructionist
approaches or models of mental illness, including the subtypes and varieties
of each. What would each have to say about the causes of mental illness. About
mental illness diagnosis? Treatment?
- Contrast
the positions of David Rosenhan ("On Being Sane in Insane Places")
and Robert Spitzer ("On Pseudoscience in Science") with respect
to the reality of mental illness as well as its diagnosability?
Some questions to consider concerning Sexual Deviance:
- How
is human sexuality "gendered?"
- How
would an essentialist view human sexuality and sexual deviance? How would
a constructionist approach these same phenomena? How do these two approaches
differ?
- In
what specific ways is homosexuality "departing from deviance" over
time? Describe and discuss the ways we see this taking place. Do you believe
these ways indicate a diminution in homosexuality's deviant status? What sorts
of changes do you predict for the next decade or so?
- Considering
how common and typical it is, should teenage sex be regarded as a form of
deviance? Why or why not? What factors should be considered in answering this
question? Does it depend on certain crucial factors or circumstances? Is the
refusal of a teenager to have sex a form of deviance?
- How
would a constructionist's analysis of sex work differ from that of a radical
feminist?
Some questions to consider concerning Cognitive Deviance:
- Why
is empirical falsehood not a defining element of deviant beliefs? Can beliefs
be both false and conventional? True and deviant? What element or quality
defines a belief as deviant? How
do deviant beliefs differ from deviant behavior.
- Given
the fact that professional parapsychologists hold PhDs and conduct rigorous
research whose findings are published in refereed journals, how is it that
their field is regarded as deviant among conventional, mainstream scientists?
What would change that?
Some questions to consider concerning Physical Characteristics
as Deviance
- The
case of John/Joan or Brenda/David has implications that bear directly on
the debate between constructionists and essentialists on the one hand and
"nurturists" and "naturists" on the other. In what ways?
Which side of these debates proved correct in this case study? Why?
- Are
all physical characteristics involuntarily acquired? If so, explain. If
not, which ones are not and what ways are they voluntary? Does it make a
difference with respect to the reactions their possessors generate from
"normals"?
- Which
forms of physical deviance are also behavioral in nature, that is, to the
conventional members of the society, a sign of a weak, immoral, or degenerate?
Be detailed and specific.
- What
might be an alternate and more powerful theory than Leslie Fiedler's psychoanalytic
explanation of why we are distressed yet fascinated by "freaks"?
- Explain
the similarities and differences between behavioral deviance and the possession
of involuntarily acquired, undesirable physical characteristics. Do these
generalizations apply to all societies at all times?
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