The last of the three chapters I chose was Chapter 7, titled “Deviance and Crime”. The chapter discusses many aspects of deviance and crime. A good portion of the chapter is devoted to outlining the many different theories of deviance. The functionalist, conflict and symbolic interaction theories of deviance are highlighted and the text goes on to discuss what each of the theories entails. Forms of deviance are also featured heavily in the chapter. As far as crime is concerned, different aspects of it are also discussed in the chapter. Organized crime, corporate crime, white-collar crime as well as others are discussed in the text.
The link I have provided here will take you to an article on positive deviance. The article is titled “The power of positive deviance” (The Independent, 2010) and the article defines positive deviance as “…an awkward, oxymoronic term…outliers who succeed against all odds.” I chose this article to represent a specific concept from the text, the specific concept being deviance. Deviance is an overarching theme throughout chapter 7. A good portion of the chapter is devoted to deviance and I thought providing an article on the subject would be a good idea.
The photograph that I chose to utilize to symbolize a part of the chapter that particularly interested me was a still shot photograph from my favorite movie, The Godfather. The part of the chapter that interested me was the section on organized crime, in the textbook a still shot photograph from The Sopranos was used in this section. I chose to use a shot from The Godfather because it was the first movie I ever saw that really showed how a mafia and how an organized crime ring really runs and operates. The shot better symbolizes organized crime than many other photos because most people have seen The Godfather and can relate to its importance in the world of cinema and even the world of mobsters.
The video I have linked is a video on causes and potential cures of organized crime, the video is titled "Organized Crime: Causes" (2009). Organized crime is a concept discussed in the textbook (pg. 169). The video is about 3 minutes long and features a criminologist named Stephen Schneider who discusses different aspects of organized crime and what he thinks can be done to try to reduce the amount of organized crime that we see in the world today.
Link to two Internet sites that provide useful information:
This link is to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) site on organized crime. There are a lot of good resources on the site such as an overview about organized crime, types of organized crime and people wanted by the FBI for partaking in organized crime. The site helps provide information on organized crime in more detail than the textbook does. For example the site goes into how to fight organized crime. "To combat the ongoing threat posed by these groups, we have a long-established---yet constantly evolving---organized crime program dedicated to eliminating the criminal enterprises that pose the greatest threat to America. (FBI, n.d.)
This link will take you to a site on an introduction to the sociology of deviance, as the site is titled “Introduction to the Sociology of Deviance” (Defining Deviance, 2008) . The site is a good reference source because it has scholarly articles on different aspects of deviance. An example of what is included is Howard Becker’s “Moral Entrepreneurs: The Creation and Enforcement of Deviant Categories” article. The site is not very long but is good because of the different articles provided. The site also links to other sites that also provide some good information such as a link to a “Defining Deviance” site that discusses deviance in general.
A quote that represents the feelings I had while reading:
“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.” -Ernest Hemingway (n.d.)
I chose this quote by Ernest Hemingway to represent the feelings I had while reading the chapter because while coming across the part of the text on crime I started to think about the different types of crime, and how war could be seen by many people as a crime. People could see war as a crime because many people are being killed but nobody has to serve jail time for it (excluding war crimes). So this Ernest Hemingway quote really struck a chord with me because of this interesting tidbit about war being a crime.
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