The Chicago Perspective focused on delinquency and crime in Chicago, claiming these behaviors were normal responses to abnormal social conditions like dilapidation, poverty, and cultural mixing. This became known as Social Disorganization Theory. The Critical Perspective holds that understanding deviance requires examining the political process and role of elites. It incorporates Societal Reaction Theory, emphasizing how societies label and punish "outsiders", Radical Criminology which identifies the political economy as the source of criminal law, and Critical Sociology which examines society to promote change. The Frankfurt School influenced Critical Sociology by questioning major trends in modern life like authority, power, and their effects on institutions and attitudes.
The Chicago Perspective focused on delinquency and crime in Chicago, claiming these behaviors were normal responses to abnormal social conditions like dilapidation, poverty, and cultural mixing. This became known as Social Disorganization Theory. The Critical Perspective holds that understanding deviance requires examining the political process and role of elites. It incorporates Societal Reaction Theory, emphasizing how societies label and punish "outsiders", Radical Criminology which identifies the political economy as the source of criminal law, and Critical Sociology which examines society to promote change. The Frankfurt School influenced Critical Sociology by questioning major trends in modern life like authority, power, and their effects on institutions and attitudes.
The Chicago Perspective focused on delinquency and crime in Chicago, claiming these behaviors were normal responses to abnormal social conditions like dilapidation, poverty, and cultural mixing. This became known as Social Disorganization Theory. The Critical Perspective holds that understanding deviance requires examining the political process and role of elites. It incorporates Societal Reaction Theory, emphasizing how societies label and punish "outsiders", Radical Criminology which identifies the political economy as the source of criminal law, and Critical Sociology which examines society to promote change. The Frankfurt School influenced Critical Sociology by questioning major trends in modern life like authority, power, and their effects on institutions and attitudes.
The Chicago Perspective focused on delinquency and crime in Chicago, claiming these behaviors were normal responses to abnormal social conditions like dilapidation, poverty, and cultural mixing. This became known as Social Disorganization Theory. The Critical Perspective holds that understanding deviance requires examining the political process and role of elites. It incorporates Societal Reaction Theory, emphasizing how societies label and punish "outsiders", Radical Criminology which identifies the political economy as the source of criminal law, and Critical Sociology which examines society to promote change. The Frankfurt School influenced Critical Sociology by questioning major trends in modern life like authority, power, and their effects on institutions and attitudes.
Why name the Perspective Chicago? Critical Perspective
- The Chicago School needed answer for its exponentially - Holds the study of the political process is central to growing problem of delinquency and crime. Thus, this became understanding deviance and social and notrol, this a primary focus in the city of Chicago. emphasizes the role of elites and historical change. - The critical perspective in deviance and social control is a Chicago Perspective blend of three approaches: societal reaction theory, radical - By Clifford Shaw and Henry D. Mckay criminology, and critical sociology. - Also known as Social Disorganization Theory - This perspective claimed that delinquency was not caused at Societal Reaction Theory the individual level, but was considered to be normal response - People are not born “deviant”, whatever their physical, mental, of normal individual to abnormal social conditions. and moral characteristics. - There was an indirect loss in the ability to act communally and - The social definitions and systematic ways society punishes individuals exhibited unrestricted freedom to express their and excludes those it defines as “different” marks such dispositions and desires, often resulting in delinquent individuals and group as outsiders. behaviors. - This approach focuses attention on the sources of official labeling (in society, organizations, or small groups) and the Social Disorganization Theory consequences of labeling for deviant and society. - This is the consequences of a community’s inability to realize - It urges sociologist to take the side of oppressed persons and common values and to solve the problems of its resident , groups, who are seen as needing the protection of the law resulting in the breakdown of effective social control within against a discriminatory welfare and justice system. that community, - It sometimes views state officials who “manufacture” and “process” deviants as more culpable than the deviants they punish Shaw and McKay noted that neighborhoods with highest crime rates - It’s perspective toward social control is that regulatory have at least three (3) common problems: institutions and organizations engage in excessive 1. Physical Dilapidation deviantizing. 2. Poverty - It urges there is an “over production” of deviant categories and 3. Higher level of ethnic and culture mixing persons (Spitzer) and an overuse of the criminal sanction (packer) Radical Criminology prejudice and discrimination, and the problems of - Radical criminology goes beyond societal reaction theory by values in mass culture. identifying the political economy as the source of criminal law One criticism of the Frankfurt school was its tendency deviant labeling. toward simplistic or unitary explanations, where a - Radical criminologists have shown how political and economic single cause is claimed to be the source of social institutions have increasingly become fused into a single disruption. In these analyses society becomes all power system. powerful and the autonomy of the individual - Radical criminology also emphasizes race, class, ethnic, age, disappears. gender, and other significant social differences in the deviantizing process. Marxian Influences - It sees juvenile delinquency as a special case of status based - Critical theorists have honored Marxist theory for its analysis on age grading. of early, entrepreneurial capitalism. However, they questioned - Punishment focuses on minorities, and on children of the poor Marxism’s application to today’s society, which they call and of single mothers. advanced capitalism. - Marx and Engels emphasized that ideology was embedded in Critical Sociology all social institutions, or organizational doctrines, and human - Critical Sociology is an approach to sociology that examines sentiments. But their approach had been too deterministic. society and seeks to change it. - Critical Sociologists, by contrast, consider the conditions under which oppressed groups either comply or revolt. In FRANKFURT SCHOOL considering how power elites stabilize and maintain Critical Sociology traces its tradition to Frankfurt school themselves, critical thinkers discovered the role of cooptation. in Germany. This process is the integration of political minorities into the As early as 1920s, a group of scholars gathered to leadership or policy-making structure without essentially address what they perceived as the major trends and altering the system. dislocations in modern life. The Frankfurt School was a group of scholars known for developing critical theory and popularizing the dialectical method of learning by interrogating society’s contradictions. Taking society as the unit of study, they raised intriguing questions about the nature of authority and power, and how these shaped social institutions and organizations as well as personal sentiments (Arato & Gebhardt) Their approach was twofold. First, they emphasized changes in legal political, and economic onstituions. Second, they examined social attitudes toward