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The sociology of punishment seeks to understand why and how we punish. Punishment involves the intentional infliction of pain and/or the deprivation of rights and liberties. . Sociologists of punishment usually examine state-sanctioned acts in relation to law-breaking; for instance, why citizens give consent to the legitimation of acts of viole
Punishment and Social Structure (1939), a book written by Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer, is the seminal Marxian analysis of punishment as a social institution. [1] It represents the "most sustained and comprehensive account of punishment to have emerged from within the Marxist tradition" and "succeeds in opening up a whole vista of understanding which simply did not exist before it was ...
This theory is applied to a variety of approaches within the bases of criminology in particular and in sociology more generally as a conflict theory or structural conflict perspective in sociology and sociology of crime. As this perspective is itself broad enough, embracing as it does a diversity of positions.
A sociological theory is a supposition that intends to consider, analyze, and/or explain objects of social reality from a sociological perspective, [1]: 14 drawing connections between individual concepts in order to organize and substantiate sociological knowledge.
The notion of social structure is intimately related to a variety of central topics in social science, including the relation of structure and agency. The most influential attempts to combine the concept of social structure with agency are Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory. Giddens emphasizes the ...
Critical criminologists assert that how crime is defined is socially and historically contingent, that is, what constitutes a crime varies in different social situations and different periods of history. The conclusion that critical criminological theorists draw from this is that crime is socially constructed by the state and those in power. [8]
Another early form of the theory was proposed by Reiss (1951) [3] who defined delinquency as, "...behavior consequent to the failure of personal and social controls." ." Personal control was defined as, "...the ability of the individual to refrain from meeting needs in ways which conflict with the norms and rules of the community" while social control was, "...the ability of social groups or ...
In the fields of sociology and criminology, strain theory is a theoretical perspective that aims to explain the relationship between social structure, social values or goals, and crime. Strain theory was originally introduced by Robert King Merton (1938), and argues that society's dominant cultural values and social structure causes strain ...