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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
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.
Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena. [1] A tool used by social scientists, social theories relate to historical debates over the validity and reliability of different methodologies (e.g. positivism and antipositivism), the primacy of either structure or agency, as well as the relationship between contingency and necessity.
Manifest functions are the consequences that people see, observe or even expect. It is explicitly stated and understood by the participants in the relevant action. The manifest function of a rain dance, according to Merton in his 1957 Social Theory and Social Structure, is to produce rain, and this outcome is intended and desired by people participating in the ritual.
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 ...
This theory, while very much a symbolic interactionist theory, also has elements of conflict theory, as the dominant group has the power to decide what is deviant and acceptable and enjoys the power behind the labeling process. An example of this is a prison system that labels people convicted of theft, and because of this they start to view ...
Punishment can be explained by positive prevention theory to use the criminal justice system to teach people what are the social norms for what is correct, and acts as a reinforcement. Punishment can serve as a means for society to publicly express denunciation of an action as being criminal.
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 ...