(no subject)
Jun. 19th, 2006 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThe 'crime and deviance' chapter starts out interesting.
definitions: deviance is any departure from norms / expectations / values of a particular society.
So, Jesus was a deviant.
Functionalist theory, Durkheim, reckons a certain amount of deviance is useful/essential. Because socities need to change, and if everyone is doing the same (no deviance) then there is no change.
Also says punishment can't squish crime totally for deviance that is criminal and deviance that is, say, abolishing slavery, all the same thing is to the mechanism and too much punishment makes for dysfunctional no change no growing society.
It seems to me there has to be holes to poke in that.
But it is past 9 at night and I'm not feeling very poke-y.
I guess it goes back to values ie value of human life. Trying to make it so people don't kill people seems like a pretty good start. But it means squishing free will in particular ways. And squishing the idea that some people need killing. Which... is a very big argument. You get everything from Jains that try not to step on bugs right up to people who think killing criminals is helpful.
I don't think my brain can keep up with that argument tonight.
Though with vampires the argue comes back to resources. If you can put them all in nice safe padded rooms, you don't have to kill them.
Methods of squishing deviance but still allowing change... tricksy.
Leaving people alive to have thoughts seems like a good start.
I think I'll go to bed now. Read more big thinking tomorrow.
definitions: deviance is any departure from norms / expectations / values of a particular society.
So, Jesus was a deviant.
Functionalist theory, Durkheim, reckons a certain amount of deviance is useful/essential. Because socities need to change, and if everyone is doing the same (no deviance) then there is no change.
Also says punishment can't squish crime totally for deviance that is criminal and deviance that is, say, abolishing slavery, all the same thing is to the mechanism and too much punishment makes for dysfunctional no change no growing society.
It seems to me there has to be holes to poke in that.
But it is past 9 at night and I'm not feeling very poke-y.
I guess it goes back to values ie value of human life. Trying to make it so people don't kill people seems like a pretty good start. But it means squishing free will in particular ways. And squishing the idea that some people need killing. Which... is a very big argument. You get everything from Jains that try not to step on bugs right up to people who think killing criminals is helpful.
I don't think my brain can keep up with that argument tonight.
Though with vampires the argue comes back to resources. If you can put them all in nice safe padded rooms, you don't have to kill them.
Methods of squishing deviance but still allowing change... tricksy.
Leaving people alive to have thoughts seems like a good start.
I think I'll go to bed now. Read more big thinking tomorrow.