Explanations for Crime and Deviance: 3. Interactionism
A quick’n’dirty overview of the Interactionist perspective on crime and deviance. Two ideas closely associated with Interactionist approaches are those of deviance as both relative and socially constructed. Relativity refers to the idea that the same behaviour can be considered deviant in one context (or society) but non-deviant in another. A simple example here might […]
Explanations for Crime and Deviance: 2. New Right
In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a general political perception that the ‘fight against crime’ was not only being lost, but that attempts to explain and solve offending behaviours were largely ineffective. The best that could be done was to develop ways that limited the impact of crime on communities and this […]
Explanations for Crime and Deviance: 1. Functionalism
A short set of Notes covering a range of Functionalist explanations for crime and deviance, largely based around the concepts of anomie (both the Durkheimian and Mertonian interpretations) and Strain (Merton again plus Agnew’s General Strain Theory). There’s also a little bit of subcultural stuff thrown-in for good measure. Traditional Functionalism Functionalist approaches are based […]
Crime Trends and Patterns in England and Wales
A short set of Notes looking at crime trends and patterns in England and Wales over the past 50-odd years. While students don’t require a detailed factual knowledge of trends and patterns they do provide a useful introduction to the next set of Notes covering theoretical explanations for crime and deviance. One reason for measuring […]
Defining and Measuring Crime
Some Notes that have been hanging around on my hard drive doing nothing useful that I’ve finally got around to posting. There are plenty more where these came from but whether or not I’ll ever get around to digging them out is anyone’s guess. Defining Crime and Deviance Deviance ‘To deviate’ means ‘to stray from […]
The Psychology Teacher’s Resource Guide
The Resource Guide is a compendium of 50 “Standards-Based Lesson Plans” created by Amanda Vanderbur and aligned with the US National Standards for High School Psychology. These, as you might expect, have evolved somewhat between the year this Guide was published (2014) and the year in which this post was published (2024). If you’re an […]
A New Year and a New Resolution
Active Listening: The Film
More Classic Studies in Psychology
A set of 21 short commentaries on a range of psychological studies by an ex-A-level Examiner. I previously posted Tom Butler-Bowdon’s 50 Classic Studies in Psychology in which he provided a student-friendly commentary on said classic studies to save you the time and trouble of actually having to read the originals. So why, you might […]
Anchoring the Abstract: Curiosity
One of the things I’ve found students find difficult about subjects like Sociology is the frequently abstract nature of the ideas they’re being asked to understand and apply. Ideas that range from the relatively simple (socialisation, identity, culture…) to the not-quite-so-simple (positivism, postmodernism, methodology…) and the downright difficult (risk society, hegemony, autopoiesis …) And since […]
A Whole Bundle of Risk
I think it’s fair to say Beck’s concepts of Risk and Risk Society aren’t well-covered at A-level, partly because his ideas are difficult to get across to students and partly because, not to put too fine a point on things, they’re not easy to understand and encapsulate in a few pithy points. Be that as […]