A Jeanne Site
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: May 6, 2000
jeanne
Susan
On Violent Neighborhoods
In the last week of April 2000, I put up the OJJDP publication, Violent Neighborhoods, Violent Kids, with a couple of Pass or Prepared?s that linked the publication to several classes. Tuesday morning, May 2, I put up a new Pass or Prepared? linked to a practical understanding of how the report uses pretty graphs in a way that makes the data look far more sophisticated than it is, and limits the graphics and the tables to frequencies, when we have lots of questions about the relationships between variables (crosstabs), which are only briefly explained in words, lost in the report. Of particular concern to me was the statement on athletics as not being an effective afterschool supervised activity because as many not "good" kids took part in athletics as "good" kids. First, we were angry about the labellng of kids as "good" kids.
Theory on Labeling:
(See, Edwin Schur, "An Overview of Labeling Theory," in Readings in Juvenile Delinquency, by Joseph Weis, Robert Crutchfield, and George Bridges, Pine Forge Press, 1996. ISBN: 0-8039-9079-0:Schur quotes Howard Becker:
"Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying these rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders . . . The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label."Look at Becker's statement carefully in Pass or Prepared? on Labeling Theory
See also: Sociological Theories of Deviance. Associate Dean John Hamlin's Homepage, University of Minnesota at Duluth. If you're interested in theory, this is a good source.
On the Penal System, Racism, Justice
Keith brought up an actual incident with the penal system this week.
On Performance and WSSA in San Diego
We shared our perceptions of the performances at the Western Social Science Association Meetings in San Diego last week. Because of the way the meetings were set, CSUDH and UWP students were doing whole sessions, three formally listed in the program, and one impromptu one in the patio outside the meeting rooms, as well as lunch for all of us together in the Sports Bar. We also attended together a panel session, chaired by Peter Heller, on critical sociology and Marxism. We have a lot to tell you about that session.