Author Topic: // , Tierney, J. (2010). Criminology: Theory and context.  (Read 1823 times)

dismalscience

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  // , I stole this book, and enjoyed its contents.

I think the section that compared the Chicago school to the work of Emile Durkheim, widely considered the founder of Sociology, appeals naturally to the Mustacheans.

When I read about "Tiny Detail Exaggeration Syndrome" I thought of Durkheim's "Society of Saints" analogy from that part of the book.

I recommend it to anyone who has ever scratched their head and wondered why some things are crimes (or "crimes") and others are not.

A WorldCat.org link URI to this title in the 6th edition follows:

        http://www.worldcat.org/title/criminology-theory-and-context/oclc/968551840

"In the first place crime is normal because a society exempt from it is utterly impossible. Crime, we have shown elsewhere, consists of an act that offends certain very strong collective sentiments. In a society in which criminal acts are no longer committed, the sentiments they offend would have to be found without exception in all individual consciousness, and they must be found to exist with the same degree as sentiments contrary to them. Assuming that this condition could actually be realized, crime would not thereby disappear; it would only change its form, for the very cause which would thus dry up the sources of criminality would immediately open up new ones....

Imagine a society of saints, a perfect cloister of exemplary individuals. Crimes, properly so called, will there be unknown, but faults which appear venial to the layman will create there the same scandal that the ordinary offense does in ordinary consciousness. If, then, this society has the power to judge and punish, it will define these acts as criminal and will treat them as such. For the same reason, the perfect and upright man judges his smaller failings with a severity that the majority reserve for acts more truly in the nature of an offense. Formerly, acts of violence against persons were more frequent than they are today, because respect for individual dignity was less strong. As this has increased, these crimes have become more rare; and also, many acts violating this sentiment have been introduced into the penal law which were not included there in primitive times.2

In order to exhaust all the hypotheses logically possible, it will perhaps be asked why this unanimity does not extend to all collective sentiments without exception. Why should not even the most feeble sentiment gather enough energy to prevent all dissent? The moral consciousness of the society would be present in its entirety in all the individuals, with a vitality sufficient to prevent all acts offending it--the purely conventional faults as well as the crimes. But a uniformity so universal and absolute is utterly impossible; for the immediate physical milieu in which each one of us is placed, the hereditary antecedents, and the social influences vary from one individual to the next, and consequently diversify consciousness. It is impossible for all to be alike, if oniy because each one has his own organism and that these organisms occupy different areas in space. That is why even among the lower peoples, .where individual originality is very little developed, it nevertheless does exist.

Thus, since there cannot be a society in which the individuals do not differ more or less from the collective type, it is also inevitable that, among these divergences, there are some with a criminal character. What confers this charcter upon them is not the intrinsic quality of a given act but that definition which the collective conscience lends them. If the collective conscience is stronger, if it has enough authority practically to suppress these divergences, it will also be more sensitive, more exacting, and, reacting against the slightest deviations with the energy it otherwise displays only against more considerable infractions, it will attribute to them the same gravity as formerly to crimes. In other words, it will designate them as criminal."

        https://www.d.umn.edu/~bmork/2111/readings/durkheimrules.htm

I wonder how we might continue the sentence, "Imagine a society of Mustacheans...", and what such a society might consider criminal.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2017, 04:32:26 PM by dismalscience »

 

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