1. One page for each question.
Getting Played book
What is feminist about Getting Played, and how does it achieve the feminist agenda in criminology?
Punished book
What is meant by the term “hyper-criminalization,” and how does it related to the “youth control complex?”
2.Paper on Getting Played and Punished
Using the ideas in Punished and Getting Played explain which one of these kinds of scholarship (specifically feminist scholarship, or more general critical scholarship) you like the best in terms of
1) being interesting;
2) being useful in creating social policy; and
3) useful for students of criminology}.
Start with a brief comparison of feminist theory and critical criminology (about one page, most) and then offer you views as to which is best about two pages.
3. Final paper3-2-1
For Athens, Miller and Rios
1. Three things you learned about criminological analysis/theory/concepts
2. Two things that shocked you about the lives and behaviors of criminals and victims of crime
3. One thing you find interesting in any one of the books, and how would you would go about researching it using either positivist, interactionist (situational), feminist or critical reasoning.
Lonnie Athens’ Violent criminals act and actions: book
Essentialism is a major assumption of the positivists. This idea is that the deviant is different from the non-deviant due to some essential qualities (low IQ, bad parents; low self-control…). It is assumed that all deviants possess a quality that differentiates them.
Lombroso: Atavism determined criminality
Hooten, Dugdale, etc.: Feeblemindedness
Sociological Postivism: Social Ecology
In the past the essential quality of the deviant has been defective genes, low intelligence, poverty, alienation, etc. The study by Pittman and Handy is an example of finding the essential qualities of violence in a variety of places such as prior criminal record, time of day or use of weapons.
Athens is very concerned that this gives us the wrong ideas about the causes of violence.
In reading the book it’s clear that Athens’ feels that his work has been ignored and even ridiculed, and he is right. He has not conformed to some of the major principles of positivist research (as is taught in most research methods classes) and he has been outspoken in his view that conventional criminology has failed to reduce violent crime.
Further, he subtly attacks the major criminologists for being stuck in their methodological ways, mostly due to inertia and the desire to curry favor with policy makers.
Finally, he believes, as do I, that criminology fails to appreciate the constructed nature of social life, and relies instead on a view of human behavior that assumes humans are merely reactive agents who must confront social forces.
This preoccupation with finding patterns and “typical cases” gives criminology its character, but as Athens points out, does little to help us reduce violence.
The same can be said about the research on personality types associated with violence, although it’s less convincing.
Finally, he is critical of the view that divergent factors that are causally connected produce violence.
Causality is a crucial term in social science, and finding the cause or causes of behavior has been unsuccessful. Most social scientists choose to look for “risk factors” that compel behavior rather than looking for a “cause.” In any case Athens is saying we need a new framework or paradigm to understand violence and he suggests the interpretative approach.
He says that the major shortcomings of positivism is that it ignores situated action and based on interpretations, and the assumption that humans are a “neutral medium” for the operation of antecedent factors on behavior.
The interpretative approach assumes that humans are in a process of becoming who they are and they are objects, that is, that they have a self-image.
Self-image is produced when we, beginning as children, look at ourselves and define who we are. Some people want to be jocks, others gangsters.
This is part of what is referred to as the generalized other, the common image and understanding of the attitudes of a particular social type. Mostly we get an idea of what the generalized other is through the life experiences, the media and literature. By watching TV we get a sense of the American dad, or the typical problems in high school. We develop an idea of what the most beautiful girls look like and how to behave when you want to appear cool.The generalized other is the exemplar of the typical man, teen, bad ass, cop, sorority member, math teacher, angry driver, beaten down schmuck, etc.When someone tells you to act cool, the image you try to portray is the generalized other. Mead says that children develop an understanding of the generalized other in play. When children play house, or doctor if you are so lucky, they are expressing their image of what a mother, father or doctor is – an image they gained through experience and culture.
People are able to recreate these self-images by seeing themselves as objects – in mirrors or by comparing themselves to their reference group or popular cultural images. This self-image is projected to others who respond to the image. For example, a group of kids who look like they are from a gang movie might make a person cross the street to avoid them, thus validating that self-image.
Lonnie Athens’ Four StageViolentization Process
“Violentization” is analogous to “socialization,” i.e., people become the kind of people they are as a result of social experiences. Some of these are “consequential and unforgettable;” “have a lasting impact;” leave “a permanent mark...regardless of their wishes.”
“The significant experiences which make people dangerous violent criminals do not occur all at once...but...gradually over time.” It is “a developmental process with discernible stages.” It is not inevitable, not all who start the process finish it.
The four stages of the Violentization Process are:
Brutalization: includes three elemental experiences: violent Subjugation; personal horrification; violent coaching. All three add up to coarse and cruel treatment by others with lasting and dramatic impacts.
Belligerency: desperate to do something about the violent treatment, the decision is made to resort to violence if necessary to stop the treatment. The person resolves to use “serious violence” if provoked and if it has a chance of success.
Violent Performances: This is the transition from a resolution to use violence to its actual use. This is a crucial phase: “Intentionally injuring another human being gravely for the very first time in one’s life is not as casual a matter as those who have not seriously contemplated, much less performed, such action might believe.”Its easy to go there.
Virulency: A readiness to use extreme violence to attack another with minimal or no provocation. Sometimes referred to as the Defensive Worldview.
Six traits to the defensive worldview are:
•Vulnerability
•Need for self protection
•Trust no one
•Maintain social distance
•Threat and use of violence
•Attraction to similarly defensive people
•Don’t expect help
As Athens says, “Not poverty or genetic inheritance or psychopathology but violentization is the cause of criminal violence.”
What are the components of the interpretative approach?
1.Self
oAs process
oAs object
oThese are connected by the generalized other
2.Self conversations
4 features
- Quickly take role of the other and indicate in a way that communicates intentions and possibility
- This is also a conversation with oneself, clarifying and organizing a series of responses to various cues
- Sensations, or ideas about situations quickly become attached to some emotional state that may inhibit or accentuate various interpretations of the situation
- In making intentions, we make them from the perspective of the generalized other, which insures that the intention is made in a socially and culturally understandable way.
•Defensive world view
Some individuals in society live in social worlds with a great number of dangerous situations, and this influences how they view reality. This social ethic of “dog eat dog” (Hobbes) is called the Defensive World View.
chapter 4
Two phases in the definition of the situation
▪Definition
▪Judgment
Socio-cultural linguistics
Social-cultural vocabulary
Social life in intimate or small-scale group settings creates opportunities for many short cuts through social interaction. We learn how to quickly make a point, show approval of disapproval, or initiate or end an interaction often times without using words. Consider the dirty look a mother gives a misbehaving child. This “language” is referred to as Socio-Cultural Linguistics. Criminals, tough guys, and their victims know this language and how to use it. It’s a way of communicating. The way to respond is determined by the Socio-Cultural Vocabulary that provides a set of ready-made responses to challenges or apologies. So when a person is having a self-conversation, he is employing a wide range of factors that are commonly known within that social world or social setting.
Judgments in this context involve what is called the generalized other
Generalized Other (is mutable): Term used to describe a generic type. For example, when someone mentions the words police officer people have a general idea of what this type of person is, does, and a variety of other characteristics and features associated with police officers. Dad, priest, criminal, and child are understood first from the perspective of the generalized other. We can imagine talking to each of the people mentioned above and how they would respond to us. We can imagine how we would look to them and how they would understand us (self as object) and can imagine adjusting our presentation of self accordingly.
When we interact with people, our understanding of them, based on the generalized other, is the initial step to a plan of action.
In his study he found that violent actors will interpret a situation and that interpretation is the motivation for the violence, and that violent actors assumed the attitude of their victim and implicitly or explicitly indicated the meaning of the victims gestures, and they used the generalized other to determine what the ought to do.
The consciously create a violent plan of action, which contradicts other social science thinking on violence (32-3)
There are four types of interpretationsof the situation
4 types of interpretations of the situation
1.Physically defensive -- commonly used by incipiently violent and non-violent individuals.
§Two essential steps: take the attitude of the victim to understand the meaning of his gestures and take the attitude of his generalized other to determine how he “ought” to respond. Case 18
§Notice his commentary on victim precipitation (34-5); four ways to view victim precipitation; his critique of Wolfgang’s positivist definition
§
2.Frustrative -- commonly used by incipiently nonviolent self-images.
▪Two steps – take the attitude of the victim to determine compliance or resistance and to determine his course of action, frustration forces a violent plan of action. Case 49
3. Malefic -- three step process
- Assume the attitude of the victim to understand the victim’s gestures
- Perpetrator implicitly or explicitly indicates to self the victim is evil and a bad person
- Indicate to self that he “ought” to act because violence is the most fitting way to handle the evil person
4. Frustrative-Malefic Interpretations
Combined both types.
Three step process
- Assume the attitude of the victim toindicate to self that the victim gestures indicate either resistance to his line of action, or that the victim is the victim wants to do something the perpetrator wants to do
- Assuming the attitude of the generalized other indicates to self that the victim is pissing him off and needs a good ass licking
- Violence is necessary and a violent plan of action is created
Chapter 5
Fixed lines of indication (“call out”)
violent person continues to make a violent plan of action leading to a physical attack and fails to take other mattes into account, violence begins immediately or makes the plan nurture (tunnel vision based on his impression that the generalized other would respond violently)
Restraining Judgment
violent person breaks out of the fixed line of indication and decides to do something different by redefining the situation and making a new judgment (fear of failure or change in the other person's behavior, violence may harm or destroy a social relationship, friendship or marriage, deference, or fear of legal consequences). Dispels the idea that violence is an "act of passion."
Overriding Judgment
individual breaks out of the fixed line of indication for a moment or not. but if a violent interpretation persists he may redefine the situation. Essentally he does a slow motion reveiw. The major reason why the violence occurd is because in redefining the situation he decides the victims' behavior is intolerable and its a violence at all costs decision.
Chapter 6
Violent Self-Images: I have a violent disposition and everybody knows it
Incipiently Violent Self-Images: Seen by others are violent based on obvious features of their personality or characteristics, but not always ready to be violent (don’t piss him off, too much; or I can sometimes be violent, but I need a push); guy is more show than go.
Non-violent Self-Images: either too good a nature, or too lazy or too scared to be violent.
What he does in chapters 6 and 7 is to illustrate the ways in which humans are proactive agents, who construct meaning and interpret the impact of social forces and others’ behaviors.
Violent actors who commit substantially violent acts are divided into three categories, violent, incipiently violent and nonviolent. Athens’ view is that the self image of a person will be congruent with how he or she interprets a situation, taking into account how he perceives others see him and his data confirm this.
Each violent act, by each type of actor (violent, incipiently violent, and nonviolent) was related to a specific interpretation of the situation (as described in chapter 4).
Those having violent self images are likely to interpret a wider range of situations as requiring a violent response, thereby illustrating and confirming their violent disposition and personal attributes.
Chapter 7 presents a good analysis of the relationship between self image and interpretations.
1 Violent Actors
•seen by others as having a violent disposition
•salient violence related personal attributes
2 Incipiently Violent Self Images
•salient violence related personal attributes
•willingness to make serious threats of violence
•seen as being “more show than go”
3 Nonviolent Self Images
•Rarest among the three types
•not seen by others and self as having violent dispositions
•not seen as having salient violence related personal attributes
Chapter 8
Three types of careers
- Stable violent: stable career, same self image and violent periods over entire life
- Two types, stable violent (case 56) and stable nonviolent (explained on page 71), and perhaps a stable marginally violent type (71)
- Escalating violent: self image and violent periods become progressively more violent
- Two subtypes of these careers: fully escalating and partially escalating (80-81)
- De-escalating violent: progressively less violent self image and violent periods.
- Two subtypes fully de-escalating and partially de-escalating (91)
- Most violent offenders have either fully or partially de-escalating careers (91)
Three critical features
•Self image
•Violent periods in life
•Correlation between self image and types of violent periods
Chapter 9
Major and minor conclusions
5 minor conclusions
2 major conclusions
Role of the generalized other
Chapter 10
In this chapter he recounts the difficulties he experienced in getting his work taken seriously. He notes that the "interpretative" approach to studying crime was unknown at the time. The last paragraph is important, and get to his problems in the profession.
Chapter 11
Positivism versus Interpretivism
6 significant differences
- differ on the presumed source of crimnal behavior
- differ in terms of the attitudes that the researcher assume toward their subject matter
- differ in terms of the kinds of concepts used to study crime
- differ as to the models of causality
- differ with respect to their views of the criminal
- differ with respect to the preferred modes of intellectual production
Chapter 12
Autobiographical information and criticism of his approach
Chapter 13
His previous research and the literature (Hans Toch)
Toch’s analysis
2 basic personality types (with subtypes)
•Inadequate personality (5 subtypes)
•Warped personality (4 subtypes)
Why Toch’s analysis is not interpretivism
Example of positivism on pages 129 and 142
Athens’ emphasis on choice and variations in violent criminals (130)
Unanswered questions
Women
Chapter 14
Good summary of his findings
Generalized other versus phantom communities
Chapter 15
Five Brute Facts
- there is more than one type of violent crime exists
- there is more than one type of violent criminal
- there are different types of violent criminals who are capable of engaging in different types of violent criminal acts
- violent criminals and acts are not evenly spread across the social landscape but tend to pop up in certain places
- violent criminal acts and actors may change over time by becoming more or less violent.
Getting Played by Jody Miller:
Overview Getting Played
GETTING PLAYED OVERVIEW
From the Foreword
African American girls are an understudied group and when studied its centered on explaining their criminal involvement.
This is because criminologists fail to “take gender seriously as a structural, interactional and symbolic source of inequality.” (2)
She takes a critical perspective (as opposed to positivist or interpretative) “A consistent goal has been to make it evident that violence against women is every woman’s problem – and every man’s problem – that, in fact, it has its roots in social organization and culture.” (2)
One of the key features of critical criminology is the emphasis on crime as a problem of social organization, social values and political culture.