sociology final.txt

- Belief that some variable controls social life.

- Individuals acting alone or with others shape, resist, challenge, and sometimes change the social organizations and the social institutions that impinge on them.

- Government in which the wealthy class rules

- Process of shifting federal programs to the states.

• 5. What is the politico-economic sytem of society and what causes it?
• - The system from which social problem emanate and is the result of historical events and conscious choices by political elites

- is about the way society should be designed; includes setting goals and determining the means to achieve them. Encompasses the idea that if social problems exist within a society the design can be changed to reduce or eliminate those problems

- social forces constrain what we do; however people are not totally controlled.

- Sociologist tend to be rejected by those in power because their perspective is subversive and they challenge the core of society�s dominant ideology.

• - Policies and behaviors that enhance our moral obligation to others
• - Government provision of benefits to people who cannot provide for themselves
• - A special commitment to all children to ensure health, safety, preparation for school, and equal funding for schools.
• - A redistribution of jobs and resources to economically troubled rural and urban locations
• - Addressing many problems with federal money, standards, and administration.

• - it would reserve the current trend toward greater inequality
• - it would make society more secure
• - it would promote social justice

- Although a progressive agenda would be very expensive it could be financed by reducing the military budget, eliminating corporate welfare and subsidies to the wealthy, using the budget surplus for social programs, and increasing tax revenues.

- From the bottom up; ie from individuals acting collectively with a plan and mobilizing for action.

- The knowledge (ideas, values, and beliefs) that the members of a social organization share

- The belief that nature is a vast and bountiful storehouse to be used by human beings.

• 15. Planned obsolescence
• - The manufacture of consumer goods designed to wear. Or existing products are given superficial changes and marketed as new, making the previous products out of date.

- The poor, because of dangerous jobs and residential segregation, are more exposed than the more well-to-do to environmental dangers.

- While the US accounts for only 4.5% of the worlds population we consume roughly 1/4th of the world�s resources and accounts for 1/4th of all greenhouse emissions

• - the cornucopia view of nature
• - faith in technology
• - the growth ethic
• - materialism
• - the belief in individualism

• - urbanization
• - the system of stratification
• - capitalism
• - the bias of the political system

• - to rely on the market place rather than on the government.
• 21. What are the two benefits that will occur if energy sources are in short and prices rise?
• - consumption will be reduced among those who cannot afford high prices.
• - Corporations and individuals will be motivated to search for new sources.

- it is based on government planning and control to reduce problems and promote conservation. This solution shares the burdens throughout the social strata and controls consumption to meet societal needs.

- Because of population growth, urbanization, expanding technology, and the lack of planning by nations individually and collectively.

• 24. What are the two levels of solution to dangers posed by critical environmental problems?
• - physical level: we need discoveries and inventions of nonpolluting technologies and renewable resources
• - social level: we need changes in the structural conditions responsible for these problems and the creation of new forms of transnational social organizations.

- An act that breaks the law

- An act of force perceived by the powerful as threatening to the status quo

- Acts that violate laws that enforce the morality of the majority

- Acts that violate moral order crimes; they may offend the majority, but they do not harm other people

- Deviant behavior that is a consequence of the self- fulfilling prophecy of a negative label.

- A business operation that seeks profit by supplying illegal goods and services

- Illicit acts that committed by middle class and middle upper class people in their business and social activities

- Illegal acts by business enterprises

- Illegal acts intended to influence the political system. Also, the abuse of authority by those in power. Finally, actions by governments that are illegal or immoral.

- The practice of targeting citizens for police encounters on the basis of race.

• 35. Bail
• - Posting of money by the accused to guarantee that he or she will be present in the trail.

- Arrangement between the prosecution and the accused where by the letter pleads guilty in return for a reduced charge.

- The US system of justice, whereby the state and the accused engage in a public battle to argue and provide evidence before an impartial judge or jury.

- By law, judges must incarcerate certain types of criminals

- For a given offense, a judge must impose a sentence that is within the guidelines of the law.

- employed at a level below that for which one has been trained.

- killing of a criminal by the state.

- Conditional release from prison in which the former prisoner remains under the supervision of a parole office

- Percentage of offenders who, after their treatment or punishment has ended, are arrested and convicted of new offenses

- A social status determined by how an individual is perceived, evaluated, and treated by legal authorities

- the law which is created by the powerful; therefore, it is innately political

- The focus on street crimes against people and property, omitting the white collar crimes, political crime, and organized crime.

• - More males than females commit crimes
• - Juveniles and young adults have the highest crime rate
• - Members of the lower classes and racial minorities are more likely to be criminal

• - they are impossible to enforce
• - they are costly to enforce and if legal they would bring in significant tax revenues
• - they make organized crime profitable
• - they contribute to the corruption of the police and courts.
• - Moreover victimless crimes are rarely victimless- they do harm people

- losses resulting from individual white collar crime amount to many times the monetary loss from street crimes, yet official agencies do not devote as much attention to white collar crimes, and the few criminals that are apprehended receive relatively light sentences.

• 50. What are the most dangerous and expensive crimes and why?
• - corporate crimes because they involve unsafe working conditions, pollution of the environment, unsafe products, and fraud.

• - acts that threaten the power structure
• - illegal acts by those in power

- Organized crime

• - the demand for illegal goods and services
• - corruption among the police and government officials
• - violence and intimidation
• - its well-organized operation at all levels

- Any substance that directly effects the brain or nervous system when ingested

- Chemical that heals a traumatized part of the body

- Chemical that improves performance

- public policy of stopping the flow of drugs into the united states by guarding the boarders and by curtailing the creation, processing, and distribution of drugs in other countries.

- moral panics occur when a social problem is defined as a threat to societal values and interest. Moral panics typically involve the exaggeration of a social problem; the public response to it is also exagerrated.

-politics- the exercise of power by interest groups and the majority to legislate their views on others; not thier potential for harm

• - members of the white working class on the west coast felt threatened by cheap chinese labor and sought coersive measures against those chinese.
• - religious groups interpreting opiate use as moral eveil mounted sucessful pressure.

- the harrison narcotics act of 1914, which established a narcotics division of the treasury department whose goal was to eliminate drug addiction. Behavior once considered a medical problem became a criminal one.

• - negative stereotypes held by the general public and efforts for control by interest groups and law inforcement professionals.
• What is the result of this?
• the result is that current drug laws are illogical. They are not related to the danger of the drugs but rather reflect the political interest of the powerful.

- about 1 billion per week.

- stopping drugs from coming into the country and punishing those who use and sell drugs. in large this war is unsuccessful

• - users often engage in criminal activity because the drugs, being illegal, are so expensive
• - punitive drug laws encourage organized crime by making importation, processing, and distribution of illegal drugs extremely lucrative.
• - people selling illicit drugs often corrupt the police.

• - blacks and latinos are over represented in the prison population for drug offenses given their numbers in the population and their drug usage stats.
• - although crack cocaine and powder cocaine are basically the same, the govt punishes the sellers of crack much more severly.
• - drug enforcement of crack and cocaine occurs almost exclusively in minority neighborhoods.
• - the courts tend to administer medical treatment for white drug dealers and the criminal justice system for black users.