Conflict in our society is nothing new. It has been around for centuries and encompasses every facet of life. Within the past few years in the U.S. there has been an apparent rise in instances of police brutality towards American citizens, particularly its citizens of color. Advances in technology have helped push this issue to the forefront and for what feels like for the first time, these instances are getting the attention and discussions they deserve. Though these instances being brought to light, our society seem to be shifting in a way that is starting to question the actions of police and the legality of the use of force they employ. With the overwhelming number of acts that have been caught on camera by citizens, another shift is occurring
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This ‘crime’ is not a phenomenon that can be easily defined according to an objective set of criteria. Instead, what a particular state, government or a collection of social forces defines as a ‘crime’ in any society or historical period will expose the interests and influences that are present by such forces during that time. Conventional theories of criminology typically regard crime as the product of either ‘moral’ failing on the part of the people who are labeled as “criminal”, genetic or biological tendencies towards criminality possessed by such people, “social injustice” or “abuse” to which the criminal has previously experiences, or any combination of these (Agnew and Cullen, 2006). All of these theories regard the “criminal as deviant,” a perspective offered by authorities as inherently legitimate, though they may differ in their assessments of the matter of how such “deviants” …show more content…
C. Wright Mills is considered to be the father of modern conflict theory, with others such as Lewis Coser and George Simmel adding their own views on conflict theory later on. However, one piece that I find quite important in the examination of conflict theory is from Max Weber titled Class, Power, and Status. In this book, Weber observed that social hierarchies are embedded not only in material relationships of the kind critiqued by Marxists, but also in the relationship of power and status that aren’t able to be defined as purely material or economic in nature. Several concepts claimed by Weber are particularly important to a conflict theorist’s analysis of what is considered a crime. One of these is formal rationality, or the view that the modern Western orientation towards the power of reason and efficiency has produced a situation where the means to achieve this reason are separated from the ends. Simplifying the statement above, you have to have a goal and you take rational steps, based on past experiences observations or logic, to attain a goal. Efforts for the rational management of society through scientific principles have generated an almost permanent, self-perpetuating government that operates on the basis of this formal rationality. Furthermore, Weber created the definition of the modern state
This ‘crime’ is not a phenomenon that can be easily defined according to an objective set of criteria. Instead, what a particular state, government or a collection of social forces defines as a ‘crime’ in any society or historical period will expose the interests and influences that are present by such forces during that time. Conventional theories of criminology typically regard crime as the product of either ‘moral’ failing on the part of the people who are labeled as “criminal”, genetic or biological tendencies towards criminality possessed by such people, “social injustice” or “abuse” to which the criminal has previously experiences, or any combination of these (Agnew and Cullen, 2006). All of these theories regard the “criminal as deviant,” a perspective offered by authorities as inherently legitimate, though they may differ in their assessments of the matter of how such “deviants” …show more content…
C. Wright Mills is considered to be the father of modern conflict theory, with others such as Lewis Coser and George Simmel adding their own views on conflict theory later on. However, one piece that I find quite important in the examination of conflict theory is from Max Weber titled Class, Power, and Status. In this book, Weber observed that social hierarchies are embedded not only in material relationships of the kind critiqued by Marxists, but also in the relationship of power and status that aren’t able to be defined as purely material or economic in nature. Several concepts claimed by Weber are particularly important to a conflict theorist’s analysis of what is considered a crime. One of these is formal rationality, or the view that the modern Western orientation towards the power of reason and efficiency has produced a situation where the means to achieve this reason are separated from the ends. Simplifying the statement above, you have to have a goal and you take rational steps, based on past experiences observations or logic, to attain a goal. Efforts for the rational management of society through scientific principles have generated an almost permanent, self-perpetuating government that operates on the basis of this formal rationality. Furthermore, Weber created the definition of the modern state