Group items tagged

Music training enhances a brain function that dies away.  Studies show that early experiences of childhood determine which brain cells (neurons) will connect with other brain cells, and which ones will die away. Because neural connections are responsible for all types of intelligence, a child’s brain develops to its full potential only with exposure to the necessary music enriching experiences in early childhood. (Music Beats Computers at Enhancing Early Childhood Development, American Music Conference via PR NEWSWIRE: Neurological Research, February 1997)

Music achieves non-musical positive effects.  It has been shown that children develop faster socially, mentally, and even physically when exposed to music in their early childhood. "Thus, it appears that music studied for good and sufficient reasons for its own sake has beneficial ‘side effects’ on cognition." (Rausher, F.H.,Shaw G.I., Levine, L.J., Ky, K.N. & Wright, E.I. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, Los Angeles, CA., August 13, 1994.)

“This has major policy implications for federal, state, and local agencies, as well as knowledge that can help families allocate resources that are most beneficial to children.”

Quick thinking, making fast analysis and decisions

Strategy and anticipation

Developing reading and math skills

Perseverance

Memory                o    Reasoned judgments               

Estimating skills                o    Inductive reasoning and hypothesis testing

Mapping

Pattern recognition

Teamwork and cooperation when played with others

Simulation, real world skills

Too much video game playing makes your kid socially isolated.  Also, he may spend less time in other activities such as doing homework, reading, sports, and interacting with the family and friends.   Video games do not exercise your kid’s imaginative thinking.  Using imagination may be important in developing creativity.   Some video games teach kids the wrong values.  Violent behavior, vengeance and aggression are rewarded.  Negotiating and other nonviolent solutions are often not options.  Women are often portrayed as weaker characters that are helpless or sexually provocative.    Games can confuse reality and fantasy. Academic achievement may be negatively related to over-all time spent playing video games. Studies have shown that the more time a kid spends playing video games, the poorer is his performance in school.  (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Gentile, Lynch & Walsh, 2004) Video games may also have bad effects on some children’s health, including obesity, video-induced seizures. and postural, muscular and skeletal disorders, such as tendonitis, nerve compression, carpal tunnel syndrome. When playing online, your kid can pick up bad language and behavior from other people, and may make your kid vulnerable to online dangers.

Cesare Lombroso

positivist criminology who thought he had isolated specific physiological characteristics of “degeneracy”

James Fallon

lack of brain activity has been linked with specific genetic markers

environment, and not just genes

psychopathy and sociopathy are recognized as problematic forms of deviance because of prevalent social anxieties about serial killers as types of criminal who “live next door” or blend in.

deviance is a violation of established contextual, cultural, or social norms, whether folkways, mores, or codified law

Folkways

Mores

laws are norms that are specified in explicit codes and enforced by government bodies

rime is therefore an act of deviance that breaks not only a norm, but a law. Deviance can be as minor as picking one’s nose in public or as major as committing murder.

Firstly, deviance is defined by its social context. To understand why some acts are deviant and some are not, it is necessary to understand what the context is, what the existing rules are, and how these rules came to be established

Whether an act is deviant or not depends on society’s definition of that act

deviance is not an intrinsic (biological or psychological) attribute of individuals, nor of the acts themselves, but a product of social processes.

moral entrepreneurs

individuals’ deviant status is ascribed to them through social processes

even when these beliefs about kinds of persons are products of objective scientific classification, the institutional context of science and expert knowledge is not independent of societal norms, beliefs, and practices

social control,

organized action intended to change people’s behaviour

maintain social order,

enforcing rules are through sanctions

Positive

Negative

formal or informal

Formal sanctions

Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532),

It was not, however, until the 19th century and the invention of modern institutions like the prison, the public school, the modern army, the asylum, the hospital, and the factory, that the means for extending government and social control widely through the population were developed.

disciplinary social control 

Foucault argues that the ideal of discipline as a means of social control is to render individuals docile.

The chief components of disciplinary social control in modern institutions like the prison and the school are surveillance, normalization, and examination

seeing machine.

rows of desks

one-way glass or video monitors.

normalization

examinations

disciplinary social control as a key mechanism in creating a normalizing society.

One way deviance is functional, he argued, is that it challenges people’s present views

which also contributes to society

crime is most likely to occur in communities with weak social ties and the absence of social control.

cial disorganization theor

A person is not born a criminal, but becomes one over time, often based on factors in his or her social environment.

Individuals who believe they are a part of society are less likely to commit crimes against it.

Attachment

Commitment

involvement,

belief,

studies have found that children from disadvantaged communities who attend preschool programs that teach basic social skills are significantly less likely to engage in criminal activity

strain theory

that access to socially acceptable goals plays a part in determining whether a person conforms or deviates.

Critical sociology looks to social and economic factors as the causes of crime and deviance.

but as evidence of inequality in the system.

accommodatio

consensus crimes

Conflict crime

Social deviations

The second sociological insight

secondary victimization

Women who are regarded as criminally deviant are often seen as being  doubly deviant. They have broken the laws but they have also broken gender norms about appropriate female behaviour, whereas men’s criminal behaviour is seen as consistent with their aggressive, self-assertive character

medicalize

n part the gender difference revolves around patriarchal attitudes toward women and the disregard for matters considered to be of a private or domestic nature

1970s, women worked to change the criminal justice system and establish rape crisis centres and battered women’s shelters, bringing attention to domestic violence.

Interestingly women and men report similar rates of spousal violence

more a result of differential socialization processes.

Labelling Theory

Labelling theory examines the ascribing of a deviant behaviour to another person by members of society.

not so much by the behaviours themselves or the people who commit them, but by the reactions of others to these behaviours.

Secondary deviance can be so strong that it bestows a master status on an individual

Primary deviance is a violation of norms that does not result in any long-term effects on the individual’s self-image or interactions with others

Secondary deviance occurs when a person’s self-concept and behaviour begin to change after his or her actions are labelled as deviant by members of society.

The criminal justice system is ironically one of the primary agencies of socialization into the criminal “career path.”

governments,

media

family

Durkheim argued that deviance, especially extreme forms are functional in that they challenge and offend the established norms in the larger collective conscience.

deviance reaffirms norms when the deviants are punished;

promotes solidarit

clear contrasting point of comparison

stimulates social change.

Extreme deviance does make us consider “normal” behavior on the personal and larger social level.

But, what if this distribution was not an indicat8ion of test scores, but rather the frequency of times potential roommates stole food from the private stashes of previous roommates? You’d clearly want a score closer to 0 than 80.

s homosexuality deviant or normal?”

ethnocentrism tends to burn cross-cultural bridges

shifting values.

ontributed to higher or lower levels of trust over time.

The point of this story is that in most social groups a beat down would be considered deviant. In a gang it’s very much normal. Yet, in this situation, not beating him down was deviant within his gang, yet a wise choice.

Absolutist Perspective claims that deviance resides in the very nature of an act and is wrong at all times and in all places.

Normative Perspective claims that deviance is only a violation of a specific group's or society's rules at a specific point in time

Reactive Perspective claims that behavior does not become deviant unless it is disapproved of by those in authority (laws

Stigma

Conformity

“random act of senseless kindness”

legal and normal

complies with group norms yet breaks the law, it’s called crime.

normal crime.

iolates norms and breaks the law, then it’s Deviant and Criminal behavior

issues of power and powerlessness. It’s about who has the power and how they attempt to force their values and rules upon those who don’t have it.

remember that Anomie is a state of social normlessness which occurs when our lives or society has vague norms)

disproportionately high level of non-whites who ended up among the 2006 1,570,861 incarcerated members of society

Labeling Theory claims

majority of US prisoners have been in prison before (perhaps 60-80%

Phrenology is an outdated scientific approach of studying the shape and characteristics of the skull.

White-Collar Crimes are crimes committed by persons of respectable and high social status committed in the course of their occupations.

Street Crimes are crimes

Organized Crime

Hate Crimes

Norm is a set of expected behaviors for a given role and social status.

Look at the diagram below.

Is a mean of 80 good or desirable?

Values also vary between groups

An absolutists would probably fall among the 1 in 4 who feel that abortion is always wrong, because it is an unacceptable act. A normative individual would consider the circumstances (rape, incest, diagnoses, or health of mother) while a reactive would consider the legality of abortion.

Attachments

Commitment

Involvement

Belief

Negative Sanctions are punishments or negative reactions toward deviance. Positive Sanctions are rewards for conforming behavior

Table 5. Robert Merton’s Five Goal—Means Gap Coping Strategies*** 1.