Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Reflection: Saints and Roughnecks
In his essay The Saints and the Roughnecks William Chambliss examines a curious phenomenon in high school: while delinquent behavior was common among boys of various social classes at Hannibal High School, only the negative behaviors of the lower-class, less academically inclined boys was viewed as delinquent. The clean-cut, high-achieving so-called Saints often cut class early, hung out at pool halls, and, objectively speaking, engaged in more delinquent actions than the so-called Roughnecks who were lower class and did more poorly in school. But the Saints were viewed as fundamentally good boys who were going through a normal phase of life before they became upstanding members of the community, while the Roughnecks were viewed as inherently unredeemable individuals. This was even though the Saints catcalled women and engaged in vandalism of construction sites.
Reading the essay made me very angry. Chambliss, while not defending the discrepancy in attitude to the Saints and Roughnecks, argues that no one was seriously hurt by the Saints behavior. But drunk driving is now considered a very serious offense, and there is no way to know that the women the Saints sexually harassed were not psychologically harmed by what they were subjected to. Teachers admitted to give the Saints the benefit of the doubt, and thus all of the boys had relatively high GPAs, despite the fact they were truant and...…cars. They also may have had fewer places to go than the Saints. Again, the fact that they could be seen more frequently by authority figures engaged in delinquency increased the perceptions they were delinquent.
Both social conflict and symbolic-interaction perspectives underline the fact that it is not often objectively the harms of certain behaviors that result in the people who commit them from being stigmatized. In fact, so-called nice boys like the Saints may engage in very hurtful actions, and may actually not justify societys positive perceptions of them in work and school. From a social conflict perspective, society has been set up to validate their position already, and from a symbolic interaction perspective, authority figures are unable to…
References
Chambliss, W. J. (1973). The saints and the roughnecks. Society 11 (1) 24–31.
http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF03181016
Social-Conflict and Good Will Hunting Social-Conflict theory espouses the belief that that conflict is a basic aspect of life and can never be fully resolved. According to this approach formal agencies of social control merely coerce the disenfranchised to comply with the rules established by those in power. This paper will examine this perspective in light of the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting, written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and
" (Feste, 2004) The work of Crenshaw (1981) makes the suggestion that the occurrence of terrorism is most likely where the masses are passive and: elite dissatisfaction coincides; when discontent is not generalized or serious enough to provoke the majority of the population to act against the regime, but a small minority without access to the bases of power that would permit overthrow of the government seeks radical change." (Crenshaw, 1981; in
"(Wharton, Chapter 1) Undine, unlike Ralph, cannot decompose or fade in intensity for her vision is as clear and black and white. Until she marries Ralph Marvell, Undine is always judging others by social status, sizing up clothing, furniture, and appearance as coolly as the aristocrats of the American, but with a different, superficial, monetary standard of worth rather than a cultural standard of worth. Her values are just as
Labor-capital confrontations had been long brewing since the dawn of the industrial age and the start of urbanization. As the owners of the means of production amassed capital, wealth became concentrated into the hands of the few. Labor movements emerged both in Europe and in the United States, transforming the political, economic, and social landscapes of nations. The environment in which labor-capital confrontations developed must therefore be understood within a
Sumer and Akkad were the two city-states that produced the most sophisticated armies of the Bronze Age (Gabriel & Metz, 1991). The Greeks called the area Mesopotamia, meaning "the land between the two rivers," a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates basin; however, in the Bible, the region is referred to as "Shumer," the original Sumerian word for the southern part of Iraq, the site of Sumer with its
Sociology: Social Conflict Theory The model of social conflict shows that the society has many forms of inequality which bring about social change and conflict. This kind of study centers on the types of inequality found in the society, along with the subsequent conflict between the fortunate and less fortunate. Thus, this paper will look at the theory of Social Conflict and its past and present role in the society. The introduction entails