Tuesday, May 13, 2008

I am Jack's growing anxiety

I have gone through all four journals I wanted to hit (American Sociological Review, Criminology, Social Forces, and Journal of Research on Crime & Delinquency) and pulled out tons of abstracts from each one. These, in addition to the syllabi for several classes (Juvenile Delinquency, Theories of Criminality, Deviant Behavior, Sociology of Adolescence, Sociology of Interpersonal Violence, and Race and Ethnic Relations) will form the core of my study material, though some of those classes I'm really only pulling one of two things from.

Now I am going through the journal stuff and reorganizing the abstracts into the following categories. Asterisks are what I accomplished as of this post:

Gender*
Race*
Age / The Life Course *
The Role of Parents *
The Role of Peers *
Social Class / Social Disorganization Theory
Strain Theory
Labeling Theory
Self-Control Theory
Issues in Methods & Measurement
Social Class / Corporate Crime

My goal is to have everything done by the weekend, I hope. There are two entries for social class because SES is an interesting beast of a concept that consistently shows no relationship between class status and crime, because it turns out status is associated with different social psychological measures and routine activities that lead to motivations/opportunities for crime, so gang violence is one thing to talk about because it is associated with lower class status, while corporate offending is another thing to talk about because it is associated with higher class status. Social disorganization theory also captures neighborhood context and effects, which isn't something we are necessarily concerned with in regard to occupational and corporate crime. And so on and so forth. There is also a lot of overlap between some of these things, which is good for me in the long run because right now, I'm terrified of trying to synthesize some of this stuff into one coherent response.

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