-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Misery White on Real Life Superheroes
- ylukovsky on Crying Wolf – False Rape Accusations
- ylukovsky on Crying Wolf – False Rape Accusations
- proffessor on Crying Wolf – False Rape Accusations
- Rob McGoldrick on SEC reviewing S&P handling on downgrade
Frequent Topics
- ADHD
- Becker
- Britain
- Broken Windows Theory
- Conrad and Schneider
- control
- crime
- criminals
- criminal surveillance
- criminal youth
- delinquency
- Depression
- Deviance
- deviant behavior
- Deviants
- DNA profiling
- escape
- FBI
- female murderer
- film
- flash mobs
- Graffiti
- justice
- Lombroso
- medicalization of deviance
- Moral Panic
- Outsiders
- Philadelphis
- police
- Poweres that be
- prison
- privacy
- profiling
- racism
- riots
- serial killer
- social construction of illness
- social network
- society
- Stereotyping
- Stigma
- tattoos
- traceable
- Typecasting
- Women
Archives
Categories
Meta
Author Archives: nikhil.wagh
Posts: 6 (archived below)
Comments: 1
Moral Panic & Terrorism
I’m on a bit of a BBC documentary binge atm. Though this clip is an hour long, you get some of the idea after only watching the first ten minutes. This is another BBC documentary by Adam Curtis, called the Power of Fear and Nightmares.
This documentary argues how the nature of politics in the west has endured a very significant shift in incentives in the past couple of decades. Politicians in the past were focussed on progressed, achieving goals and bringing about good for the public. Now, their role is one that solely protects us from looming dangers like global terrorism and global warming. Adam Curtiss, in his documentary, argues that these dangers are grossly exaggerated if not fabricated to keep a certain ruling elite in power at the expense of spreading fear throughout a society. Politics is no longer a business of bringing about good. Instead, politicians have become managers who can control our fear and claim to know how to protect us from them.
He explains how the fear of Al-Qaeda after 9/11 was hyperbole to say the least. The American media claimed Al-Qaeda had sleeper cells in over 60 countries, including the United States. Additionally, they claimed of Al-Qaedas extensive military arsenal, their hidden bunkers inside caves, and their shadow influence within politics themselves. Adam Curtiss’ basic arguement is that the political ruling elite keep themselves in power by fabricating and emphasizing certain dangers, and claiming to have solutions to them, to spread fear to all their voters and convince them that they (the politicians) can address these problems front on.
It is probably obvious that many parallels can be drawn between this and Stuart Hall’s Moral Panic. In the same way that terrorism and Al-Qaeda’s threat was a gross exaggeration by politicians and the media, the fear of muggings in Britain was very much the same. The introduction of a new label (both “terrorism” and “muggings”) gave rise to a new fear of a particular social problem. This lead to the politics to readjust itself to address these issues and make sure they were dealt with in the appropriate manner. These new labels and the media’s responsibility for portraying them as a “new strain” of crimes/dangers lead to a dissipation of fear throughout the mass public.
I think these two points (the one made by the documentary, the other by Stuart Hall in ‘Moral Panic’) is that crime is not as clear cut and statistically grounded as it is portrayed. The use of labels can lead to the rise of an apparent crime, when in actuality there has not been any new crime at all. A perfect example of a by product of this mentality is the color-coded terror alert warnings (yellow, orange and red) that were on the news for years after september 11th. I lived in NYC for all of that time, and even when the terror alerts were orange or even red, nothing ever happened! It was just a tool to spread fear.
-Nikhil
Bernays and Modern Day Democratic Propaganda
This youtube video is a small clip from the BBC’s documentary “Century of the Self” by Adam Curtis. The documentary is divided into three parts, each approximately one hour long. This clip is from the hour long segment that focuses on Edward Bernays.
Professor Mckinney once mentioned Bernays in the opening weeks of the course. Edward Bernays was a nephew of the renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud. Bernays lived in America, and is commonly heralded as the “father of public relations”. The documentary explains how he was the engine behind what essentially was democratic propaganda. Bernays was able to mold and shape the mentality, ideologies and desires of the mass public in ways that would satisfy their inner desires and keep them docile and happy.
One of the most striking examples of Bernay’s mastermind in the field of public relations has to do with cigarette smoking. In the late 1920’s, cigarette smoking was almost exclusively a man’s hobby. Almost no women smoked cigarettes. In fact, a certain psychoanalyst at the time believe that cigarettes were a manifestation of the penis and were a symbol of male empowerment. Bernays was hired to figure out a way to advertise and promote cigarettes, so that they would instead symbolize female empowerment. He wanted to change the common sentiments about cigarettes so they could be portrayed as the female version of the penis.
The clip explains how he was able to do so by having an exhibition during a parade in NYC where a group of models were hired to provocatively smoke. This started the trend of women smoking and allowed cigarette companies for the first time to sell their cigarettes to women.
I think this is a great example of labeling theory and Durkheim’s social fact. It shows how some of our seemingly innate and inherent desires and preferences are actually the result of our social environment. If someone was smart and subtle enough, they could change our environment just enough so our desires and preferences could be changed to their liking. We, as a society, once believed that cigarette smoking was not womanly. But Bernays successfully changed this idea, through the subconscious and subtle art of public relations and advertising.
This is a prime example of what Durkheim referred to when he said that the majority of what we think and desire is not based on our natural unique preferences, but they are instead molded, shaped and influenced by the society around us. Though we are convinced that our desires come from within us, internally, the actual fact of the matter is that they are imposed upon us externally. We take many socially constructed ideas (democracy, free markets, freedom, liberty, equality) as rational facts, when in truth they are ideas that are imposed on us by an invisible ruling elite like Edward Bernays. These democractic propaganda puppeteers are responsible for controlling the behavior of the masses in America, so as to keep them content and docile with the status quo.
I think this quote sums it up nicely: “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
Hegemony & How We Define Deviants
In the following Monty Python clip from the “Holy Grail” movie, a wandering King Arthur encounters two peasants and discusses the nature of their political system. The peasant intellectually outmuscles and corrects the King over and over until the King exhibits “violence that is inherent in the system”.
The joke is clear here: no one would expect the peasant to be so knowledgable on political science, philosophy and political systems. But he is, which is what catches the king off guard.
In a broader sense, this peasant is a deviant. He is unlike his fellow peasants in that he is well read, articulate, politically aware and has the will power to stand up for his own unorthodox views. This reminds of me Conrads article “From Badness to Sickness”, where he argues that some definitions of criminals and deviants enjoy a hegemony over others. By this, Conrad meant that some definitions are more favorable than others in a given context, and this hierarchy of ways to explain deviance leads to a certain criteria being established to categorize criminals, which may not necessarily be the best or most accurate.
So going back to the video, the the peasant would be defined as a deviant (and I mean deviant in the most literal sense as someone/something that is “going against the grain”). The hegemonic definition that leads one to this label is one that is based upon the idea that most peasants in that era never question authority, are not well read or well educated, and are therefore never individually a threat to supreme power. This peasant was different, and is thus a deviant (which is the basis for the joke!)
Clearly, our view of deviants in different social classes has changed. It is not as uncommon now that a peasant (or to be more PC, someone from the lower strata of our economy) would be well read and well educated. In fact, America prides itself on the image of a working, raise-yourself-by-the-bootstraps citizen (even though this may not be an accurate reflection of reality). The deviant definition that was shown in the video was one of class-stagnation: if you were born a peasant, you would remain a peasant. Now our definitions for deviants are much more complex and fluid, so its not like we would expect the richest people to be the smartest and the poorest to be the most intellectually inept.
Conrad discusses how our definitions of criminals are evolving and are relying more on medical definitions. I agree that this shift is occurring. The only thing I can hope for is that in this shift of definition, we never stop scrutinizing our approach and our criteria for what a deviant is. In the same way the peasant in the video was challenging the hegemonic assumption of the King, we should go about doing the same. We can not accept any practice, system or ideology as a superior fact just because it exists.
Additionally, it helps to understand why someone acts in the way they do from many perspectives. The King approaches this problem by only analyzing the peasant based on his social class. This one tracked approach was clearly faulty. Instead, we much analyze deviants psychologically, politically, sociologically, philosophically, scientifically and medically if we are to get the best possible explanation and understanding of their behavior and nature. We can not accept hegemonic definitions as an end all be all.
As the peasant tells the king: “Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. ”
-Nikhil
Posted in Assignment 4
Tagged Conrad Deviants Deviance Crime Labels Badness to Sickness Medicine Medical Social Construction Monty Python
Comments Off on Hegemony & How We Define Deviants
Language & How We Label Criminals
In the following clip, Steven Pinker (a American experimental psychologist) discusses how we use language to show (and sometimes politely “mask”) our emotions and true intentions. He gives the example of a man who is trying to seduce a woman will propose “Would you like to come view my etchings upstairs?” instead of directly asking for sex.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU
His basic point is that language is not always direct. And for a good reason to! For one reason or another (emotions, cultural norms of politeness and etiquette, or institutional rules and requirements) we can not always be direct in our speech. We can not, when pulled over by a traffic cop for speeding, immediately and directly offer him a bribe in return for being let off the hook.
This same indirectness in language and how labels can influence the way we think was discussed in Stuart Hall’s piece that we read, “The Social History of a Moral Panic”. In this piece, Hall’s main point is how the term mugging was adopted by the British from the Americans and led to misperception about a “new wave” of crime that was occurring, all due to the fact that the media adopted the new term “mugging”.
I think a modern day example of how a new term can lead to a misperception of a “new wave” of crime is terrorism. In the past two decades, terrorism has been the go-to word in any foreign policy debate or discussion. Any Islamic, Arabic or Middle Eastern/Asian looking male who commits a crime on western soil is immediately thrown under the label of “terrorist”. However, as we saw with the Norwegian “gunman” Anders Breivik, the media constantly labelled him a “serial killer” “gunman” “assassin” but almost never a “terrorist”!
Why? This could be for many reasons. A superficial analysis of this would lead us to say that the media is racist and only labels brown people terrorists. But this only scratches the surface. One could argue that the media of any market based country has an agenda to cater to the interests of those in power, as Noam Chomsky would argue (this does NOT mean that it caters to those in power in that country specifically. The media could be catering to the interests of a larger, looming superpower). Thus, when Norway’s media fails to label Anders Breivik as a terrorist, it is possible that they are doing so to continue perpetuating a concept of “terrorist” throughout the country of Norway (and the world) as a brown, most likely Islamic fundamentalist who is anti capitalist, anti western and through heavy media implications, anti-freedom and ultimately anti-“good” and therefore evil.
To label Anders Breivik a terrorist then would be mislead to the masses and go against any neo-conservative interventionist agenda to “spread democracy” around the world. This is because terrorist is portrayed as an exogenous threat, that can be solved with the correct institutional building and good-seeking cultural influence from the USA and its followers. Terrorists are NOT portrayed to seem like they can come from next door. And this is why Anders Breivik has not been generally labelled a terrorist. Even though he did terrorize his own people and his argument was ideologically and irrationally based, he is still a westerner. And it would be inconsistent on the media’s part to label him a terrorist.
I think that the video I showed hits on an important point. At minute 3:30, Steven Pinker discusses Alan Fiske and his concept of how language is used in 3 different universal settings of 1) dominance 2)communality or 3)reciprocity. I think this selective use of the term “terrorist” fits under communality as it is used to help the masses interpret an event in a certain way, according to the best ways seen fit by those in power.
Its hard to fit my thoughts into the 250 word limit (which I clearly surpassed) but the discussion continues! Its interesting to see how language plays an important part in how we view crime, both domestically and internationally.
-Nikhil Wagh
Posted in Assignment 3
Tagged Alan Fiske, crime, Language, Media, Moral Panic, Perception, Sociology, Steven Pinker, Stuart Hall, Terrorism
1 Comment
Educating Prisoners: How to bring “outsiders” in
In the following TedTalk, Nalini Nadkarni discusses how we have to stop viewing prisoners as inherently defunct, naturally born deviants and assailants and instead view them as individual biological entities that are constantly in flux. (Lombroso’s work still seems to have heavy influences on our criminal correctional approach today!)
http://www.ted.com/talks/nalini_nadkarni_life_science_in_prison.html
At the beginning of this short lecture, Nalini explains a metaphor that she uses as the fundamental basis for her argument. She explains that when most people look at a tree, they see a solid, stagnant object with a massive wooden trunk and some peripheral branches, etc. But the common assumption is that a tree once rooted is stationary, motionless and essentially unchanging. However, she shows how when we instead look at the twigs and branches of the tree instead of the main trunk, we can actually find a lot of flux, motion, change and essential adaptibility.
Nalini uses this metaphor to argue that our approach to treating prison inmates has been the same. Instead of assuming (like most of us do with the idea of a tree) that criminals are inherently deficient, we should instead understand that they can be changed, influenced and educated to live more productive and less detrimental lives. She brings up an important statistic: 60% of released in mates return to prison on criminal charges at some point in their life time. Thus, clearly the current “correctional” system is not working, and needs change.
With her emphasis on educating the prisoners on life sciences, raising their awareness on more academic and socially productive issues, Nalini argues that this is the way forward for the correctional system in America. Instead of just treating criminals like bestial animals and locking them up in bland, boring and frustrating holding cells, they should instead be placed in stimulating enviornments, where they can change their personalities, enhance their understand of social responsibility and eventually go on to lead more productive, and socially beneficial lives.
I found this lecture particularly interesting after reading the short Becker piece on Outsiders. Becker argues that this idea of treating people as “Outsiders” is a two way street. The rules of a group are broken by an individual and he/she is thus labeled an “outsider” but at the same time, the rule makers and enforcers at time can be considered outsiders themselves. Becker therefore argues that deviance is “not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application of the rules and sanctions to an ‘offender'”.
Thus, both Becker and Nalini in a sense are arguing something similar. Both analysts are implying that the deviant is not solely to blame for their behavior. Rather, their behavior was in the past molded by an exogenous group attempting to deal with society, and their treatment was similar in its detached approach as well. Becker & Nalini are suggesting that we need more of an interventionist approach to dealing with criminal and deviants, with a better understanding of 1) What caused them to act in this way and 2) How we as policy makers can change our approach to help each one over come their criminal habits to form better and more socially responsible ones.
-Nikhil Wagh.
Posted in Assignment 2
Tagged Becker, crime, Deviants, Environment, Intervention, Lombroso, Outsiders, prison, Prisoners, Stigma, TedTalk
12 Comments
Modern Day Physiognomy: Article from the Economist
Here is an interesting article I stumbled upon when I was reading the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/node/18925759
This article discusses how one’s facial features can trigger two very different actions: The first is one’s propensity towards lying. The second is whether or not a male’s level of attractiveness could induce more orgasms from their female partners.
The results of the article were both surprising and expected, in my opinion. In regards to one’s tendency to lie, the researchers discovered that the wider one’s face is in comparison to its length, the more likely they are to lie about their intentions. The researchers (Dr Haselhuhn and Dr Wong) linked this facial feature to a male’s level of aggressiveness. Apparently, many studies have shown that the wider a male’s face is in relation to its length, the more aggressive they act in a given situation. The two researches then went on to see if there was any correlation between this facial feature and a tendency to lie…which there was!
I was somewhat stunned to notice that Cesare Lombroso’s name did not once appear in this article, especially since he is considered to be one of the founders of modern day criminology, with respects to links between criminal behavior and one’s physical anomalie.
I decided to post this article because I feel like in the past decade or so, there has been a growing emphasis on how one’s environment can influence their behavior, especially in terms of crime. When Giuliani was mayor of New York, he was hailed for his work on cleaning up Times Square, the general NYC subways and drastically reducing the crime rate. One theory that he was apparently fond of was the “broken window” theory. This theory posits that the more degenerated one’s environment is, the more likely someone is to add to the level of decrepitness. On the other hand, if someone’s environment was very pristine, they were much less likely to make it messy. This theory was applied to the NYC subways to clean out the graffiti, which it claims to have successfully done.
I think its good to still revert back to older theories on criminology and to not get caught in any ideological dogma, with respects to broken window theory. My view may be naive, but I believe that there isn’t one universal solution to crime. Rather, there are probably various solutions for a problem, many of which have not been tried and tested yet. But its a start to at least test and scrutinize theories, like this Economist article claims the researchers did.
-Nikhil
Posted in Uncategorized
Comments Off on Modern Day Physiognomy: Article from the Economist
