Bureaucracy Deviance and Social Control

Bureaucracy Deviance and Social Control essay assignment

Bureaucracy Deviance and Social Control essay assignment

Read through the following questions and answer one of them in your journal.

1. List and discuss the five principal characteristics of a bureaucracy. How do bureaucracies create both positive and negative impacts on the members of society? List at least three bureaucracies of which you are a member and discuss how their characteristics are similar to or different from the list provided in the text.

2. What is “groupthink”? Why does the disaster of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003 serve as a good example of the possible results of groupthink? Please discuss any experience you have had with the process, regardless of effects? For example, have you belonged to a group in which members wanted to maintain solidarity so much that they resisted sharing divergent opinions? What happened? What can be done to prevent the process?

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4. Leadership is critical for every group. Define leaders, and discuss the characteristics of both instrumental and expressive leaders. Why are they both necessary for an organization to thrive? What type of leader do you tend to be? Why? What effects does your style of leadership tend to have on groups? What are the three leadership styles discussed in the text?  What are their characteristics?  Which one do you believe is best?  Why?

5. Define groups, aggregates, categories, primary groups, secondary groups, in-groups, out-groups, and reference groups. Provide at least two examples of each.

6. McDonaldization of society is a concept created by Ritzer in 1993, and has significant implications for the social world today. After reading the information in the journal entitled, McDonaldization, discuss its characteristics, and both the advantages/strengths and disadvantages/problems of this process. Overall, do you believe McDonaldization has improved society? Why or why not?

Read through the following questions and answer one of them in your journal.

1. Define and discuss deviance, crime and stigma, providing at least two examples of each. Are all deviant acts crimes? Why or why not? Are all crimes deviant acts? Why or why not?

2. Emile Durkheim argued that deviance was actually functional for society. What does it mean to say that something is functional for society? Discuss the three major contributions that deviance makes to social order, providing at least one example of each.

3. What is the medicalization of deviance? Discuss how the ideas of Thomas Szasz differ from those most popular within the medical community. Do you agree with Szasz’ assessment of attention-deficit disorder (ADD)? Why or why not?

4. Sociologist Robert Merton developed a typology of deviance. He examined both the role of cultural goals and a person’s willingness and/or ability to use the institutionalized (or approved) means of working toward the goals. Summarize the five modes of adaptation that Merton identified, discussing the cultural goals and institutionalized means characteristics of each. Provide at least two examples of each mode.

5. Define labeling theory and techniques of neutralization? Gresham Sykes and David Matza explored how deviants adapt to negative labels that society assigns to them, identifying five techniques of neutralization.. List and discuss each technique, providing at least one example of each.

Discussion:

A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it. So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife.

{This dilemma was originally posted by Lawrence Kohlberg (psychologist, moral philosopher)}

These are the questions that we can discuss:

1. Should Heinz steal the drug? Why or why not?

2. If Heinz doesn’t love his wife, should he steal the drug for her? Why or why
not?

3. Suppose the person dying is not his wife but a stranger. Should Heinz steal the
drug for a stranger? Why or why not?

4. Suppose it is a pet animal he loves. Should Heinz steal to save the pet animal?
Why or why not?

5. Why should people do everything they can to save another’s life?

6. It is against the law for Heinz to steal? Does that make it morally wrong? Why
or why not?

7. Why should people generally do everything they can to avoid breaking the
law? How does this relate to Heinz’s case?