Thursday, January 30. 2025

Today's schedule is DCBA

B Block Criminology - Today, to start the class, I would like you back in your pod/groupings where I'll give you a handout to help you with crime theories and I'd like your group to see where your crime theory categorized clusters (similar categories) fit in terms of Choice, Trait, Social Structure, Social Learning, and Conflict theories. You may find that your ideas fit well within the ambit of some established Criminological Theories...

The goal of criminological theory is to help one gain an understating of crime and criminal justice. Many disciplines factor into criminological theories, such as psychology, sociology, biology, political science, and criminal justice. Theories cover the making and the breaking of the law, criminal and deviant behavior, as well as patterns of criminal activity. Individual theories may be either macro (broad scale - wide or all encompassing) or micro (small scale - specific to particular actions). Theories can be used to guide policy making, and can be evaluated on a number of criteria including: clarity, scope, parsimony (concise), testability, practical usefulness, and empirical validity. Many theories have common traits, but differences among them still exist. Understanding these differences is key to understanding the often contradictory views of crime and deviance they try to explain. 

So, according to the social constructionist perspective, "crime" is considered an artificial construct, meaning that it is not an inherent quality of an act but rather a social definition created by society through its laws, norms, and values. These definitions of "crime" can vary across cultures and time periods, so "crime" is contextual. Essentially, what is considered a crime is defined by the social context, not an objective quality of the act itself. From the Criminology: Foundations and Modern Applications textbook Chapter 4 Social Construction of Crime The definition and understanding of crime are shaped by social, cultural, and political factors, and they can change over time. This will help us understand the Conflict, Interactionist and Consensus views on crime...for help here look at Views of Defining Crime

Next, we'll begin our look at the nature vs. nurture debate by focusing on the history of psychological and sociological criminology and our brief history of criminology (from B.C.E up to and including the current theories, which will help you with your first activity in the course). 

A Block Physical Geography - The Five Themes are a framework for making sense of geographic data. It helps you to understand the holistic nature of geography of geography (emphasizing the organic or functional relation between parts and the whole, as each theme cannot be seen in isolation from the others). Today we'll finish up our look at the Five Themes, focusing on  Human Environment Interactions, Movement-Diffusion, and Region. After, you'll need to use your phones or one of the three laptops in the class to assist you with your GEO ID assignment (specifically a mapping function - Google Earth is always awesome - and web access to answer some questions). From your notebook (it looks like this)

Today's Fit...