Overview

This unit introduces students to an understanding of a range of sociological and criminological approaches to deviance and non/normative interactions in the social and criminal world. The unit will familiarize students with a number of contemporary social problems and controversies subject to social control to manage deviance or non-normativity. As such students will be lead to analyse major forms of social control – in particular the legal system and social responses to crime and punishment – in addition students will analyse the forces that construct notions of social conformity or normativity. Finally, students will be lead to analyse and respond to differential power structures and the relativities of crime and criminal behaviour across a range of offending.

Requisites

Teaching Periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date
Semester 2
Location
Hawthorn
Start and end dates
29-July-2024
27-October-2024
Last self-enrolment date
11-August-2024
Census date
31-August-2024
Last withdraw without fail date
13-September-2024
Results released date
03-December-2024

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

  • Evaluate and apply a sociological perspective to the social world around them
  • Identify and differentiate the major theoretical perspectives that explain the sociological concept of deviance
  • Define and use a range of key sociological concepts to appraise the ways in which social processes and structures respond to notions and categories of deviance in a contemporary context
  • Discuss and critique published work and communicate this through informed written argument

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
On-campus
Lecture
1.00 12 weeks 12
On-campus
Class
2.00 12 weeks 24
Specified Activities
Various
2.00 12 weeks 24
Unspecified Activities
Independent Learning
7.50 12 weeks 90
TOTAL150

Swinburne Online

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
Live Online
Class
3.00 12 weeks 36
Online
Directed Online Learning and Independent Learning
9.50 12 weeks 114
TOTAL150

Assessment

Type Task Weighting ULO's
EssayIndividual 30% 1,2,3,4 
Project PresentationIndividual 30% 3,4 
Project ReportIndividual/Group 40% 1,2,3 

Content

  • Traditional sociological explanations of deviance
  • Sociological evolution of deviance
  • Rules and the normative dimension: “kinds of people”; “kinds of rules”, notions of difference
  • The modern context: the death of deviance
  • Surveillance: Foucault and the postmodern world of post-deviance
  • Feminism and deviance
  • Law and deviance
  • Crime, punishment and deviance
  • Bodies and deviance
  • Sex, sexuality, gender and deviance
  • Minds and deviance
  • Institutions: the church and the state and deviance

Study resources

Reading materials

A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.