Deviance Difference & Conformity

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.

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:
1. Evaluate and apply a sociological perspective to the social world around them
2. Identify and differentiate the major theoretical perspectives that explain the sociological concept of deviance
3. 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
4. Discuss and critique published work and communicate this through informed written argument.