Effect of Male Stream Knowledge on Sociological Explanations of Behavior

Effect of Male Stream Knowledge on Sociological Explanations of Behavior

One effect of male stream knowledge in sociological explanations of

behaviour is that men tend to be very much in favour of positivist

methods, like scientific research and proof. Whereas feminists think

that the sympathetic approach is better therefore using things like

observations, this mainly due to the fact that positivist research has

many flaws.

Another effect is that due to the fact that men develop most

sociological explanations of crime and therefore they only talk bout

men. They exclude the fact the females commit crime which is evident

in all of the theories apart from feminism because these ideas are

predominantly about women. This means that women are left out of the

equation meaning that men place there patriarchal views on the

sociology of crime.

b) Briefly evaluate the usefulness of social surveys as a source of

information on crime and deviance for sociologists. (12 marks)

Social surveys are a way of finding out information from a large

number of people. An example of a social survey is a questionnaire,

which is the easiest and quickest way of getting a large amount of

information from a population.

Official statistics were primarily used to help sociologists work out

who and how much crime exists. These were then criticised saying that

they do not show unreported crime, which could be a far greater number

than that provided in the official statistics.

Therefore, victimisation studies were formed, which are a form of

social survey. They use questionnaires to ask people in a chosen

population whether they have been a vic...

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... as well, that if you believe this

idea then nothing will be done and there is proof that show that

people do suffer from crime. You wouldn't be able to prove anything or

say anything and nothing will ever be solved.

I don't think there is one good theory, which helps to explain both

male and female crime, but at least feminism tries to explain why

females are not shown on official crime statistics and the fact that

it is the criminal justice systems fault. Therefore Feminism is a very

good theory if you put it alongside other theories to create the whole

picture of crime therefore Marxism etc explains why men commit crime

and feminism adds to that to say why females don't get convicted.

Therefore there isn't a perfect theory you need to run theories

alongside other theories to provide a rounded explanation of crime.