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Social disorganization theory strengths and weaknesses
Social disorganization theory strengths and weaknesses
Social disorganization theory strengths and weaknesses
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In this film review, I will define social disorganization theory, and I will make a correlation connection between Crash (2004) and the Concentric Zone Model. My interpretation of social disorganization theory comes from Criminology Goes to the Movies: Crime Theory and Popular Culture, written by Nicole Rafter and Michelle Brown. Social Disorganization theory arose from the first half of the twentieth century. In addition, the Prohibition was in effect, “the period from 1919 to 1933 during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption were illegal” (Rafter & Brown;2011, Pg. 68). Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess argued in order understand crime, they must consider “it’s social roots, and explanatory framework that …show more content…
continues to play a primary role in criminological theory today” (Rafter & Brown;2011, Pg. 68). Therefore, the study lead to the foundation of The Concentric Zone Model (1925). The Concentric Zone Model illustrates a series of zones within a city.
The following regions represent the series of zones from the core to the outside rings; Central Business District, Transitional, Working Class, Residential, and Commuter Zone. Zone II was the most significant region out of all them, and that’s because the transitional zone deals with various unique movements. For example, Nicole Rafter and Michelle Brown claim, “In these transitional neighborhoods, various cultural or ethnic groups would move in and then, over time, move out into more affluent areas of the city and its periphery. Meanwhile, another wave of immigrants would move into the transitional zone and begin these processes anew” (Rafter & Brown;2011, Pg. 70). Consequently, Zone II may be characterized as “temporary housing.” As we can imagine, people from different cultures, background, race and ethnicities bring their social norms into a neighborhood. We can acknowledge how and why crime …show more content…
occurs. Crash (2004), a film directed by Paul Haggins, illustrates many short stories from various characters. Each character comes from a different culture, background, and most importantly, class. In addition, each character makes a connection with one another which represents social disorganization theory. For example, Daniel Ruiz, a locksmith, who is Mexican, has a shaved head and has visible tattoos, gets a call to a high-class neighborhood to change the locks on all the doors. In the house, Jean Cabot, your typical Beverly Hills housewife, demanded her husband to call another locksmith in the morning because she believes that the locksmith is going to compromise the lock and sell the keys to his “amigos.” This film has a lot of discrimination scenes. Another scene that had a connection to social disorganization theory was when Daniel Ruiz came home to his daughter under her bed.
Thinking that she was afraid of monsters, the daughter told her dad that she heard a “bang” earlier. Her dad asked her if it was a truck bang, and her daughter responded, “like a gun.” The father responded, “that’s funny because we moved out of that bad neighborhood. There’s not that many guns out here” (Crash; 2004). The connection we see is basically the family moving from the transitional zone region, where the bullet went through her room, to the residential zone, where the daughter heard the
bang. Furthermore, the film does a great job piecing each culture together and demonstrating that each socio-economic class has different mindsets. For example, early in the film, Jenna yelled at her maid, who’s Mexican, for not putting the clean dishes away. Despite coming from different classes, at the end of the film, Jenna acknowledges her and tells her that she loves her. Again, we can connect this to social disorganization because we see two distinct classes coming together. Overall, this film was fantastic because we saw various connections from social disorganization.
He is a decorated veteran, scholar and successful business leader upon graduating. In comparison to the other Wes Moore who never seemed to escape his childhood and ended up in prison. The theory that best explains the authors’ noninvolvement in a life of crime vs. the criminality of the other Wes Moore is the social disorganization theory. Shaw and McKay, the founders of this theory, believed that “juvenile delinquency could be understood only by considering the social context in which youths lived. A context that itself was a product of major societal transformations wrought by rapid urbanization, unbridled industrialization, and massive population shifts” (Lilly, Cullen & Ball, 2015). The theory is centered around transitional zones and competition determined how people were distributed spatially among these zones (Lilly et al., 2015). This model founded by Ernest Burgess showed that high priced residential areas were in the outer zones and the inner zones consisted of poverty (Lilly et al.,
Another noteworthy urban sociologist that’s invested significant research and time into gentrification is Saskia Sassen, among other topical analysis including globalization. “Gentrification was initially understood as the rehabilitation of decaying and low-income housing by middle-class outsiders in central cities. In the late 1970s a broader conceptualization of the process began to emerge, and by the early 1980s new scholarship had developed a far broader meaning of gentrification, linking it with processes of spatial, economic and social restructuring.” (Sassen 1991: 255). This account is an extract from an influential book that extended beyond the field of gentrification and summarizes its basis proficiently. In more recent and localized media, the release the documentary-film ‘In Jackson Heights’ portrayed the devastation that gentrification is causing as it plagues through Jackson Heights, Queens. One of the local businessmen interviewed is shop owner Don Tobon, stating "We live in a
Furthermore, he attempts to dispel the negative aspects of gentrification by pointing out how some of them are nonexistent. To accomplish this, Turman exemplifies how gentrification could positively impact neighborhoods like Third Ward (a ‘dangerous’ neighborhood in Houston, Texas). Throughout the article, Turman provides copious examples of how gentrification can positively change urban communities, expressing that “gentrification can produce desirable effects upon a community such as a reduced crime rate, investment in the infrastructure of an area and increased economic activity in neighborhoods which gentrify”. Furthermore, he opportunistically uses the Third Ward as an example, which he describes as “the 15th most dangerous neighborhood in the country” and “synonymous with crime”, as an example of an area that could “need the change that gentrification provides”.
Inner City Communities are often areas which are both densely populated and deteriorating(quote). The areas and its residents have strongly been correlated with social and economical disparity. Residents of inner city communities have been plagued with problems including: “high unemployment, poor health care, inadequate educational opportunities, dilapidated housing, high infant mortality, and extreme poverty” (Attitudes and Perceptions, n.d). Though the inner city communities have been stricken with
Many of these ethnic groups still reside where their relatives first lived when they arrived many years ago, whereas a majority of the ethnic groups have dispersed all over the Chicago land area, creating many culturally mixed neighborhoods. Ultimately, all of these ethnic groups found their rightful area in which they belong in Chicago. To this day, the areas in Chicago that the different ethnic immigrants moved to back in the 1920s are very much so the same. These immigrants have a deep impact on the development of neighborhoods in today’s society. Without the immigrants’ hard work and their ambition to establish a life for their families and their future, Chicago would not be as developed and defined as it is now.
... motivation for wealthy individuals to return to the inner-city core but it also provides impetus for commercial and retail mixed-use to follow, increasing local revenue for cities (Duany, 2001). Proponents of gentrification profess that this increase in municipal revenue from sales and property taxes allows for the funding of city improvements, in the form of job opportunities, improved schools and parks, retail markets and increased sense of security and safety ((Davidson (2009), Ellen & O’Reagan (2007), Formoso et. al (2010)). Due to the increase in housing and private rental prices and the general decrease of the affordable housing stock in gentrifying areas, financially-precarious communities such as the elderly, female-headed households, and blue-collar workers can no longer afford to live in newly developed spaces ((Schill & Nathan (1983), Atkinson, (2000)).
Two major sociological theories explain youth crime at the macro level. The first is Social Disorganization theory, created in 1969 by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay. The theory resulted from a study of juvenile delinquency in Chicago using information from 1900 to 1940, which attempts to answer the question of how aspects of the structure of a community contribute to social control. The study found that a community that is unable to achieve common values has a high rate of delinquency. Shaw and McKay looked at the physical appearance of the neighborhoods, the average income of the population, the ethnicity of the neighborhood, the percent of renters versus owners, and how fast the population of the area changed. These factors all contribute to neighborhood delinquency.
Mystique Caston Ms. Jefferson English 22 february 2016 Gentrification and Chicago Gentrification and chicago “Gentrification refers to trends in the neighborhood development that tend to attract more affluent residents, and in the instances concentrates scale commercial investment. ”(Bennet,).This means that gentrification can change how a neighborhood is ran or even how much income the community takes in depending on what businesses come in and what class of people decide to invest into that community. In this paper i will be discussing gentrification and and poverty, pros and cons of gentrification, relationships due to gentrification, conflict due to gentrification, reactions/ feelings or of small business owners about
The combination of ethnic groups has changed over the years but the mixed use, mixed income, mixed cultural background of the neighborhood still remains very similar. A radical change that has taken place is that the number of children attending school has greatly increase and this has had an inverse affect on crime and gang formations and related crime and homicide.
The downgrading of African Americans to certain neighborhoods continues today. The phrase of a not interested neighborhood followed by a shift in the urban community and disturbance of the minority has made it hard for African Americans to launch themselves, have fairness, and try to break out into a housing neighborhood. If they have a reason to relocate, Caucasians who support open housing laws, but become uncomfortable and relocate if they are contact with a rise of the African American population in their own neighborhood most likely, settle the neighborhoods they have transfer. This motion creates a tremendously increase of an African American neighborhood, and then shift in the urban community begins an alternative. All of these slight prejudiced procedures leave a metropolitan African American population with few options. It forces them to remain in non-advanced neighborhoods with rising crime, gang activity, and...
Jackelyn Hwang and Robert J. Sampson’s article “Divergent Pathways of Gentrification: Racial Inequality and the Social Order of Renewal in Chicago Neighborhoods” addresses the evolution of gentrification over time. The direct examination of gentrification is difficult to observe; however, by examining social pathways we are able to further advance our studies.
Therefore, the community has informal social control, or the connection between social organization and crime. Some of the helpful factors to a community can be informal surveillance, movement-governing rules, and direct intervention. They also contain unity, structure, and integration. All of these qualities are proven to improve crime rate. Socially disorganized communities lack those qualities. According to our lecture, “characteristics such as poverty, residential mobility, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity contribute to social disorganization.” A major example would be when a community has weak social ties. This can be caused from a lack of resources needed to help others, such as single-parent families or poor families. These weak social ties cause social disorganization, which then leads higher levels of crime. According to Seigel, Social disorganization theory concentrates on the circumstances in the inner city that affect crimes. These circumstances include the deterioration of the neighborhoods, the lack of social control, gangs and other groups who violate the law, and the opposing social values within these neighborhoods (Siegel,
This theory however as some have argued has emerged from social disorganisation theory, which sees the causes of crime as a matter of macro level disadvantage. Macro level disadvantage are the following: low socioeconomic status, ethnic or racial heterogeneity, these things they believe are the reasons for crime due to the knock on effect these factors have on the community network and schools. Consequently, if th...
It was assumed that these areas are expanded from their center in a pattern known as concentric circles, moving outward, each circle consisting of a different zone. There are five zones. The first zone is said to be the central business zone. Outside of this area is zone two, also known as the transition zone. This is the area with the highest potential for delinquency, consisting of the poorest and least educated citizens. Expanding outward from this zone is zone three, which is where the majority of the working-class lives. And following this is zone four and five which are more prosperous areas, expanding into the suburbs. This theory was proved true across major cities including, Seattle, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Little Rock, and many others. The low-level crimes or disorganization in which characterized these cities and ultimately caused the delinquency could be anywhere from unemployment to prostitution (Huff-Corzine, 2014). These undesirable characteristics of a society gives rise to increased criminal activity as well as allowing it further deterioration. This movement traveling from the outskirts of the city towards its center displays a drastic change in juvenile crime rate, the highest rates being concentrated in a cities center (or zone
MacDonald, H. (2010, January 4). A crime theory demolished. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870359090504574638024055735590.ht