The Marxist Perspective on Crime Essay Example

The Marxist Perspective on Crime Paper In sociology, deviance refers to behaviours or actions which are considered abnormal and undesirable; in other words, they contravene cultural/social norms (for example swearing in public). At a certain point in time, a society may decide that some specific acts are so undesirable that they warrant punishment. When laws are passed against deviant acts, they become crimes (for example murder). In this essay, I will look at the Marxist perspective and how it has contributed to the study and understanding of crime and deviance. Whilst Functionalism is a perspective based on value consensus, Marxism holds at its core the theory of conflict and class struggle in society. According to Marx, there is a fundamental division between what he sees are the two classes of society: the capitalists (or bourgeoisie), who own the means of production (e. g. oney, property, raw materials capital) and the working-class, who do not own capital. From a Marxist point of view, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie hold conflicting positions for example, factory workers will inevitably wish for high wages, whilst factory owners will want to maximise their profits by paying workers as little as possible. Marxist criminology is based around the view that crime is a product of the fundamental class conflict in capitalist societies. We will write a custom essay sample on The Marxist Perspective on Crime specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on The Marxist Perspective on Crime specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on The Marxist Perspective on Crime specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Marxists argue that the structural-conflict model of capitalism systematically generates crime by holding at its centre severe social inequalities whilst encouraging people to strive for monetary success. The nature of the system is competitive, promoting personal gain rather than collective well-being; it often leads to the exploitation of millions for the profit of a few. Right across the social spectrum, people are persuaded of the importance of material possessions through adverts of the latest fashion item and through the medias portrayal of exclusive lifestyles. Echoing Mertons strain theory, Marxists argue that those with barriers to success, from the businessman to the factory worker, are pressured to break the law in order to achieve the material desires which capitalism encourages. Marxs theory of alienation can be applied to those crimes which have no apparent financial gain, explaining them as an expression of the frustration produced by demeaning and unsatisfying work. For those who are most affected by the systems unequal distribution of wealth, crime can be seen simply as a means for survival. According to Marxists, the state passes laws which protect the interests and reflect the ideology of the ruling class the many laws which protect private property, the essence of capitalism, reflect the expansion of business and trade. They argue that laws which appear to be in the interest of the subject class are in fact just concessions and are there to create a false consciousness, an illusion of equality; they are in place to maintain the power of the ruling class and to keep the subject class under control. From a Marxist point of view, there is a systematic bias in favour of those at the top, and this is evident when looking at how laws are enforced. White-collar crimes, such as corporate/financial frauds, are rarely discovered and even more rarely prosecuted, despite the fact that they can have devastating effects; on the other hand, more visible street crimes are severely punished by the agents of social control. Moreover, people have unequal access to a fair trial having the money to pay for a good lawyer can mean the difference between being found guilty or not guilty. In this light, Marxists play down the significance of official statistics, which predominantly record blue-collar crimes, claiming that they are a social construction and that they do not reflect the truth. Radical criminology, a strand of neo-Marxism, developed in the 1970s through the work of Ian Taylor, Paul Walton and Jock Young as an alternative perspective to traditional Marxist criminology. Like traditional Marxists, they see the economy as the most important part of society and they believe that the inequalities in wealth and power between individuals in capitalist societies are the root cause of crime. However, unlike Marxists, they reject theories suggesting that external forces can direct human behaviour (for example the strain to anomie). Taylor et al insist that crimes are often deliberate acts with political motives, and that deviants are not just the passive victims of capitalism, but that they are actively fighting and trying to alter capitalism. By looking at the states role in the process of criminalisation, radical criminology draws both on Marxism and Interactionism in an attempt to produce a fully social theory of deviance. However, it has been criticised for failing to provide any substantial theories of crime and for offering a utopian socialist model as an alternative to capitalism. New left realism developed in the early 1980s both to compensate for some of the weaknesses of previous Marxist and neo-Marxist theories and to respond to a rise in zero tolerance right-wing policies. Left realists differentiate themselves from Marxists and left idealists by emphasising the significance of working-class street crime and by studying its effect on its victims. John Lea and Jock Young point to evidence from the British Crime Survey that there has been a massive increase in street crime since the Second World War. Whilst agreeing that crime is closely linked to deprivation, they reject the view that poverty is directly responsible for crime, arguing that unemployment levels in the 1930s were high, yet the crime rate was low compared to the 1980s. Their explanation of crime is based around the concepts of relative deprivation, subculture and marginalisation. According to Lea and Young, deprivation leads to crime when experienced as relative deprivation. When one feels deprived compared to someone else, they may use illegal means to feel less disadvantaged. As well as explaining property and financial crime, relative deprivation can be used to explain violent crime: relative deprivation can create frustration and aggression. The concept of subculture is explained by Lea and Young as a collective response to a groups problem. If a group sufferers from relative deprivation, it may adopt a lifestyle which to cope with their problem, either illegally or legally. The concept of marginalisation refers to groups at the margins of society, those without socio-political representation and clearly defined objectives. Typically, unemployed youths of minority ethnic groups resort to crime as an expression of their resentment to a society which doesnt offer them anything. Essentially, left realism is criticised for failing to explain the causes of crime it relies extensively on victimisation statistics and only takes into account the views of victims on certain issues. Also, left realism fails to explain why some people who suffer from relative deprivation commit crime and others do not. However, it has highlighted the importance of understanding street crime and has influenced crime tackling policies. The traditional Marxist perspective on crime has been essential in illustrating the many flaws of capitalism and pointing out that crime is not exclusively a working class phenomenon. In many respects, however, it has a rather simplistic view on the relations of power in capitalist societies. Moreover, it is in large part race and gender blind, and it emphasises the significance of corporate crime at the expense of other crimes. Most importantly of all, perhaps, it wrongly assumes that a communist system would eliminate crime. Despite these criticisms, Marxism has produced a basis for the understanding of crime and has influenced numerous new approaches which further enrich the study of crime and deviance.

Identifying Understanding Masculine Rhyme

Identifying Understanding Masculine Rhyme A masculine rhyme happens when a rhyme is on the final syllable of a wordthat syllable is stressed Green and Mean are masculine rhymes, as are Invest and Undressed, Import and Short, and Intrude and Food. In looking at masculine rhymes, we have two separate components: the rhyme, and the stress. Rhyme Rhymes are simply identical (or very similar) sounds. An okay rhyme is head and pet, since both share the same vowel sound, but head and bed are a closer rhyme, because they share a vowel and a consonant sound. Rhymes dont have to be from the same letters, either. As we see above, invest and undressed rhyme, even though one ends in -st and one in -ssed. Its not about the letters themselves; its all about the sound they make. Stress Stress is a little trickier to understand. In English, we dont put the same amount of emphasis on every syllable in a word. A syllable is stressed when we put emphasis on it- beCAUSE, CHATtering, RUSHes, perSIMMon. Those syllables that are not stressed are, not surprisingly, known as unstressed. A good way to figure out which syllables are stressed and unstressed in a word is to play around with emphasizing difference syllables. Does IMpossible sound the same as imPOSSible or imposs-I-ble or impossiBLE? Some words have more than one stressed syllable, although one is usually more stressed than the others- REconSIDer (where the third syllable is more stressed than the first). Words that are only one syllable are usually automatically stressed, although it depends on their context within a sentence. So, to have a masculine rhyme, we need two (or more) words that end with the same sounds, and both have stressed last syllables. Sink and Wink and Think are all masculine rhymes. As are Overdue and Debut, and Combine and Sign. Not Gendered As you can see, masculine rhyme has nothing to do with gender. The term was coined long enough ago that stressed syllables, more powerful than unstressed syllables, were equated with the masculine; words ending with unstressed syllables (like RUSHing, HEAVen, and PURple) are all considered feminine endings- when those kinds of words rhyme, its known as feminine rhyme. How to Identify Masculine Rhyme For the most part, once you know the rules of masculine rhymes, theyre pretty easy to spot. As long as the words in question rhyme in their final (or only) syllable, and that syllable is stressed, the rhyme is masculine. Check out the poetry excerpts below for examples of masculine rhyme. Examples From John Donnes Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter my heart, three-personed God, for youAs yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bendYour force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. So we have two rhymes here you/new and mend/bend. Since all of these words are one syllable long, they are automatically stressed. Rhyme? Check. Stressed syllable? Check. These are masculine rhymes. From On the Dangers of Open Water by Liz Wager: This beauty we dont understand will sweepus out to sea. We look for it belowour bows, but if we try to understandthe workings of that beauty we perceive,were driven mad by all we cannot know.We force ourselves to roam between the strandstill, like Narcissus, drown to find reprieve. Here, we have a couple different rhymes: below/know, understand/strands, perceive/reprieve. (While understand and strands are not perfect rhymes, theyre pretty close.) In this example, there are multi-syllable words: they all end with a stressed syllable- perCEIVE, rePRIEVE, and beLOW. Stressed final syllables? Yes. Rhymes? Yes. Another example of masculine rhyme. Why Do Poets Use Masculine Rhyme? In addition to knowing what masculine rhyme is, and how to identify it, its also helpful to understand why a poet might use it in a poem, or what masculine rhyme contributes to a poem. There are several ways to emphasize particular words in a poem. Placement in a line, stress, and rhyme all make words stand out. In the above examples, all the masculine rhymes occur at the end of the line; just by having that white space to their right, these words are more prominent, more visible. Our eyes linger on those final words before we move onto the next line. Stress, too, emphasizes a word; words like to, the, an, a, and, if, or, at, etc., are usually all unstressed in poetic lines, while stressed words have more meaning, more life. And, when words are rhymed, they stand out. The more times we hear a certain sound repeated, the more we pay attention to that sound- just think about the poetry of Dr. Seuss! So, having masculine rhymes (especially those at the end of lines) help a poet to really emphasize the important words of a poem. Whether a reader realizes it or not, stressed syllables and words tend to stick in our memories better, as do the repetition of sounds that we find in rhyme. So, the next time you read a poem that incorporates rhyme (such as a sonnet or a pantoum), check to see if it is making use of masculine rhyme, and how that use is impacting your reading experience.

'Rebel Without a Cause' Film Review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

'Rebel Without a Cause' Film Review - Essay Example In order to discern the position, it is important to look at the outstanding question that Jim Stark ask his father while considering the embodiment of manhood; â€Å"What can you do when you have to be a man?† (Ray II). When asking the question, Jim expects a clear and conclusive solution, but the father’s inability to give a precise answer points in a way to the question of masculinity among the characters in the movie. People wonder why there is not one definite answer explaining who a real man is. Is it that Mr. Stark is not sure of what it takes to be a man? Maybe there is more than one way of answering the question. One plausible thing in this scenario is that the society in which the movie is set provides only one standard model of manhood; that of a tough, hyper-masculine male. There seems to be numerous instances in the movie during which this assertion of a hyper-masculine male is ideologically shifted and distorted. For instance, when Jim gets back home, he finds his dad rushing to bring food to Jim’s mother afore she awakens. Jim becomes disgusted at just how diminished his father’s masculinity has become and begged him to stop getting submissive. It is clear that Jim’s disgust stems from his worries regarding the apparent inversion of gender roles. It is plausible in Jim’s character that something urgent needs to be done in order to re-define the true meaning of masculinity, and hence manhood. This explains why he cannot accept his father’s submissiveness to the mother. Out of frustration, he grabs his father and pushes him across the room. This action seems to encompass Jim’s desire to re-awaken the â€Å"man† in his father. According to Jim, the father has become an emasculated patriarch in this matriarchal society. When one turns to Frank’s life in the movie, it is notable that he has control over his activities, leaving him with little room to assert his masculinity. Indeed, his masculinity has