The criminological potential of pure sociology

Abstract

The pure sociology perspective invented by Donald Black, a general theoretical framework for the prediction and explanation of social reality, has considerable potential for the scientific understanding of criminal behavior. Several scholars have profitably drawn upon Black's proposal that a significant amount of crime is a form of disputing or social control, especially to explain violent conflict. However, pure sociology has not yet been extended and applied to criminal behavior more broadly. A pure sociology of predatory behavior, for instance, would address the location and direction in social space of predators, prey, and third parties. In expanding criminological thought, however, pure sociology also challenges it. Pure sociology explanations are not restricted by time or place, a feature not easily realized with a concept so closely tied to a relatively recent social invention: the state. Additionally, the supra-psychological, -anthropocentric, and -teleological nature of pure sociology generates explanations of behavior that are at odds with many of the assumptions of traditional criminology. Ultimately, then, pure sociology yields a new paradigm for the explanation of behavior the state defines as criminal. Criminology has long been hospitable to a diversity of theoretical perspectives. Phenomenology, rational choice theory, Marxism, evolutionary psychology, and a clutch of social psychological explanations have all contributed to a significant growth in our understanding of criminal behavior. Yet gaps undoubtedly remain. A recent addition with much to offer the field is pure sociology. Pure sociology was invented by Donald Black in The Behavior of Law [8], elaborated by him in subsequent publications, and has been applied to a variety of subjects by scholars such as Baumgartner [3][4][5], Borg [21], Campbell [22], Hoffmann [41], Horwitz [42, 43], Phillips [54] (see also Phillips & Cooney [55]), Michalski [49, 50], Morrill [51], Mullis [52], Senechal de la Roche [58, 59], Tucker [67, 68], and myself [28,31]. Since pure sociology represents a new way of explaining social life its application to criminology is not wholly straightforward. The present analysis is divided into two halves, the first addressing how pure sociology differs from

Drug Market Violence

“…(2) Assaults and homicides committed within dealing hierarchies as a means of enforcing normative codes. Predation is taking another actor's possessions for reasons unrelated to social control (Cooney, 2006). 1 ''[R]obberies of drug dealers'' are an example (Goldstein, 1985, p. 497).…”

Foreign Fieldworkers and Native Participants: A Theory of Method

“…1 This paper relies on the orienting framework known as pure sociology (Black, 1976(Black, , 1995(Black, , 1998Cooney, 1998Cooney, , 2006Cooney, , 2009. The focus of this paradigm is determining how social behavior is affected by the social status of and social distance between persons involved in situations.…”

“…Purely sociological theories attempt to use social status and social distance to explain social behavior. Past work in pure sociology has explored, for example, how social structure affects economic behaviors such as welfare (Michalski, 2003) and predation (Cooney & Phillips, 2002); cultural behaviors such as ideas and art (Black, 1998); and normative behaviors, including law (Black, 1976), retaliation (Black, 1983;Cooney, 1998Cooney, , 2006Cooney, , 2009, avoidance, toleration (Baumgartner, 1988), and therapy (Horwitz, 1982;Tucker, 1999).…”

Criminology as social control: discriminatory research & its role in the reproduction of social inequalities and crime

“…For instance, pure sociology has been used to explain economic behaviors such as welfare [35] and predation [15,16,30], and also has been applied to cultural behaviors such as ideas [10], medicine ([9]:164-5), and art ( [9]:168-9). The majority of prior work in pure sociology has focused on making sense of forms of social control, such as law [5,7], self-help [6,14,38,40], avoidance [3], therapy [22,46], terrorism [11], and control of research by Institutional Review Boards [32].…”