Last minute exam help
Here's a place to post question you might still have after studying for the exam. Anyone should feel free to ask for help and to answer exam-related questions here.
« September 2006 | Main | November 2006 »
Here's a place to post question you might still have after studying for the exam. Anyone should feel free to ask for help and to answer exam-related questions here.
If you haven't seen this before, check out this little clip. Makes me think I'm trying too hard with my lectures.
Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFPsOMYwXNk
Someone brought up a good point in class last week that unfortunately we wandered away from without really addressing. The comment was basically this: if Charles Booth's mapping project of London declared some areas "vicious" and "semi-criminal" we should not automatically assume this is merely the speculative bias of an elite social scientist. In poor areas of cities, there is, indeed, more crime of all sorts."
I agree with this. I think it is almost one of these "social facts" we've been discussing. Poverty tends to make certain acts against state authority (the law) thinkable in a way that comfortable living does not. However, I don't think this has anything to do with anyone's natural penchant for crime (I don't think the person who posed the question thinks this either). Rather, criminality can often be seen as acts of survival and challenges to a particular social group's monopoly of power. Cast in this light, middle class and wealthy people commit fewer crimes than poor people today because the laws are written by middle class and wealthy men and women for their own protection and preservation of their property (I'm thinking, for example, about the fact that there are no laws effectively controlling the menace of SUVs; yet, there are smoking bans in cities around the world. A regular Jane or Joe with no car stands little chance on their bicycle or on foot against an SUV should there be a collision, yet we have military-size vehicles roaming the streets [the Hummer] as a celebration of American freedom [or something]. What's funny is that these incredibly dangerous, not to mention gas-guzzling, toxin-emitting, vehicles (SUVs) are constantly marketed for their safety value, and, indeed you are safer if you're riding inside one, but what about everyone else? Whose safety and liberty are valued here? Can you imagine the possibility of a city-wide ban on SUVs?)
That's just one example of the class biases rooted in the laws that govern today, but I invite you to come up with more (or, if you disagree, let's hear it).
More importantly, though, I want to hear what you think about the law and class society in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, to get back to our original question. Was there more crime in poor areas of London? Do you see any relationship between property and the laws of the period?