6.2.3: Sociological Explanations

 6.2.3: Sociological Explanations 

In contrast with both sociobiologists and psychologists, sociologists search for factors outside the individual.

 They look for social influences that “recruit” people to break norms.

To account for why people commit crimes, for example, sociologists examine such external influences as socialization, membership in subcultures, and social class. 

Social class, a concept that we discuss in depth in Chapter 8, refers to people’s relative standing in terms of education, occupation, and especially income and wealth. 

To explain deviance, sociologists apply the three sociological perspectives—symbolic interactionism, functionalism, and conflict theory. Let’s compare these three explanations.