Abstract
On one level, it is evident that the subject of this short chapter is a little absurd. It is almost impossible to furnish a scientifically defensible conception of society without retreating to a description of people’s imagination of that conception. “Society” has no visible, corporate presence. Neither is there a vantage point from which one may view the simultaneous doings of several million Canadians or Britons and give them a collective identity. All those doings are simply a vast scatter of busy exchanges, solitary happenings, meetings, partings, collaborations, conflicts and alliances without obvious design or order. One cannot grasp them as a totality. There is probably no prestructured totality to be grasped. The very idea of a structured society is an imposition, an analytic artifact deeply embedded in metaphysics. As Dewey argued.
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Notes
1. J. Dewey, quoted in C. Wright Mills; Sociology and Pragmatism (New York: Paine-Whitman, 1964) pp. 436–430.
2. See F. Dubow et al., Reactions to Crime, Superintendent of Documents Washington, 1979.
3. J. Defronzo, “In Search of the Behavioral and Attitudinal Consequences of Victimization,” Sociological Symposium (Winter 1979) no. 25.
4. C. Thomas and C. Nelson, Public Attitudes Toward Criminal Justice Agencies, Policies and Levels of Victimization, National Criminal Justice Reference Service (Rockville, 1975).
6. See J. van Dijk; Extent of Public Information and the Nature of Public Attitudes Towards Crime The Hague: Netherlands Ministry of Justice Research and Documentation Centre, 1978).
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16. See D. Davis, Homicide in American Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968); J. Palmer, ‘Thrillers’, in I. Taylor and L. Taylor (eds), Politics and Deviance (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973).
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18. See S. Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1980).
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21. See J. Young, The Drugtakers (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1971).
22. See M. Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966).
23. D. Ogg, England in the Reigns of James II and William HI (London: Oxford University Press, 1955) pp. 56–7.
24. I. Karpets, Director of the Moscow Institute of Criminology, quoted in W. Connor, Deviance in Soviet Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972) p. 168.
25. See P. Mayer, “Witches,” in M. Marwisk (ed.); Witchcraft and Sorcery (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970).
26. M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966) p. 315.
27. J. Douglas, “Deviance and Respectability,” in J. Douglas (ed.), Deviance and Respectability (New York: Basic Books, 1970) p. 4.
28. P. Berger The Social Reality of Religion (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967) pp. 31–2, 33, 34.
29. R. Scott “A proposed Framework for Analyzing Deviance,” in R. Scott and J. Douglas (eds), Theoretical Perspectives on Deviance (New York: Basic Books, 1972) p. 22.
30. See J. Blish, The Day After Judgement (New York: Avon, 1982).
31. M. Bard, quoted in “Victimology: the Study of Trauma,” Police Magazine (Mar. 1979) p. 28.
32. See J. Nunnally, “What the Media Present,” in T. Scheff (ed.), Mental Illness and Social Processes (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
33. See C. Williams and M. Weinberg, Homosexuals and the Military (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
35. P. Rock, “The Sociology of Deviancy and Conceptions of Moral Order,” British Journal of Criminology (Apr. 1974) vol. 14, no. 2.
36. See O. MacDonagh, A Pattern of Government Growth (London: Mac-Gibbon & Kee, 1961).
37. C. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (Illinois: Free Press, 1965) p. 119.
38. See E. Durkeim and M. Mauss, Primitive Classification (reprinted by University of Chicago Press, 1963).
39. P. Berger and T. Luckmann The Social Construction of Reality (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1967). pp. 47–8.
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© 1986 Ezzat A. Fattah
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Rock, P. (1986). Society’s Attitude to the Victim. In: Fattah, E.A. (eds) From Crime Policy to Victim Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08305-3_3
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