Suchergebnisse

Culture, in the simplest language, refers to the thoughtways, feelingways, and actionways of a people, be they a nation or a subsociety. As a concept, it refers to the established orientations which a people has for managing its relationships in the collectivity and its relationships to the forces and conditions of the physical environment. The key elements of culture are beliefs, sentiments, norms, and values. Almost all behavioral scientists would include in the realm of culture all the cognitive, affective, behavioral, and value orientations shared by a people. With these basic elements of culture, a people constructs complexes which we call ideologies, social structures, institutions, organizations, laws, and policies.

chapter 1 Seattle's Challenges -- chapter 2 From Sojourners to Asylum-Seekers -- chapter 3 Falls from Grace -- chapter 4 Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship -- chapter 5 Schooling eir Children -- chapter 6 Changing Husband-Wife Relations -- chapter 7 Use and Abuse of Welfare -- chapter 8 Victors and Vanquished -- chapter 9 Starting Church Congregations -- chapter 10 From Elation to Alienation -- chapter 11 Dying and Memorializing -- chapter 12 To Return or Not Return? -- chapter 13 Conclusion.

Most literature on juvenile delinquency describes it as essentially a product of the lower socio-economic classes. While there has been some speculation over the incidence and quality of middle-class delinquency, what evidence exists is largely impressionistic. Nevertheless, the prevailing view is that delinquency among middle-class youth has increased in recent years. The present paper seeks a sociological and theoretical perspective to help account for the dominant forms of juvenile delinquency among middle-class youth. It attempts also to explain the emergence and the particular qualities of middle-class delinquency as a consequence of structural changes taking place in the larger society.Accounting for middle-class delinquency in North America requires an understanding of the dominant culture of middle-class youth. Structural changes in society over the last half-century have produced opportunities for extensive adolescent peer-group participation and the emergence of a mass youth culture. During the growth of this youth culture, in which the majority of middle-class teenagers participate, there have emerged, jointly, both delinquent and non-delinquent patterns of behaviour. It is the thesis of this paper that the bulk of middle-class delinquency occurs in the course of customary, non-delinquent activities and falls within the limits of adolescent group norms. Moreover the knowledge of both delinquent and non-delinquent patterns in the youth culture is widely shared among middle-class teenagers. Thus, in order to account for middle-class delinquency one need not look for a separate "delinquent subculture."