Application of Theories: Summary lectures and readings.
Session 1, L: General introduction.
Methods (allow replication and give credibility) of theory building: An explicit method makes an analysis scientific.In
sociology methods of theory building are of particular importance:
- Social systems tend to be very complex, which makes them difficult to explain and predict
- Sociological theories tend to imply counter-intuitive predictions. To demonstrate that Counter-intuitive
predictions are valid, you need an accepted method.
The “whole does not equal the sum of its parts; it is something different, whose properties differ from those displayed
by the parts from which it is formed.”
Sociology as a discipline is built on the notion that unexpected phenomena can arise from the interaction of
individuals, therefore sociological theories and analyses tend to be difficult.
Session 2, P: Where have all the criminals gone?
Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J. (2006). Freakonomics. Chapter 4 “Where Have All the
Criminals Gone?”
In 1989 that was a peak in crime rates in the US. Suddenly, the crime rates dropped in the early 1990s and no one
knew why. Different possible explanations were given:
1. A stronger economy. Less unemployment equals less crime. Critique: The drop in crime rates was much bigger
than the growth of the economy. Added to that, not only crimes with a financial motivation dropped, but also
violent crimes. Generalize the theory: crime rates should decline other times the economy was growing, it did not.
2. Increased reliance on prisons. Judges gave out stricter sentences. Increase of people sent to prison, people
became afraid to commit the same crime again. Critique: accounts for ⅓ of the crime drop.
3. Increased use of capital punishment. The amount of executions in the USA between 1980 and 1990
quadrupled. Executing 1 criminal translates into 7 fewer homicides. Critique: accounts for 1/25 of the crime drop.
4. More police. The number of police officers grew in the 1990s. Critique: accounts for 1/10 of the crime drop. The
number of police officers will always rise when there is a growth in crime rates due to measures taken against
crime. So, it’s hard to give a good causal explanation.
5. Innovative policing strategies. Smart and new ways of policing were introduced in New York. → Example:
Broken Window Theory: Visible signs of crime, anti-social behaviour, and civil disorder create an urban
environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes. It suggests that policing
methods that target minor crimes (vandalism, public drinking) help to create an atmosphere of order and
lawfulness. Critique: The crime drop was already happening before these strategies were implemented and there
was a very large increase in the number of officers in New York. Besides that this theory was used in New York for
policing but not in any other state.
6. Tougher gun laws. Brady Act gun control law (1993) requires buyers to have a criminal background check. This
was set to fail because the regulation of the legal market would not be able to overthrow the healthy black market.
Critique: In Switzerland guns were legal if people had a permit. At the time it was the safest country in the world.
Not only the USA should be studied.
Theory of John Lott: more guns equals less crime because criminals might think everyone would be able to
defend themselves. Proven to be false.
7. Bursting of the crack bubble. There was a lot of violence between crack dealers in the 80’s. While the amount
of crack use hasn’t dropped since then, the profits of dealing crack have dropped. Therefore, the violence has also
decreased. Small dealers didn't want to take the risk of going to jail for barely any profit. Critique: crash of the
crack market accounts for 15% of the crime drop.
8. Aging of the population. Since people mellow out as they get older, more people must lead to less crime.
Critique: this demographic change is too slow and subtle to explain the sudden drop in crime.
However, there was another demographic change that did influence the reduction of crime in the 1990s. Women who
were not able to have an abortion in Europe often resented their baby and failed to provide it with a good home.
Because of this, these children were more likely to become criminals. In the US, abortion laws were very strict for a
long time with abortions only being possible in extreme situations. This changed with the case of Roe vs. Wade in
1973. By 1980 the number of abortions in the US reached 1.6 million per year. It was relatively cheap to get an
abortion and the women that did get an abortion were often unmarried, their teens or poor (or all three). The first
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, cohort of children born after Roe vs. Wade were hitting their late teens when the crime rates began to fall. Legalized
abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime.
But is this theory true or is there merely a correlation? How can we tell if there is causality between abortion and
crime? One way is to measure crime data in the five states where abortion was already legal two years earlier. In these
states crime did fall earlier. Of course, you can say that this was a pure coincidence. One factor to look at is the
correlation between a state’s abortion rate and its crime rate. The states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970s
had the greatest crime drops in the 1990s. Other correlations that prove the theory are:
- In states with high abortion rates, the entire decline in crime was among the post-Roe cohort as opposed to older
criminals.
- Canadian and Australian studies have revealed a similar link between abortion and crime.
- The post-Roe cohort was not only missing thousands of young male criminals, but also thousands of single,
teenage mothers.
Session 3, L: Explanation and prediction.
Two kinds of typical sociological research questions:
- Related to explanations: why-questions (trying to find the ex[;anans).
- Related to predictions: will… questions (trying to find the explanandum).
Theories are general statements (laws, or “law-like”) which are not restricted to certain objects, or certain dates or
places.
The covering law model – general method of explaining and predicting based on the deduction principle.
Explanans: Statements that explain p.
- Consists of at least one general statement (L1)
- And at least one auxiliary assumption (a1): a hypothesis that is assumed to be accurate in order for the tests to
work as planned. This is a singular statement.
- The last-mentioned is also a singular statement.
Line indicates that explanandum follows from explanans.
Explanandum: Statement p that we seek to explain.
- Singular statement.
Explanans:
Assumption 1 (the statement that explains the explanandum):
General statement/law: If X, then Y.
→ If many people are dissatisfied with their living conditions (Dx), they will protest (Px).
Assumption 2 (omvat at least one law and one singular statement):
Singular statement: Z is an element of X ( → Z: Leipzig, 1989 and X: societies where many
people are dissatisfied with their living conditions).
→ In Leipzig 1989 (a), many people were dissatisfied with their living conditions (D).
Explanandum:
Conclusion:
Singular statement: for Z it holds that Y (because Z is an element of X, the law (Y) applies to Z → because
Leipzig, 1989 is an element of societies where many people are dissatisfied with their living conditions, the law ‘’if
many people are dissatisfied with their living conditions, they will protest’’ applies to Leipzig,
1989).
→ In Leipzig 1989 (a), many people protested (P).
Extensions:
1. Includes scope conditions (S): specifies to which cases the law applies.
- Law: it holds for all S; if X, then Y→ example: law only applies to modern societies).
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