Social Problems and Social Control: Deviance, Crime, Poverty, Unemployment and Control Agencies
What this domain tests
The sociological reading of deviance and social problems, plus the formal and informal machinery that produces conformity.
Core content
- Deviance: Durkheim argued crime is normal and performs boundary-maintenance and innovation functions; Merton's strain theory gives five adaptations to the gap between goals and means - conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion; Becker's labelling theory shifts attention to who defines an act as deviant.
- Crime: types include white-collar crime (Sutherland), organised crime, cyber crime and juvenile delinquency.
- Poverty: absolute vs relative; the poverty line is estimated from a consumption basket - the Tendulkar Committee (2009) used a basket including health and education, while the Rangarajan Committee (2014) used separate rural and urban baskets and produced a higher estimate. Multidimensional poverty measures deprivations, not only income.
- Unemployment: open, disguised (surplus labour in agriculture), seasonal, structural, frictional, and educated unemployment.
- Inequality: income and wealth gaps, caste and gender disparities in education, health and work.
- Social control: informal (folkways, mores, customs, religion, gossip, ridicule, public opinion) and formal (law, police, courts, prisons, constitution). Agencies: family, school, religion, peer group, workplace, media, state. Durkheim and Merton link weak control and anomie to deviance.
Worked example
"A school dropout from a poor household takes to petty theft after his peers praise it." Analysis: Merton's innovation - the goal of money is accepted, illegitimate means are adopted because legitimate means are blocked; the peer group supplies differential association and positive sanction, showing informal control working in the wrong direction. The formal agency (police) responds only later, which is why prevention targets opportunity and socialisation rather than punishment alone.
Traps
Saying Durkheim approved of crime; confusing strain theory with labelling theory; treating poverty as only absolute; listing unemployment types without examples; assuming social control is only legal.