When discussing bias, he refers to the class structure and how the elite tend to view the poor as naturally more inclined to deviant and criminal behavior. Although he does not mention strain theory specifically, his suppositions are very much in alignment with Merton's. Ultimately, the Saints and the Roughnecks provide an intriguing scenario upon which to make numerous sociological speculations. Labeling theory, Social Control Theory and Strain theory are just the tip of the iceberg...
While no single theory can entirely or unequivocally explain why the Saints and the Roughnecks led such parallel yet divergent lives, the answer inevitably lies somewhere within the premises of sociological inquiry.Saints and Roughnecks was the title given to Chambliss' 1973 study in which he found that class and not crime often determines a person's reputation in the society and his fate with the police. The author, William Chambliss' selected two different groups of teenagers for his study, one coming from affluent part of the metropolitan area and are labeled Saints for the study, while the other group came from lower-income
Saints and the Roughnecks - William J. Chambliss In his seminal essay "The Saints and the Roughnecks," William J. Chambliss studied how a community's differential perceptions led to preferential treatment of a group of juvenile delinquents from upper-middle class families over another gang of delinquents from lower-class families. The main determinant for a community's reaction to a juvenile's deviant behavior was socioeconomic class. Since this essay's publication in 1973, the idea that
Saints and the Roughnecks by William Chambliss is a masterpiece study in Seattle suburb in the 1970s and it demonstrates the significance of connecting the macro and micro factors together. (Conformity, deviance and Crime) The Saints and the Roughnecks were two clusters of boys from the same Hanibal High School, who got involved in the same kinds of abnormal behaviors but were branded differently by the public. (Violence; Disease
In his concluding questions, Chambliss notes these reactions, questioning how the meanings that were assigned to both groups by the townspeople, school officials, and police affected their futures. For this reason, Symbolic Interaction theory can be applied to the case of the Saints and the Roughnecks. In assigning values to both groups, members outside of these groups most likely impacted the groups' futures, according to Chambliss. The decisions of the
Saints The Roughnecks and the Saints: A Research Overview The essential problem that the researcher set out to address in this article was the perception of and reaction to delinquency amongst teenagers in a specific town. more specifically, the researcher ended up identifying a difference in the way teenage boys of different socioeconomic backgrounds were viewed by teachers, the police, and other community members in light of their delinquency, though it
Reflection: Saints and RoughnecksIn his essay �The Saints and the Roughnecks� William Chambliss examines a curious phenomenon in high school: while delinquent behavior was common among boys of various social classes at Hannibal High School, only the negative behaviors of the lower-class, less academically inclined boys was viewed as delinquent. The clean-cut, high-achieving so-called Saints often cut class early, hung out at pool halls, and, objectively speaking, engaged in more
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