Order, Disorder, Crime, and Deviance (CRIM20004)

This subject invites students to look anew at things we, as individuals and society, often take for granted, by analysing the nature of social order and how it inevitably creates non-conformity and deviance. This subject will help students to (a) explore what crime and deviance mean within a society that is often riven with civil conflicts and to (b) discover how does society hang together – and at what cost and whose expense.

To do so, we will explore classical and contemporary sociological and criminological theories that help to explain the nature of social order and crime and deviance. To enhance students’ analytical skills, each theory will be examined through grounded examples, as diverse as terrorism, witch hunts, religious cults, and industrial disasters, as well as current events in Australia and beyond. The application of theory to real-life cases will help students to determine theories’ strengths and limitations, and ultimately their value in understanding the diversity of human behaviour and social reactions to it, whilst developing a critical stance on how we as society define and deal with crime, deviance, order, and disorder.