Forschungsfeld geografische Kriminalstrukturanalyse

This paper introduces a research interface between urban sociology and criminology, which has experienced a tremendous development elsewhere, but has been neglected as an own scientific field of research in Austria. A ?Geographic crime-patterns analysis“ represents an interesting and germane discipline for both qualitative- and quantitative- oriented social scientists. With regard to comprehensive crime prevention the discussion about the ?future of crime control institutions“ does not only evolve around crime prevention techniques, but also and foremost addresses elaborated methods of crime analysis. A sociological analysis of crime builds on the grounds of criminalistics: Crime hot spots are correlated with socio-demographic and spatial data as social conditions of the lifeworld in order to elaborate a theory of crime-opportunities and finally to inform authorities concerned with public safety. Once the police has realised that they can only guarantee public safety in collaboration with social and housing authorities, they must also accept an approach for a comprehensive analysis of crime statistics with regard to social phenomena. This paper shall present the scientific potential of a geographic analysis of crime.     

青少年人口犯罪中刑罚预防作用的调查分析——以天津市为例

刑罚无疑具有预防犯罪的价值,这种价值体现在犯罪人作案前对刑罚风险的主观估计,而犯罪人自身对刑罚认知上的偏差,会影响刑罚预防价值的发挥。传统上,青少年犯罪常被认为是一种"不计后果"的犯罪,其实犯罪青少年对刑罚风险的感知、判断并不弱于其他犯罪人,刑罚对青少年犯罪仍有重要的预防作用,只不过其作用的大小因犯罪青少年的年龄、性别、文化程度等有所差异。另外,一些相关因素也造成了刑罚对部分犯罪青少年预防作用的"缺失"。     

Prolegomena zu einer Theorie der symbolischen Gewalt

The development of modern society calls for a substantial extension of the sociological understanding of violence. To this end, Pierre Bourdieu??s concept of ??symbolic violence?? is of crucial importance. In this article, Bourdieu??s reflections on symbolic violence scattered throughout his oeuvre are collected, qualified and knit together. In the next step, Bourdieu??s perspective will be critically compared with other relevant approaches to the sociology of power and violence in order to assess the contribution of Bourdieu??s sociology for a systematic theory of symbolic violence. Finally, it will be scrutinized to what extend Bourdieu??s approach allows for an empirical analysis of modern phenomena of domination.     

Does Municipal Socioeconomic Development Affect Public Perceptions of Crime? A Multilevel Logistic Regression Analysis

Chile is considered as one of the safest countries in Latin America, with a below-the-average world crime rate. However, during the last few decades, the country has experienced a deterioration in public perceptions of safety. This paper investigates public perceptions of crime in the 52 municipalities of the metropolitan area of Santiago, by employing an index of socioeconomic development for each municipality. Multilevel logistic regression analysis is used in order to assess the impact of individual and municipal-level variables on perceptions of crime in these municipalities. The results show that women exhibit higher perceptions of crime, while people living in rural areas, inactive people, and people with higher education and income have generally lower perceptions. Multidimensional poverty is positively associated with high perceptions of crime, while municipal spending on health and/or education does not show a relationship with perceptions of crime. Regarding socioeconomic development level of municipalities, the results show that people living in municipalities of high development show the lowest perceptions of crime, despite the fact that these municipalities do actually exhibit the highest crime rates, a fact confirming the ‘perception gap’ and the ‘neighbourhood favouritism’ theories. The results and conclusions of this study can be used not only by local policy-makers but also by officials in other cities that—like Santiago—are characterised by high urban segregation.     

Visuelle Wissenssoziologie der Fotografie

The article sketches the outlines to a visual sociology of knowledge of photography. It begins with a discussion of the epistemological and methodical approaches to photography by Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu, and it reflects upon the theoretical and analytic conceptions of the art historians Erwin Panofsky and Max Imdahl in regard to their significance for an empirical visual sociology. Based on this, Erving Goffmans metaphor of the frame is introduced for the sociological analysis of photographs between single frames, picture contexts, and social milieus. A photograph taken from current everyday communication is used for the illustration and for the empirical testing of the methodological and methodical considerations.     

Social class and delinquency in London boroughs

Early empirical studies carried out in the U.S. of geographically distributed or ‘ecological’ delinquency rates have tended to stress the importance of environmental, attitudinal (anomic) variables and institutional factors as the principal determinants of urban delinquency. More recent research however has indicated that delinquency is highly related with socio-economic status, rather than with purely ecological factors or with ‘anomie’. In the present paper we present new evidence, based on published data, on the causal structure of delinquency in metropolitan London boroughs by means of a combined use of two well known multivariate techniques-regression analysis and factor analysis. It is found that 50% of the variance of London annual delinquency rates is explained by two indicators of socio-economic status or class used as independent regression variables. In addition, when social class is controlled for, half of the remaining variance is accounted for by indicators of urban land use and post-war population mobility. Thus 75% of the total observed delinquency variance is explained by the regression equation. Finally, the quantified indicators provide a useful typology of London boroughs which permits a characterisation of urban areas in terms of their crimogenic properties.     

Living on the Edge: Neighborhood Boundaries and the Spatial Dynamics of Violent Crime

Neighborhood boundaries are a defining aspect of highly segregated urban areas. Yet, few studies examine the particular challenges and spatial processes that occur at the bordering region between two neighborhoods. Extending the growing literature on spatial interdependence, this article argues that neighborhood boundaries—defined as sharp changes in the racial or socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods—are a salient feature of the spatial structure with implications for violent crime and other outcomes. Boundaries lack the social control and cohesion of adjacent homogeneous areas, are contested between groups provoking intergroup conflict, and create opportunities for criminal behavior. This article presents evidence linking racial neighborhood boundaries to increased violent crime. The findings illustrate the importance of neighborhood boundaries for our understanding of spatial dimensions of population dynamics above and beyond the characteristics of neighborhoods.     

Bastler — Sammler — Spurensucher. Zum Verhältnis von Geschichte und Systematik der soziologischen Theorie nach Robert K. Merton

For the history of sociology not to lose its relevance to the discipline, it should not be understood as a biographically oriented parade of recognized and forgotten classics, but rather complement sociological theory. Writing upon these premises, the historian of sociology would cease to act as the discipline's identity engineer who, considering the competitive field of theories and subjects, conservatively serves sociology to find and stabilize its historical identity. Furthermore, s/he would no longer operate as collector of ideas in search in the history of sociology for concepts of sociological analysis that were abandoned at some point, and in doing so, would cease to pursue the objective of critically undermining the dominating paradigms in contemporary sociology. On the contrary, since the ‘historic turn’ in the philosophy of science, the historian of sociology has to take up a trace-tracking role. In contrast to Robert K. Merton's stance, the theory and history of sociology should not be understood as two separate ventures. Rather, the genealogical exploration will lead to a historical epistemology of disciplinary paradigms that emphasizes that theoretical paradigms must be analyzed within the social context of their genesis. Such an approach would enable us to systematically identify the prerequisites and range of contemporary theoretical paradigms. Beyond Merton's former analysis, theory construction in sociology requires that systematic and historical reconstructions go hand-in-hand.     

Illuminating urban street (u)topias

ABSTRACT

A utopian vision of the city is often bright, well-lit, and conversely darkness and night are more often associated with dystopia. This paper uses an ethnographic study of night-time in a busy street space in the middle of a south coast UK city in order to demonstrate the application of ‘utopia as method’, or rather utopia as a mobile method in understanding justice and injustice in urban space. In doing so, we suggest the possibilities of urban mobile space, arguing that ‘utopia as method’ originates in Lefebvre’s (1991) work on the possibilities that arise from the seemingly impossible imaginings of urban transformation. We use what are considered to be distinct approaches to photography: ‘ethnographic’ and ‘expressive’ in demonstrating this. Photography tells a story of the lighting of the space in illuminating the street in particular ways and making visible aspects that otherwise may go unnoticed. We draw from the boundaries, of photography (and therefore light), of method, and of urban space, looking to the ‘territorial edges’ for Lefebvre’s possibilities.     

Assessing Urban Public Safety via Indicator-Based Evaluating Method: A Systemic View of Shanghai

The explosive development of urban Shanghai after China’s economic reform in 1978 has attracted wide attention. There are a plethora of studies attempting to capture the fast dynamics in this global city. Looking into the urban dynamics from a public safety perspective, however, eludes the current literature. Urban public safety has become a primary concern of urban sustainability in recent years due to escalated potential loss if urban public safety is severely breached. This is even more so for megacities like Shanghai. Assessing the current status of urban public safety hence becomes an imperative task for urban sustainability. This research initiates a detailed assessment effort through building a relatively comprehensive set of public safety indicators. Four general aspects of Shanghai’s urban public safety are identified, i.e., urban development, urban crime and instability, urban housing and livability, and urban disasters. From officially published data, field survey and interviews, 34 individual indicators are chosen. Principal component analyses are conducted for each of the four aspects, and a synthetic urban public safety index is derived. The analysis suggests that urban Shanghai’s public safety is gradually increasing due primarily to continuous economic success and increased investment in public safety preparation, education, and prevention. The assessment index is also shown to be able to capture major events affecting Shanghai’s public safety.     

Simmels ‚Exkurs über die Soziologie der Sinne’ — Zentraltext einer anthropologischen Soziologie

The article reconstructs Simmel’s essay “Excursus on the Sociology of the Senses” as a central text of a sociology of the body, as a paradigmatic approach to an anthropological sociology. It re-systemizes Simmel’s partly implicit, partly explicit non-or pre-sociological aesthesiological premises on the senses as well as his twofold sociological perspective on the senses, i.e. the senses as a constituting factor of social relations on the one hand and the social regulation and construction of the senses on the other hand. Simmel’s phenomenological view on the structure and function of the senses (their immanence of abstraction, double perspective, difference and combination) is shown to be the aesthesiological foundation of his sociological approach, being perhaps part of a philosophical anthropology, that systematically reconstructs the basic significance of the senses or the body as prefiguring a person’s relation to him/herself, to the world and to others while at the same time saving him from biologistic reduction. The senses have their share in constituting the social world by which they are at the same time interpreted, modeled and constructed. Methodologically systemized in this way, Simmel’s essay in nuce reveals an aesthesiology of the senses that opens up the possibility of an anthropological sociology apt to rebalance the linguistic turn not only by an iconic turn but also by an acoustic turn (that can rediscover the sociological relevance of ‘parole’ against the dominance of ‘langue’).     

Soziologie und soziale Ontologie

Recent philosophical work attempts to describe social phenomena in general categories, an approach also interesting for sociologists. The questions as of what constitutes social objects or facts and whether there is a common structure of social phenomena are mostly neglected in sociology. This neglect is problematic because basic questions about conceptualisation and explanation in sociology cannot be pursued without a clear understanding of social phenomena. The philosophical discussions take place vis-à-vis the doctrine of ontological individualism which means that social phenomena are shadow phenomena without reality. Only the actions of individuals and the mental processes being constitutive elements of the actions are real. In opposition to this dogma, Gilbert, Searle and Ruben argue that social phenomena cannot be reduced to actions. Quite the contrary, actions can only be understood if the existence of the phenomena is presupposed. From a sociological point of view there are three remarkable aspects: First, all three authors offer good arguments against ontological individualism. Second, their arguments are based on the reconstruction of the use of everyday concepts referring to social phenomena and are therefore comprehensible. Third, the understanding of social phenomena merely as collective subjects, intentions or systems of interlocking beliefs is too restrictive. Despite this failure these theories show a way to gain a more realistic understanding of social phenomena.     

Fuzzy-Logik für die Soziologie

This contribution introduces fuzzy-logic as a possibly new basis for sociology. After a general introduction to the basic principles of fuzzy-logic certain advantages are presented exemplarily, particularly for the empirical research considering as example the so called “qualitative-comparative analysis” (QCA), and for the sociological theory concerning Hartmut Esser’s theory of action. In sum, the application of fuzzy-logic promises sociology a more simple modelling of more complex facts than it has been possible so far.     

Cross-National Variation in Violent Crime Rates: Race, r-K Theory, and Income

Rushton's theory of r-K race differences was examined in relation to the rate of murder, rape, and serious assault per 100,000 population and Gross Domestic Product per Person for 74 countries from the 1993–1996 International Crime Statistics published by INTERPOL and the 1999 CIA World Fact Book. Each country was assigned to one of the three macro-races East Asian, European, and African. The results corroborated earlier findings that violent crime is lowest in East Asian countries, intermediate in European countries, and highest in African and in Black Caribbean countries. The median number of violent crimes per 100,000 population were: 7 East Asian countries—34; 45 European countries—42; and 22 African and Black Caribbean countries—149, respectively. The median Gross Domestic Product per Person was highest in East Asian countries ($12,600), intermediate in European countries ($7,400), and lowest in African and Black Caribbean countries ($1,900). Across the three population groups there was an ecological correlation of –.96 between crime and wealth (wealthier countries had less crime). Finer-grained analyses, however, found that while wealth was negatively related to crime across European or East Asian countries, it was positively related to crime for the African and Black Caribbean countries (i.e., the wealthier an African or Black Caribbean country, the greater its rate of violent crime). Future research needs to examine genetic factors in addition to cultural factors as well as their interactions.     

上海流动人口犯罪特征及原因分析——透过新闻资料的梳理、分析

流动人口犯罪是目前城市犯罪的主要构成因素之一,上海流动人口犯罪比重已占到城市犯罪总数的60%左右,并呈继续上升趋势。透过新闻资料对上海流动人口犯罪特征及原因进行具体分析,可以看出上海流动人口犯罪表现出了犯罪的一些共性,也反映了上海城市犯罪的一些个性特征:侵财型犯罪比重大;流动人口共同结伙犯罪、团伙犯罪比重较大;犯罪成员年龄结构轻;犯罪发案时间季节性明显;罪案主要集中于城郊结合部。导致流动人口犯罪的首要因素是社会环境。因此,应加强社会公平性建设,加强城市流动人口社会保障制度建设,建立有效的流动人口管理机制和统一的流动人口管理机构,加强对流动人口的法制教育和技能培训。     

Marxism underground. Latent Marxism in Austrian empirical sociology

The establishment of sociology in Austria in the twentieth century is in many ways connected with Marxism. Numerous sociologists considered themselves as Marxists, thus at least subjectively carrying on with an “underground” Marxism in their sociological work. Others spent considerable energy in distancing themselves sharply from Marxist positions and tried (especially in times of Austrofascism and National Socialism) to banish Marxism underground within the young discipline. This precarious tension continued to exist in the post-war period and shaped the establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in Austria, but remained unproductive. This thematic issue therefore raises the question of the “latency” of Marxist concepts and positions in Austrian empirical sociology and seeks to explore whether the discussion and updating of Marxist positions can stimulate reflection on the conditions of production of sociological knowledge and research.     

Verrückter Alltag

The article inquires into the heuristic and interpretative potential of Goffman’s sociology for historical microanalysis and pleads for more exchange between interpretative sociology and historical fields like microhistory or historical anthropology. Using source material consisting of reports produced by police and medical officers of the city of Basel between 1890 and 1910 the author looks at the ‘abnormal’ or ‘bizarre’ behaviour of people that were examined by the police and subsequently by the town physicians. Goffman’s concepts are applied to analyse everyday aspects of their “performance” in order to interpret them historically, i. e. in the wider contexts of the acceleration of modernization in the decades around 1900.     

Measuring Well-Being and Progress

Well-being is becoming a concept which is more and more involved in any world development consideration. A large amount of work is being carried out to study measurements of well-being, including a more holistic vision on the development and welfare of a country. This paper proposes an idea of well-being and progress being in equilibrium with each other. This is distant from the two extreme positions: poor but happy, and rich then happy; too romantic the first, and reductive the second. After a short explanation on the meaning of Objective and Subjective well-being, we show some interesting relations between economic and social variables, and we propose a new index to measure the well-being and progress of the countries: the Well-being & Progress Index (WIP). It includes several aspects of well-being and progress, like human rights, economic well-being, equality, education, research, quality of urban environment, ecological behaviours, subjective well-being, longevity, and violent crime. The most frequently used indexes usually only focus on some aspects, like ecology, or economy, or policy, or education, or happiness, and so forth. On the contrary, this new WIP index allows a global and well-balanced vision, thanks to the large range of indicators used, and how representative they are.     

Dienstboten der Nation: Ausbeutung informeller Laienpflege und die Revitalisierung eines totgeglaubten Klassikers

The decline of Marxist theory is best exemplified by the concept of “exploitation”. For decades now and not only in sociology, the former mainspring of the social critique has been carving out a niche existence. While the concept of exploitation has all but vanished from the social sciences together with its Marxist legacy, it seems like everyone is talking about exploitation. Moreover, the retrenchment of Marxist theory has left a gap that has not yet been filled. This article aims to show that exploitation can be a useful instrument for the theoretical and empirical study of society. The article proposes a sociological concept of exploitation that draws on the sociologies of work, inequality and gender in an empirical analysis of so-called “caring communities” currently garnering widespread societal and political support in the context of Germany’s eldercare crisis. In so doing, the article aims to end the presumed obsolescence of a classic sociological concept that is as relevant today as it ever was.