Some questions to consider concerning Crime, Violence, and Deviant Organizations

1. Are there acts that are deviant but not criminal? Criminal, but not deviant? What are some differences and similarities between deviance and crime?
2. Is the taking of human life is universally deviant and criminal everywhere and during all periods of history?
3. Why is it significant that murders are overwhelmingly intra-racial?
4. Why is it significant that males are more likely to kill other males and women are more likely to kill males rather than other women? And, that men are far more likely to be victims of killings than women?
5. Why is it that the more intimate the relationship, the greater the likelihood, on a statistical basis, that one person will kill another.
6. The taboo against murder is said to be a cultural universal, the one act that is universally deviant everywhere and throughout history. Does this mean that it is not "relative"? Be detailed and specific.
7. What qualities or characteristics does robbery possess that are to some degree unique and distinctive to itself?
8. In the 1970s, many feminists argued that "rape isn't about sex, it's about violence." But by the 1990s, many feminists began to argue that rape is often about sex as well as about violence. Why this change in orientation?
9. Why are people more likely to be concerned about street-crime than white collar crime?
10. What can we discern from the fact that women are more likely to engage in shoplifting than other forms of theft?
11. Although most people recognize that theft is improper and problematic, why are crimes like shoplifting and employee pilferage so widespread in the population?

Some questions to consider concerning  Mental Disorder:

1. What are the differences between mental "illness" and mental "disorder?"  Contrast the essentialist and the constructionist approaches or models of mental illness, including the subtypes and varieties of each. What would each have to say about the causes of mental illness. About mental illness diagnosis? Treatment?
2. Contrast the positions of David Rosenhan ("On Being Sane in Insane Places") and Robert Spitzer ("On Pseudoscience in Science") with respect to the reality of mental illness as well as its diagnosability?

Some questions to consider concerning Sexual Deviance:

1. How is human sexuality "gendered?"
2. How would an essentialist view human sexuality and sexual deviance? How would a constructionist approach these same phenomena? How do these two approaches differ?
3. In what specific ways is homosexuality "departing from deviance" over time? Describe and discuss the ways we see this taking place. Do you believe these ways indicate a diminution in homosexuality's deviant status? What sorts of changes do you predict for the next decade or so? 
4. Considering how common and typical it is, should teenage sex be regarded as a form of deviance? Why or why not? What factors should be considered in answering this question? Does it depend on certain crucial factors or circumstances? Is the refusal of a teenager to have sex a form of deviance?
5. How would a constructionist's analysis of sex work differ from that of a radical feminist?

Some questions to consider concerning Cognitive Deviance:

1. Why is empirical falsehood not a defining element of deviant beliefs? Can beliefs be both false and conventional? True and deviant? What element or quality defines a belief as deviant?  How do deviant beliefs differ from deviant behavior.  
2. Given the fact that professional parapsychologists hold PhDs and conduct rigorous research whose findings are published in refereed journals, how is it that their field is regarded as deviant among conventional, mainstream scientists? What would change that?

Some questions to consider concerning Physical Characteristics as Deviance

1. The case of John/Joan or Brenda/David has implications that bear directly on the debate between constructionists and essentialists on the one hand and "nurturists" and "naturists" on the other. In what ways? Which side of these debates proved correct in this case study? Why?
2. Are all physical characteristics involuntarily acquired? If so, explain. If not, which ones are not and what ways are they voluntary? Does it make a difference with respect to the reactions their possessors generate from "normals"? 
3. Which forms of physical deviance are also behavioral in nature, that is, to the conventional members of the society, a sign of a weak, immoral, or degenerate? Be detailed and specific. 
4. What might be an alternate and more powerful theory than Leslie Fiedler's psychoanalytic explanation of why we are distressed yet fascinated by "freaks"?
5. Explain the similarities and differences between behavioral deviance and the possession of involuntarily acquired, undesirable physical characteristics. Do these generalizations apply to all societies at all times?

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