Analysis Of Stanley Milgram s Perils Of Disobedience

In Stanley Milgram’s essay, â€Å"Perils of Disobedience†, an experiment was conducted to test an individual’s obedience from authority when conflicting with morally incorrect orders. Following the conclusion of World War Two, Milgram’s essay was published in Harper’s Magazine, which appeals to a national audience and yields an array of content from different contextual backgrounds. As Milgram reports the results of his experiment, he provides descriptive details of many of the subjects and their behaviors when conflicted with following orders that hurt another individual. Among other rhetorical elements in his essay, Milgram utilizes the format of his writing in order to fully convey his evidence in a compelling manner to the reader. Milgram’s†¦show more content†¦Milgram’s description of the experiment’s composition compels the reader to analyze every detail in the essay due to the common language portrayed in the ini tial paragraphs. As the experiment progresses, Milgram reports his findings in a unique matter which supports the structure of his research. Milgram’s organizational approach to the narration of his essay uses conversational elements to supplement the clarity of his observations. By utilizing direct conversation rather than summaries, Milgram allows the reader to immerse themselves into the experiment. The reader may feel like he or she is directly in the room of the ongoing experiment because of the dialogues provided by several of the subjects. Milgram provides dialogic elements rather than summaries in order to expand his audience from the scientific world to ordinary people who may not possess scientific knowledge. He did so in order to report to the general audience of the American population in Harper’s Magazine, which focuses on common language rather than scientific dialogue. Another element of Milgram’s essay that allows for a focused, yet simplistic structure is the utilization of subheadings throughout the course of the analysis. Milgram uses subheadings such as â€Å"peculiar reactionsâ⠂¬  and â€Å"the etiquette of submission† to continually engage the reader to progress in the essay. By sectioning each topic from the next, Milgram guidesShow MoreRelatedAuthority And Authority1751 Words   |  8 Pagesnot remain intact. Obedience to authority is a topic that is very open ended, leaving many to question what the effects of authority are, if people always have the inclination to obey the authority figure, and what the effects of obedience and disobedience are and how they relate. We see examples of authority everywhere. The Bible, wars, and modern society all have countless instances of both good and bad leaders and authority figures. Nicole Biggart and Gary Hamilton talk about how for authorityRead MoreThe Perils Of Obedience By Milgram And The Stanford Prison Experiment1207 Words   |  5 Pagesof obedience. Two prestigious psychologists, Stanley Milgram and Philip G. Zimbardo, conducted practical obedience experiments with astonishing results. Shocked by the amount of immoral obedience, both doctors wrote articles exploring the reasoning for the test subjects unorthodox manners. In The Perils of Obedience by Milgram and The Stanford Prison Experiment by Zimbardo, the professionals reflect their thoughts in a logical manner. Milgram s experiment consisted of a teacher, learner, andRead MoreStephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge (2011) Organizational Behaviour 15th Edition New Jersey: Prentice Hall393164 Words   |  1573 Pagesand permission should be obta ined from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. To obtain permission(s) to use material from this work, please submit a written request to Pearson Education, Inc., Permissions Department, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458, or you may fax your request to 201-236-3290. Many of the designations by manufacturersRead MoreDeveloping Management Skills404131 Words   |  1617 Pagesbuilt-in pretests and posttests, focus on what you need to learn and to review in order to succeed. Visit www.mymanagementlab.com to learn more. DEVELOPING MANAGEMENT SKILLS EIGHTH EDITION David A. Whetten BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY Kim S. Cameron UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Prentice Hall Boston Columbus Indianapolis New York San Francisco Upper Saddle River Amsterdam Cape Town Dubai London Madrid Milan Munich Paris Montreal Toronto Delhi Mexico City Sao Paulo Sydney Hong Kong Seoul Singapore

Kunio Maekawa is an architect who designed and built his...

Kunio Maekawa is an architect who designed and built his own house, The Maekawa House, in 1941(Reynolds, 2001). Since the war was going on, he was only able to construct his home with limited materials (Reynolds, 2001). Nevertheless, he was still able to incorporate the traditional Japanese architecture with influences of the western style. The Maekawa House is considered to be modern because of the introduction it had of a different type of design in Japan (Reynolds, 2001). Maekawa obtained the traditional wood construction and spacious garden; he added the living/dining room in the center of the house. The bedroom was in the back corner of the house for privacy reasons, and the other rooms were design on both sides of the living room†¦show more content†¦He was drawn by the English Arts and Crafts Movement and chose to write about John Ruskin’s essay, â€Å"Seven Lamps of Architecture.† Maekawa was intrigued by how Ruskin defined the architectural detail of a rchitects’ work. This made him more interested to find out what architecture was (Maekawa, 1984). He visited projects around Tokyo, and even got the chance to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel but was disappointed by the lack of information (Maekawa, 1984). He read an architectural journal, Architectural Forum, and was not fascinated because there was no information of the design or the aesthetics. It seems magazines in the 1920’s were somewhat conservative (Maekawa, 1984). Maekawa entered Tokyo Imperial University in 1925 to pursue his architecture education and it was there when he was able to be exposed to the European trends (Maekawa, 1984). He learned about the Western and Japanese architectural history and took field trips to shrines and temples (Maekawa, 1984). He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1928 (Maekawa, 1984). He was then eluded by Europe’s modernism where he later pursued his belief of modernism in Paris by working under, the well-known architect, LeCorbusier (Maekawa, 1984). The first exposure that Maekawa had of LeCorbusier was when he read a report of LeCorbusier’s Ville Contemporain (Maekawa, 1984)e. Due to the recession in Japan in 1927, Maekawa needed to look elsewhere to obtain a job,

How do criminologists define corporate crime Free Essays

Introduction A standard definition of corporate crime would read as follows: ‘Illegal acts or omissions, punishable by the state†¦ which are the result of deliberate decision- making or culpable negligence within a legitimate formal organisation.’ (McLaughlin Muncie 2006: 74). With reference to how corporate crime has been defined by criminology, in this essay I will firstly explore how conventional criminology, (that which predates the 1970’s), ignored or marginalized corporate crime (Crawford 1998). We will write a custom essay sample on How do criminologists define corporate crime? or any similar topic only for you Order Now I will then discuss the significance of the contribution that Critical criminologies, most notably Marxist Criminology, have made to this debate. I will then go on to consider the seriousness of corporate crime, exploring some of the problems with statistics that attempt to measure the ‘crime problem’. This will be followed by a discussion on criminology post 1970, notably administrative criminology and the implications this has had on crime prevention initiatives in the 1980’s with relevance to corporate crime. The problem with early ‘criminological’ theories, notably classicism and positivism, was not the inaccurate definition that they gave of corporate crime in so much as they ignored it. Crime was considered an individualistic matter (see Taylor, Walton Young 1973; Vold et al 2002) with positivists arguing that crime was ‘tangible’ and ‘quantifiable’ (McLaughlin Muncie 2006: 302), two labels that many contemporary authors would be hesitant to assign to corporate crime (See Slapper Tombs 1999 Green 1990). It was Sutherland’s groundbreaking research on white collar crime in the 1940’s that brought corporate crime to the forefront of the criminological agenda (Williams 2008:56) and thus seems to be a sound starting point for discussion. For the sake of argument, we will consider white collar crime a sub category of corporate crime, defined by Sutherland (1940) as a crime committed by a person of high social status and of respectabil ity in the course of his employment. (A standard definition of corporate crime as the one that I have given earlier does not have the pre requisite of social status or respectability). Nevertheless, criticisms of Sutherland’s definiton of white collar crime, most notably by Nelken (see Nelken in Maguire et al 2007: 733-766) would apply to corporate crime, the first of these being that the behaviours that Sutherland regards as crimes are socially contentious e.g. taking long breaks or misusing the telephone at work. Other crimes that are mentioned are wide ranging and have nothing in common e.g. bank embezzlement and fiddling at work (see Nelken in Maguire et al 2007: 738). Nelken quotes Geiss (1968) who states that socially controversial crimes risk blurring the boundaries between what is criminal and what is not criminal (see Nelken in Maguire et al 1997:740). More generally, corporate crime has been said to be difficult to define because it covers a wide range of crimes and is complicated by terminology such as ‘business’ or ‘organisational’ often used in its place (see Slapper and Tombs (1999)). Crawford (1998) argues that definitions of corporate crime cannot be dicussed without recognising that there is a link between corporate crime and organisational crime. In the end, Nelken argues that bearing all this in mind, perhaps we should be asking ourselves whether definitions of white collar crime within criminology should match legal definitions of white collar crime (Nelken in Maguire et al 2007: 742). Perhaps at this stage, before proceeding to look at Marxist criminologies, it is worth mentioning that matching criminological definitions of crime with legal definitions would not resolve the problem of wide ranging crimes as these will only increase with time. The definition of crime changes according to the social and historical context, as social interactionists raised this very point in the 1960’s arguing that cri me is a social construction (Taylor, Walton Young, 1973: ). Here we can see the beginnings of a more critical understanding of crime, moving away from the focus being on the offender to questions being raised, such as ‘who defines what is a crime?’ bringing into discussion the role of power. We will now move on to a short discussion about the contribution of Marxist criminology, as most work on corporate crime has originated from this school of thought (McLaughlin Muncie 2006: 75). This is because Marxist criminology raises the importance of ‘power’ and the state, arguing that those in power shape the laws in order to protect their own interests (Vold el al 2002: 256). According to Vold (2002), this explains why the cost of street crime in America is $18 billion per year and why the cost of corporate crime is $1 trillion per year (2002: 255). Vold argues that twice as many people die because of illegal workplace conditions as they do from criminal homicide. In answer to the main question, we can safely assume that these statistics illustrate that corporate crime is a serious problem. It has been argued by others that failure by criminal justice agencies to control street crime serves the interest of the ruling class by diverting the public’s attent ion away from the people in power (who the public are greater victims of) and keeps the public in constant anxiety about lower class crime (Reiman, 1998 in Vold et al 2002). This may explain as we shall see further on why crime prevention initiatives have ignored corporate crime. Marxist criminology may have been criticised for not offering any realistic solutions to the crime problem (Lea Young 1984), however with the rights given to corporations to have the right of ownership over genetic materials taken from living organisms (Manning, 2000), we can see some of the potential problems to come. Going back to statistics, no discussion on the seriousness of corporate crime can be complete without mentioning the problems with empirical research in its quest to measure how serious corporate crime is. One way of looking at the phenomenon of ‘seriousness’ is to measure levels of corporate crime. This however presents quite a challenge as corporate crime is one such crime where they may be no clear victim. Crawford (1998) offers this as one explanation as to why crime prevention initiatives are difficult to implement in addressing corporate crime (1998:166). Although some crime prevention surveys have included commercial and other white collar crimes (Pearce: 1996), Crawford (1998) argues that surveys are still required to use what he terms ‘popularly meaningful’ definitions of crime, which means that this limits the range of crimes that are included in surveys (1998:166). All of this gives more credibility to the notion that there is a ‘dark figure of crime.’ (see Coleman 1996) especially where for example corporate crime is omitted from victim surveys such as the British Crime Survey (Swale 2007: 123). Despite these problems with crime statis tics, this does not explain why government crime prevention initiatives that are the result of criminological research ignore corporate crime (Box 1983). If positivism and classicism ignored corporate crime the same can be said of administrative criminology which emerged in the late 1980’s and which gave birth to situational crime prevention initiatives in the 1980’s (see Hughes 1996). The ideas of administrative criminology were a rehash of classicist notions of the criminal as being rational and calculating. Situational crime prevention was however concerned with manipulating the physical environment for e.g. through using surveillance techniques like CCTV or improving architectural design. However as many have argued situational crime prevention agendas have ignored crimes committed by the powerful such as governments and crimes against human rights aswell as the police (Cohen 1993; McLaughlin 1996). The reason put forward by Hughes as regards the lack of focus on corporate crimes is because situational crime prevention inititiatives agendas have been set by the demands of the government. This essay has explored how early criminology predating the 1970’s ignored or marginalized corporate crime. The 1960’s saw the beginnings of more critical thinking, notably with the emergence of social interactionism and then in the 1970’s Marxist Criminology which focussed its attention away from the offender and on to the state as the object of study. It was from Marxist Criminology that much research on corporate crime emerged and which had provided some explanation as to why corporate crime is still not considered part of the ‘crime problem’. Marxist criminology is however not without its critics (see Lea Young, 1984). As we have shown, administrative criminology which paved the way for crime prevention initiatives again ignored corporate crime and reverted back to previous classicist ideas, with a focus on crime as being individualistic (see Hughes, 1996). As regards to how serious a problem corporate crime poses we need to be certain about ho w much corporate crime there is. However, due to the problems that I have considered with statistics this is tricky. What we can be certain of is that with developments in science and technology and e.g. the commodification of DNA (Nelken in Maguire et al 2007:765) we can only take it as inevitable that as Social Interactionists have suggested, this will result in the creation of newer crimes (see Taylor, Walton Young 1973), for which reason we should abandon our search in coming to a more comprehensive understanding of corporate crime. Bibliography Carrington Hogg (2002) Critical Criminology: Issues, debates, challenges Devon:Willan Publishing Crawford, A (1998) Crime prevention and Community Safety Essex: Pearson Education Hughes, G (1996) Understanding Crime Prevention Buckingham: OUP Lea Young (1984) What is to be done about Law Order London: Pluto Press Maguire et al (1997) Oxford Handbook of Criminology Oxford: OUP McLaughlin The Sage Dictionary of Criminology Muncie (2006) London: Sage Swale, J (2007) Sociology of Crime and Deviance Oxfordshire: Hodder Education Taylor, Walton Young (1973) The New Criminology London: Routledge Vold et al (2002) Theoretical Criminology Oxford: OUP Williams, K (2007) Textbook on Criminology Oxford: OUP How to cite How do criminologists define corporate crime?, Essay examples