The Construction of Amanda Knox as an Other Essay

Among any community there is a set of boundaries that must be respected under penalty of being labeled as deviant. Consequently, a community will create agencies of control in order to punish and fight against all the forms of behavior considered as deviant. In his Study in the Sociology of Deviance, Kai T. Erikson defends the point that deviant forms of behavior are a natural and beneficial part of social life. One of his main arguments is that, in our modern society, “the agencies of control often seem to define their job as that of keeping deviance within bounds rather than obliterating it altogether” (Wayward Puritans 24:2). Now, what if society gave to its agencies of control the role of annihilating deviance? What if the set of

When a crime is so deviant that it far exceeds society’s tolerance, it triggers public alarm and outrage[7] that draws the

Beginning from a child we begin to experience different situations and interactions with others. We start getting taught the difference between right and wrong, what may be considered good and what is considered bad, and also taught the things we should and should not do. As we grow older we try to refrain from behavior of which society may disapprove of. Society see’s certain types of behavior as being deviant. First let’s begin by explaining what is a deviant behavior? Deviant behavior can be any behavior that does not conform to what people may consider normal, a behavior that does not meet with many expectations in society. Societies are both social structure and culture. Robert K Merton developed structural

The muder of Meredith Kercher was covered very differently from beginning to end. Media bias was present on both sides of guilty and not guilty. The story was hard to keep straight as information was either left out or presented falsely. News articles presented soon after a story, is useful for awareness of the issue; however, exact details are generally not presented fairly or true fully.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Power of Context,” this notion is seen at the forefront. Gladwell explains moments in time when crime provoked more crime just because people felt that such actions simply were acceptable in the community. Similarly, in Susan Faludi’s “The Naked Citadel,” Faludi depicts incidents in a military college that are flat out disturbing. She points out that these many incidents of inhumane acts from cadets are seen as acceptable because the community has had such a culture of it that it became

Amanda Knox was a 20 year old from Seattle, Washington who moved to Perugia, Italy for college. She was a smart girl. She seemed to me to be very open with her life and sexuality. Her openness was later used against her by police, prosecutors, and media. The media gave her sexual nicknames, a few being: “… the promiscuous American she-devil…”, and “Foxy Knoxy” (HB xiii-xiv).

     In The Murder of Helen Jewett, Patricia Cohen uses one of the most trivial murders during the 1800’s to illustrate the sexiest society accommodations to the privileged, hypocritical tunneled views toward sexual behavior, and the exploitation of legal codes, use of tabloid journalism, and politics. Taking the fact that woman was made from taking a rib from man was more than biblical knowledge, but incorporated into the male belief that a woman’s place is determined by the man. Helen had the proper rearing a maid servant, but how did she fall so far from grace. Judge Weston properly takes credit for rearing her with the proper strictness and education. Was Helen seduced at an

In the story Cohen makes use of the most trivial murder of 1836 to show the twisted societal accommodations of those who are considered privileged, hypocritical channelled views towards sexuality and legal codes exploitation with a mingling of tabloids journalism and mere politics. In her story Cohen brings out a really sensational fact that a place for women is determined by a man.

Women were seen to dominate over men. Mr. Yeates said that he felt privileged by the fact that he could get on with Lady Knox: “chiefly, I imagine, because I was a worm before her, and thankfully permitted her to do all the talking” (Fox 1). Mr. Yeates was being submissive to what Lady Knox said.

Criminality is still assumed to be a masculine characteristic and women lawbreakers are therefore observed to be either ‘not women’ or ‘not criminals’ (Worrall 1990, p. 31). Female offenders are hallmarked for tireless and inescapable coverage if they fit into the rewarding newsworthy categories of violent or sexual. It is always important to note the reason for overrepresentation of women criminals in the media. “Women who commit serious offences are judged to have transgressed two sets of laws: criminal laws and the laws of nature” (Jewkes 2011, p. 125). Such women are hence “doubly deviant and doubly damned” (Lloyd, 1995). When women commit very serious crimes, such as murder, they attract

With regards to female sentences, it can be seen on the one hand that the criminal justice system deals with female crimes more leniently than with male criminality, as referred to as the chivalry theory (Pollok, 1983). As many female offences are usually petty wrongdoings, such as shoplifting which makes up for nearly a half of all indictable convictions (Ministry of Justice, 2014), due to their gender, it is most likely that females are to be cautioned over receiving a prison sentence. However, this was not the case for Maxine Carr in 2003. A whirlwind of media interest surrounding Carr’s involvement, with the murders of two young girls from Soham, is argued to be the definitive reason as to why Carr received a prison sentence of three years, all for perverting the course of justice.

While most of the violent crimes that happens most are them are belongs to men, women have not been the wilting flowers promoted so heartily by Victorian adorers and (right or wrong) often evident in today's society. Before we get into detail about the fascinating phenomenon of the Black Widow, it is worth a brief overview of women's escalating role in the world of violent crime, particularly in the United States.

Within any culture lies an array of definitive demeanors and actions that are deemed socially adequate and inadequate. Depending on the distinguishing behavior of a given individual and the society that they live in, there are invisible “laws” that prevent people from acting a certain way. If the individual’s behavior is adverse to the superior, predominant norms of their society, the actions of that individual are considered to be deviant. Social deviance in shown in a variety of dissimilar faces: within physical appearance, actions done to oneself and others, and religious groups.

The prosecution had based much of the case on the digital evidence found on the computer that Casey Anthony used, with most of the attention given to the 84 times that the word chloroform had been searched. That evidence would later be challenged by John Bradley himself, who would change his original statement and reveal that there was only one reference found in the computer related to the search of chloroform. (Jones, 2012).

"Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitute deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders-deviance is not a quality of the act of a person commits, but rather a consequences of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an 'offender' The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied. Deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label."