Social Pathology

1
Social Pathology

• A Scientific Attempt to Move Beyond Good and Evil

2
Social Pathology - A Context

• Social Pathology was an attempt to use the
  science of the 19th century, even though it
  became highly moralistic discriminatory.
• Social Pathology sees deviance as caused rather
  than chosen, and its control is a medical like
  cure rather than penance or punishment.
• Social Pathology views deviance as sickness, not
  sin - a product of disease infecting the body or
  mind.

3
Social Pathology A Definition

• Social Pathology attempts to explain deviance - a
  violation of moral expectations by individuals -
  Scientifically.
• It maintains the moral overtone of earlier times.
• Uses the existing science of the times.

4
Social Pathology - Causes

• Individuals are defective.
• Individuals are delinquent in receiving or
  accepting socialization.

5
Social Pathology Social Darwinism

• Herbert Spencer( 1820-1903)
• Believe society operates by fixed laws.
• Society evolved from lower to higher forms
  (barbarian to civilized forms).
• Over generations the most capable and fittest
  members of society survive while the less
  capable die out. Thus societies improve.

6
Social Pathology Social Darwinism

• He coined the phrase the survival of the
  fittest.
• He did not see sociology intervening into
  society, since the fit would survive on their own
  and build a better society
• Needless to say those in power supported his
  ideas.
• He really didnt do research, he simply developed
  ideas about society.

7
Social Pathology Racial Hierarchy

• Science of the time accepted the following as
  scientific
• The more complex an organism the better it is,
  and the higher it is in the prescribed universal
  plan. (the moral overtone)
• Scientists applied this idea of progression
  (simple to complex) to human groups.

8
Racial Hierarchy

• Racial hierarchy promulgated that whites passed
  through all other races in utero. It incorporated
  two concepts
• Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny the process by
  which individual development in utero mirrors the
  stages of species development over evolutionary
  history.

9
Racial Hierarchy

• Concept of atavists those that did not pass
  through the complete evolutionary process in
  utero.
• Used to explain birth defects (Mongolism)
• Used to explain social relationships.
• Used by Lombroso to explain criminal behavior by
  examining the stigma or the signs of the atavism.
  

10
Problems - Social Pathology

• Theory is deterministic traits to behavior
• Uses Social Darwinism that address biological
  form and uses it to analyze social forms.
• It is moralistic
• The idea of hereditary infection will bring down
  the genetic level of the human race.

11
Influences of Social Pathology

• Promotes sexual and racial purity
• Influences the Eugenics movement
• Urges fit to mate with fit
• Institutionalization for prophylactic purpose.
• Sterilization laws till 1976.
• Intelligence tests lead to Immigration laws of
  1924, and the impact on the immigrations policies
  of WWII.
• Today resurgence The Bell curve Rushtons
  proposal on explaining AIDS