Word: sociologist
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...period of great social upheaval, and partly in the nature of the vandal, who is as difficult to define as he is to catch. In New York City, for example, police make arrests in only 2% to 3% of all reported cases. The vandal's deeds, as British Sociologist Stanley Cohen of England's University of Durham has observed, are commonly described as wanton, pointless, aimless, senseless, meaningless or mindless. Cohen is one of several social scientists who think that none of these objectives really apply...
...characterize property destruction -whether it is pulling up paving stones in Paris, breaking embassy windows in Jakarta or wrecking a slum-area store in Los Angeles-with a phrase like 'reckless, ignorant vandalism' is a political judgment," Cohen has written. He agrees with Fordham University Sociologist John M. Martin that every act of vandalism carries a heavy freight of motivation and even logic-though scanalized and law-abiding citizens are not likely to appreciate either. As a classic example, the Luddites who smashed the new textile machines at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution were venting their rage...
...Much contemporary vandalism, says Sociologist Martin, is similarly vindictive, a blow struck in anger by the havenots, the oppressed and the dispossessed. "Most research into school vandalism," says Cohen, "indicates that there is something wrong with the school that is damaged. The highest rates of school vandalism tend to occur in schools with obsolete facilities and equipment, low staff morale and high boredom among the pupils...
...young (nearly 80% of all those arrested are under 18), and the young of today care little for the society their fathers built. Furthermore, in an age of expanding permissiveness, the vandal is no longer so heavily concentrated, if he ever was. among the underprivileged and the poor; as Sociologist Martin has noted, vandalism cannot be classified along racial, ethnic or even economic lines...
Susan K. has a good job, sturdy feminist principles and no interest, at the moment, in getting married. She also has a married lover, which makes her the prototype of The New Other Woman in Sociologist Laurel Richardson's book of that name (Free Press; $17.95). The old-fashioned mistress was usually depicted as a skulking and tragically trapped figure, racked by guilt. The newer version, born of feminism and the sexual revolution, says Richardson, is more blasé and confident about her life. "First of all, she doesn't want to get married, doesn't want to husband-steal," Richardson...