Sociological Theories

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Event 1- Martha Stewart Stock Conviction

Martha Stewart was recently convicted for the illegal selling of stock. Officially convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and making two false counts to investigators she is looking at a lengthy sentence. We can analyze her situation through five different theoretical perspectives. Focusing on the sociological, but also with attention to the psychological and biological we can look at her situation in numerous ways.

First, from the biological perspective we can treat it as an evolutionary theory. While this may seem like a stretch, none of the others seems to fit, as she has no known deficiencies or imbalances (Neurological), and given her cooking background we can probably safely rule out biochemical theory. In addition, since we know of no family history we can rule out genetic. Even still, the evolutionary theory remains a stretch, because there's no real evidence to support it. We can, however, take it from the perspective that she was always like this, and this was just the chance for it to be exposed. That, all along she has possessed these traits of deceit and fraud, but just hadn't been exposed yet. So while the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, we do see somewhat of an advantage because of the uniqueness of the situation; a person with almost everything still wanting more.

From the psychological perspective we can analyze her from the psychodynamic perspective. The fact that she had a successful TV show and enterprise, yet what still pretty widely vivified and hated amongst the general public would support this theory of her having a damaged ego. Again, this being unconscious and not present could have motivated her to do the deed. The d...

... middle of paper ...

...ed that Malvo wasn't brainwashed at all and was able to make his own decisions.

In all three of these events we can compare similar theories to the situations. A blue-collar crime, a federal crime, and a serial killer are all grouped and brought together by similar rationalization and motivation. Although we have different levels of this, we can conclude that ultimately we can bring justice to all. The theories all have their advantages and disadvantages but one thing that is certain is that we won't have a lack of criminal subjects to apply them too. That being said, despite this ever present need crime is on the decline and we can only hope that we continue to develop prevention theories and that this trend continues so that we are not faced with a naturally born terrorist, a blue-collar criminal, or a serial killer any more than we have too, if at all.

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