Stanley Cohen (sociologist)

Hymie Stanley Cohen ( born February 23, 1942 in Johannesburg; † 7 January 2013) was a professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science ( LSE) and an internationally recognized criminologist and an important representative of Critical Criminology.

Life

Cohen grew up in South Africa and studied at the University of Witwatersrand, Sociology and Social Work. He rejected the apartheid, his commitment to human rights as a great sense of Jewish humor his life left him long. In 1963 he came to London. At the LSE he received his doctorate and began in 1967 at the University of Durham and 1972 at the University of Essex to teach. In 1980 he moved to Israel, where he directed the Institute of Criminology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was involved there for human rights organizations who were active in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. In 1996 he returned to England and was Martin Wright Professor of Sociology at the LSE. In 1998 he became a Fellow of the British Academy and received honorary doctorates from the University of Essex (2003) and Middlesex University (2008). In 2009 he received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the British Society of Criminology. He died in 2013 from Parkinson's disease, the disease had been diagnosed in 1996.

Work

Cohen is a leading writer and thinker of criminology. The term moral panic goes back to him. He had influenced him in 1972 based on a study ( Folk Devils and Moral Panics ) for public response to the youth cultural phenomenon of the mods and rockers of the 1960s. The book is considered one of the most influential criminological studies in recent decades and has been widely quoted. He saw it in the phenomenon of deviancy amplification spiral ( spiral reinforcement deviation ), an also declining on him going a major mechanism. According to Cohen, the media reported in exaggerated form of deviant behavior, which is considered as a challenge to the social norms. The resonance in the media contributes According to Cohen help to define the phenomenon to communicate and thus also increasingly recommended for imitation. This leads to further violence or deviant behavior, and thus fueled the emerging mass movement in the form of a moral panic continues to grow.

Cohen also dealt with deviance and social control and was being influenced, among others, by Michel Foucault. A new concept was his study States of Denial. According to Michael Ignatieff, this was the starting point for various studies and considerations on the question of how people cope bring, violence and suffering hide others.

Personal

Laurie Taylor, with whom he the book Escape Attempts: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Everyday Life wrote to the mental stability of long-term prisoners, imputed to him a subtle humor. Taylor had suggested to drink less alcohol at their meetings. He quoting Richard Burton, who looked at it after his withdrawal as wonderful to see the world as it really is. Then? " That's all very well, but who the hell wants to see the world as it really is" ( Stanley Cohen, German: "It's Ok, but who the hell wants to see the world as it really is ?")

Cohen liked to read novels of Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Howard Jacobson. In 1963 he married Ruth Kretzmer, who died in 2003; the couple had two daughters.

Publications

  • Cohen, S. ( ed) (1971 ) Images of Deviance, Harmondsworth: Penguin
  • Cohen, S. ( 1971) "Directions for Research on adolescent group violence and vandalism ", British Journal of Criminology, 11 ( 4): 319-340
  • Cohen, S. ( 1971) "protest, unrest and delinquency: convergences in labels or behavior" Paper givenName to the International Symposium on Youth Unrest, Tel Aviv 25-27 October
  • Cohen, S. ( 1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics, London: MacGibbon and Kee
  • Cohen, S. ( 1972) 'Breaking out, smashing up and the social context of aspiration " In: Riven, B. ( ed) Youth at the Beginning of the Seventies, London: Martin Robertson
  • Taylor, L. & Cohen, S. ( 1972) Psychological Survival: the Experience of Long Term Imprisonment, Harmondsworth: Penguin
  • Cohen, S. & Taylor, Laurie (1976 ) Escape attempts: the theory and practice of resistance to everyday life ISBN 978-0-415-06500-9
  • Cohen, S. ( 1979) "The punitive city: notes on the dispersal of social control", Contemporary Crises, 3 ( 4): 341-363
  • Cohen, S. ( 1980) " Footprints in the Sand: A Further Report on criminology and the sociology of deviance in Britain" In: Fitzgerald, M., McLennan, G. & Pawson, J. ( eds ) Crime and Society: Readings in History and Theory, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul pg.240
  • Cohen, S. ( 1982) " Western Crime Control Models in the Third World, " in S. Spitzer and R. Simon (eds. ), Research in Law, Deviance and Social Control Vol 4
  • Cohen, S. & Scull, A. ( eds. ) ( 1983) Social Control and the State: Historical and Comparative Essays Oxford: Martin Robertson
  • Cohen, S. ( 1985) Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment and Classification, Polity Press
  • Cohen, S. ( 1988) Against Criminology, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books
  • Cohen, S. ( 1988) "Taking Decentralization Seriously: Values, Visions and Policies, " in J. Lowman et al. (eds. ), Transcarceration: Essays on the Sociology of Social Control, Aldershot: Gower.
  • Cohen, S. ( 1990) "Intellectual Scepticism and Political Commitment: The Case of Radical Criminology, " Institute of Criminology, University of Amsterdam.
  • Cohen, S. ( 1991) " Talking about torture in Israel," Tikkun, 6 ( 6): 23-30, 89-90
  • Cohen, S. ( 1993) " Human rights and crimes of the state: the culture of denial", Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 26 (2): 97-115
  • Cohen, S. ( 2001) States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering, Polity Press ISBN 978-0-7456-2392-4
  • Cohen, S. & Seu, ​​B. ( 2002) "Knowing Enough Not to Feel Too Much, " in P. Petro (ed. ) Truth Claims: Representations and Human Rights, Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Downes, D. et al. (eds. ) (2007 ) Crime, Social Control and Human Rights: From Moral Panics to States of Denial, Essays in Honour of Stanley Cohen, Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing.

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