Stanley Cohen (sociologist)

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Stanley Hymie Cohen (born February 23, 1942 in Johannesburg ; † January 7, 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 initially studied sociology and social work at Witwatersrand University . He rejected apartheid , his commitment to human rights and a great sense of Jewish humor remained with him throughout his life. In 1963 he came to London. He received his PhD from the LSE and began teaching at the University of Durham in 1967 and at the University of Essex in 1972 . In 1980 he moved to Israel , where he headed the Institute of Criminology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . There he was also involved in human rights organizations that were active in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1996 he returned to England and became 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 of Parkinson's in 2013 , the disease had been diagnosed in 1996.

plant

Cohen is considered a leading writer and thought leader in criminology. The term moral panic goes back to him. He shaped it in 1972 on the basis of a study ( Folk Devils and Moral Panics ) on the public reaction to the youth cultural phenomenon of the mods and rockers of the 1960s. The book is considered to be one of the most influential criminological studies of the last decades and has been widely cited. He saw the phenomenon of the Deviancy Amplification Spiral (deviation amplification spiral), a term also going back to him, an essential mechanism. According to Cohen, the media reported in exaggerated form of deviant behavior, which is considered a challenge to social norms. According to Cohen, the response in the media helps to define the phenomenon, to communicate it and thus to increasingly recommend it for imitation. This leads to further excesses or deviant behavior, and thus heats up the emerging mass movement in the form of a moral panic.

Cohen also dealt with deviation and social control and was influenced by Michel Foucault , among others . A new concept was his study, States of Denial . According to Michael Ignatieff , this was the starting point for a wide variety of studies and considerations on the question of how people manage to block out the violence and suffering of others.

Personal

Laurie Taylor , with whom he wrote the book Escape Attempts: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Everyday Life on the psychological stability of long-term prisoners, assumed he had a subtle sense of humor. Taylor had suggested drinking less alcohol at their meetings. He quoted Richard Burton , who, after his withdrawal, considered it wonderful to see the world for what it really was. Then “ That's all very well, but who the hell wants to see the world as it really is? ”( Stanley Cohen , German:“ It's okay, but who the hell wants to see the world as it really is? ”)

Cohen enjoyed reading novels by Philip Roth , Saul Bellow, and Howard Jacobson . In 1963 he married Ruth Kretzmer, who died in 2003; the couple had two daughters.

Publications

1970s

  • S. Cohen (Ed.): Images of Deviance . Penguin, Harmondsworth 1971.
  • S. Cohen: Directions for Research on adolescent group violence and vandalism. In: British Journal of Criminology. 11 (4), 1971, pp. 319-340.
  • S. Cohen: Protest, unrest and delinquency: convergences in labels or behavior? Paper given to the International Symposium on Youth Unrest, Tel Aviv 25-27 October 1971.
  • S. Cohen: Folk Devils and Moral Panics MacGibbon and Kee, London 1972.
  • S. Cohen: Breaking out, smashing up and the social context of aspiration. In: B. Riven (Ed.): Youth at the Beginning of the Seventies. Martin Robertson, London 1972.
  • L. Taylor, S. Cohen: Psychological Survival: the Experience of Long Term Imprisonment . Penguin, Harmondsworth 1972.
  • S. Cohen, Laurie Taylor: Escape attempts. The theory and practice of resistance in everyday life. 1976, ISBN 0-415-06500-3 .
    • German edition: Escape attempts. Identity and resistance in the modern world. Translated from English by Thomas Lindquist. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-10898-0 .
  • S. Cohen: The punitive city: notes on the dispersal of social control. In: Contemporary Crises. 3 (4) 1979, pp. 341-363.

1980s

  • S. Cohen: Footprints in the Sand: A Further Report on criminology and the sociology of deviance in Britain. In: M. Fitzgerald, G. McLennan, J. Pawson (Eds.): Crime and Society: Readings in History and Theory . Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1980, p. 240.
  • S. Cohen: Western Crime Control Models in the Third World. In: S. Spitzer, R. Simon (Eds.): Research in Law, Deviance and Social Control Vol. 4, 1982.
  • S. Cohen, A. Scull (Eds.): Social Control and the State: Historical and Comparative Essays . Martin Robertson, Oxford 1983.
  • S. Cohen: Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment and Classification . Polity Press, 1985.
  • S. Cohen: Taking Decentralization Seriously: Values, Visions and Policies. In: J. Lowman et al. (Ed.): Transcarceration: Essays on the Sociology of Social Control . Gower, Aldershot 1987. ISBN 0-566-05106-0
  • S. Cohen (Ed.): Against Criminology . Transaction Books, New Brunswick NJ 1988.

1990s

  • S. Cohen: Intellectual Skepticism and Political Commitment: The Case of Radical Criminology . Institute of Criminology, University of Amsterdam, 1990.
  • S. Cohen: Talking about torture in Israel. In: Tikkun. 6 (6), 1991, pp. 23-30, 89-90.
  • S. Cohen: Human rights and crimes of the state: the culture of denial. In: Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. 26 (2), 1993, pp. 97-115.
  • S. Cohen, Daphna Golan: The Interrogation of Palestinians During the Intifada: “Moderate Physical Pressure” or Torture? With a foreword and an additional chapter by Felicia Langer. Dura, Tossens 1992, ISBN 3-926703-01-06 .

After 2000

  • S. Cohen: States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering . Polity Press, 2001, ISBN 0-7456-2392-1 .
  • S. Cohen, B. Seu: Knowing Enough Not to Feel Too Much. In: P. Petro (Ed.): Truth Claims: Representations and Human Rights . Rutgers University Press, Piscataway NJ 2002.

literature

  • D. Downes et al. (Eds.): Crime, Social Control and Human Rights: From Moral Panics to States of Denial, Essays in Honor of Stanley Cohen . Willan Publishing, Cullompton (Devon) 2007, ISBN 978-1-84392-228-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Laurie Taylor: Stanley Cohen obituary , The Guardian , January 23, 2013.
  2. ^ Richard Facing Change: New Directions for Critical Criminology in the Early New Millennium? Western Criminology Review 3 (2). 2002.
  3. ↑ Hopkins Burke, R. (2001) An Introduction to Criminological Theory, Cullompton: Willan p. 154.
personal data
SURNAME Cohen, Stanley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cohen, Stanley Hymie; Cohen, Stan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Johannesburg
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 2013