Character

From Geography

Generally, a character could be seen as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual. This is when you talk about the character of a person. Otherwise, character can be seen not as something personal, but it can be seen as the usual pattern of behaviour and motives linked to a subject.

Character of crime

The use of character in Human Geography can be explained with the views of Émile Durkheim. The character of a subject can differ and people can look different to characters of various subjects. Durkheim shows this with the example of crime. Crime has some character of normality. Crime is present not only in the majority of societies of one particular species but in all societies of all types. There is no society that is not confronted with the problem of criminality. The form of criminality changes, the acts thus characterized are not the same everywhere, but everywhere and always, there have been people who have behaved in such a way as to draw upon themselves penal repression (Durkheim, 1895). If, in proportion as societies pass from the lower to the higher types, the rate of criminality, the relation between the yearly number of crimes and the population, tended to decline, it might be believed that crime, while still normal, is tending to lose this character of normality (Durkheim, 1895).

References

Durkheim, E. (1895). The Rules of Sociological Method, found on https://www.d.umn.edu/~bmork/2111/readings/durkheimrules.htm (23 October 2012).

Jones, R.A. (1986). Emile Durkheim: An Introduction to Four Major Works. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications

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Page created by Rens Mennen, 23 October 2012 15:21 (CEST)