Assignment:
1. Discuss Lyng's concept of edgework (pp. 220-226), broken down into the following parts: edgework activities; edgework skills; edgework sensations.
2. What do you think is the most important contribution of edgework as a model of voluntary risk-taking?
3. Rajah expands the concept of edgework as risk-taking into the area of resistance to violence and control in the intimate relationship. Evaluate the success of this theoretical expansion regarding risk thresholds and the rewards of resistance as well as examples of edgework resistance (pp. 234-240).
4. According to Brent the activity of parkour (i.e., free-running)is at once an emerging popular culture component and also a deviant label. Critique the apparent conflict of this emerging activity through the related concepts of resistance and edgework. Do you think parkour will become more or less popular in the near future?
Answer two questions:
1. Define and differentiate between Anderson's use of the concepts degeneracy and medicalization (pp. 170-171). Do you agree with Anderson that social pathology has limited use in the study of society and deviance? Why or why not?
2. Summarize Lemert's treatment of psychological/psychiatric and sociological approaches to the study of sociopathic behavior (pp.176-177).
3. Best claims that social pathology as a viable concept "gradually fell out of style" by the 1960s, replaced by a more relativistic emphasis on deviance. Then he makes a similar argument for the "death" of the concept of deviance in the present day. Summarize his three principles of deviance definition (pp. 181-182) which are now debated as inadequate to the task.