Instructions:
• You must answer four out of five of the short essay questions below.
• Development: Core theme or thesis statement is present along with coherent, coordinated, supported arguments
• Conclusion: Paper contains a well-developed summary or conclusion that builds on the theme/thesis and the ideas or arguments presented.
(1) Arrigo postulated three key propositions of postmodernism. Explain them in full, using at least 300 words.
1. The centrality of language:
2. Partial knowledge and provisional truth:
3. Deconstruction, difference, and possibility:
(2) Daly and Chesney-Lind considered five insights to be distinctive features of feminist theory? List and describe these features, using at least 300 words.
1. Gender is not a natural fact but a complex social, historical, and cultural product; it is related to, but not simply derived from, biological sex differences and reproductive capacities.
2. Gender and gender relations order social life and social institutions in fundamental ways.
3. Gender relations and constructs of masculinity and femininity are not symmetrical but are based on an organizing principle of men's superiority and social and political-economic dominance over women.
4. Systems of knowledge reflect men's views of the natural and social worlds; the production of knowledge is gendered.
5. Women should be at the center of intellectual inquiry, not peripheral, invisible, or appendages of men (3) Laub and Sampson identify five aspects to the process of desistance during adulthood. Identify and briefly explain these five aspects, using at least 300 words.
1. First, they argue that structural turning points-such as marriage and employment-set the stage for change.
2. Second, consistent with their earlier theorizing, they contend that these structural events create social bonds that increase the informal controls over offenders.
3. Third, departing from a strict control theory, they observe that as offenders move into marriages and jobs, their daily routine activities change from unstructured and focused on deviant locations (e.g., bars) to structured and filled with prosocial responsibilities
4. Fourth, this changed, prosocial lifestyle creates "desistance by default." Offenders wake up one day and find that their lives have been transformed and that criminal activity has become an increasingly distant reality. Much like Hirschi's (1969) bond of commitment, they now have so much invested in their new way of life that it would make little sense to sacrifice everything for a foolish criminal adventure. In this sense, desistance is not typically a born-again, momentary experience but rather a process of deepening prosocial involvement that gradually, but powerfully, weans offenders away from a criminogenic lifestyle.
5. Fifth and perhaps most important theoretically, Laub and Sampson (2003) assert that the desistance process they describe constrains, but does not fully determine, the choices offenders make.
(4) Explain in full the concept of the "war on drugs." Based upon what you have learned, do you think it was successful? Your answer must be at least 300 words in length.
(5) Based upon the various biosocial risk and protective factors you have studied thus far, define "risk factor" and "protective factor." Then identify and explain 3 risk factors and 3 protective factors. Your answer must be at least 300 words in length.