Deviance, Crime and Culture, Bachelor of Arts

The major in Deviance, Crime and Culture uses an interdisciplinary and ethnographic approach to train students to research, analyze and understand deviance and crime in the context of culture. With a focus on experiential learning through ethnographic fieldwork, core requirements include first-hand study of social problems, theoretical training in cross-cultural analysis, in social, political and structural inequality and in historical and contemporary interventions aimed at achieving social justice. Students learn qualitative research and writing skills including observation, participant-observation, interviewing, mapping, case studies and archival research as well as quantitative literacy. A wide range of interdisciplinary elective courses give students an opportunity to develop their own areas of expertise such as interpersonal violence, crime and transgression and individual and group conflict. In the capstone seminar students integrate current social and cultural theory with real-world ethnography to design and deliver a senior research proposal or an ethnographic field study on a subject of their choice. The professional skills students develop through this major prepare them for either careers or advanced study in the fields of criminal and social justice, law enforcement, community justice and intervention, civic activism and social science research.