ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a perspective of society that allows an understanding of crime in relation to the organization of society, a perspective that includes the behaviors of both those who are defined as criminal and those who do the defining. Basic to such a perspective are the assumptions that, first, behavior becomes structured in a segmented society and that, second, some segments impose their order on others by formulating and applying criminal definitions. The organization of society may be conceived according to two fundamentally different principles of social organization. The subsequent types of organization are based on the homogeneity and the heterogeneity of society. The learning of criminal behavior patterns is not random, but is structured according to a person's selective exposure to situations in which both criminal and anticriminal behavior patterns are present. In spite of the variations in normative systems and behavior patterns from one social or ecological segment to another, some general cultural themes pervade all segments.
