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This paper has tried to make as explicit as possible the many problems involved in creating typologies in criminology. Initially the paper presented some logical and methodological requirements for typologies in general and some illustrations of how existing typologies in criminology fail to meet particular requirements. Following this, five typologies of criminality were assessed in detail. The minimal scheme of the criminal, the victim, and the act, presented at the end of the paper, is an effort to find a universal framework for analyzing criminality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the usefulness of Weber's city typology in relation to the Russian urban experience and to attempt to locate the Russian city within Weber's celebrated Oriental-Occidental dichotomy. The failure of various intellectual and revolutionary groups before and in 1917 to liberalize a traditionalistic societal system is correlated to the absence of a middle class in the Russian cultural context. Kiev, Novgorod, and Pskov existed long before the Mongol conquest of Russia in the thirteenth century and were exposed to certain Western influences due to the political connections with the neighboring Western countries. Unknown before the Mongols arrived, Moskva "still in the nineteenth century before the liberation of the peasants from slavery retained all the characteristics of a great Oriental city of about the time of Diocletian of the second century A.D." In addition to being the seat of the patrimonial ruler, Moskva was a "locality where rents from possessions in land and slaves as well as income from office holding were spent." Elsewhere Weber said that the cities in Russia "never arrived at freedom in the Western sense. Everywhere the military, judicial, and industrial authority was taken from the cities." This act of taking away autonomous-autocephalous authority is probably Weber's reference to the total destruction of Novgorod and Pskov by the Russian rulers as soon as they emerged from the shadow of Mongol dependence as well as to the Russian colonial conquest of the non-Russian cities and countries in the more recent centuries including the twentieth. Seven major characteristics basic to Weber's Oriental vs. Occidental typology of urban behavior, as tentatively modified in view of the needs and the contribution of recent research, will be utilized in examining the Russian experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades limited research attention has been given to those smallest population centers, beyond the individual farmstead, commonly referred to as hamlets. Alluding to this fact, the following statement made in 1943 by the geographer, Glenn T. Trewartha, is still indicative of the situation: "… one of the most numerous and widespread settlement types in the United States, the unincorporated hamlet, does not deserve the near oblivion that has been accorded it by geographers and other workers in the social sciences." The lack of research interest may be attributed partially to the dimunition of the farm population and rural institutions and the increasing significance of industrialization and urban development. Because of these and other changes, students of society may share the opinion that hamlets are rapidly disappearing and consequently not worthy of study. Various studies, however, are not in agreement concerning whether or not hamlets have increased or decreased in size and numbers. According to Fuguitt, the contradictory findings stem from the fact that previous researchers have not made "a clear distinction between (1) changes in population size categories over time, and (2) changes in individual places over time." In a study based on Census data, Fuguitt examined Wisconsin's incorporated small towns for the period 1880-1960. He simultaneously analyzed the two analytical components indicated above through the use of the Markov model. His general conclusion was: "While fewer small towns are being 'born' these days, they aren't 'dying,' but are growing up to be big towns, in some cases." Although it is possible, as Fuguitt also suggests, that small unincorporated places are declining in size and number, there is little reported data to suggest they are rapidly diminishing as a rural collectivity or settlement center in contemporary society. In general, the purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to our descriptive knowledge of hamlets. Initially, an effort is made to determine the main activity pursued by the principal family supporters within or near the hamlet area. Secondly, based on the major activity pursued by each resident family's primary income recipient, a statistically derived typology of hamlets is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper reference will be made consistently to constructive typology. In order to avoid confusion—to use McKinney's words— "the term 'constructed' type is used here in preference to the designations 'ideal' and 'pure' types. The terms ideal and pure have been misinterpreted so frequently that it seems advisable to follow Howard Becker's usage and refer to these types as 'constructed types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion related to Jack P. Gibbs' work on analytical typologies in criminology. Gibbs treated as problematic an issue that has been closed for students in the field for sometime. The research was competent, its limitations clearly spelled out for the reader, and the results carefully tied to theory. Certainly, none of the others have attracted as much attention. Expectedly, the best scholarship was to be found among the papers on social theory. Unfortunately, most of these were agonizing efforts over where sociology has been and ineffectual attempts to redirect activity in a more promising direction. One has to constantly remind oneself that sociology began with three interests in mind, a distinctive subject matter, social reform, and the application of the scientific method to social behavior; that one is perilously close to forsaking the first two in mindless deference to the last in that important questions go unasked because one cannot attack them scientifically; that the questions one asks are becoming more and more scientific but more and more trivial, and, in so doing, one is, if not becoming psychologists, following psychology down the path to intellectual oblivion.