ACHIVEMENT

The successful accomplishment of, or performance in a socially defined tasks or goal. Talcott Parsons a sociologist in his book Social Theory and Modern Society suggests that modern societies use indices or achievement- examination credentials or performance in role-based tasks-rather than ascriptive criteria to recruit, select, and evaluate individuals for particular roles.

Abolitionism

A term associated with protest on grounds of inhumanity and call for the abolition of first, slavery and more recently, prisons and imprisonment, The latter stance developed within Scandinavian criminology but has since been taken up within wider critical criminology.

Ability

The power to perform a mental or physical task - either before or after training. Social psychologists usually distinguish ability from aptitude, the natural ability to acquire or learn knowledge, sometimes measured by an aptitude test. Sociologists would probably distinguish ability and skill, the former being relatively specialized and task-specific, the latter referring to a wider set of learned techniques which could be applied to a number of cognate tasks.

Aberrant Behaviour

Aberrant behaviour is a irregular behaviour that deviates from what is considered normal. In sociology, the use of the term implied that the behaviour in question is performed in secret and mainly for reasons of self- interest, as for example in the case of certain unuusal sexual practices. This may be contrasted with non conforming behaviour, which usually reffers to public violations of social norms, ofter carred out specifically in order to promote soical change.