Soziale Werte in der soziologischen und kriminologischen Forschung: Überlegungen zum Begriff und Operationalisierung

Abstract

Numerous theoretical approaches include social values as a social unit. In general, the social values are defined as guidelines; they are personal and internal; and they hold together the social groups. Overall, the social values are distinguished from value‑orientations, social norms, and attitudes. A reasonable-sized body of sociological and criminological studies has analysed the structure and significance of social values for human behaviour. The article explores this corpus, discussing numerous theoretical approaches and studies with reference to a key question: how can one fruitfully operationalise the social values? The theoretical analyses in the article apply institutional anomie theory, which is presented as an example of a criminological theory.