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Deindustrialization
The importance of manufacturing industry has declined in a number of advanced industrial societies when measured by the share of manufacturing in total output or the proportion of the population employed in the manufacturing industry. Such a trend has been termed as de-industrialization. This is mainly the result of the expansion of the services sector and the use of highly efficient technology in production.

Delinquency
The term is usually used to refer to any undesirable conduct on the part of a juvenile which is serious enough to compel the attention of persons of authority outside the family. It includes truancy, incorrigibility in school, petty offences and sometimes fairly serious crimes. The term is also used as a softer synonym for adult crimes.

Devilancy Amplification
The term was originally coined by L.T Wilkinson. It suggests that much of the alleged deviance in society is unintended consequences of police control,mass media coverage and popular reaction to deviance stereotypes. The theory suggests that distorted information and ignorance about minorities in mass society produced inappropriate responses to perceived deviances. Thus societal reaction and deviant responses create a spiral of deviancy by which relatively minor pattern of deviance is amplified.

Dharma
The Hindu code of righteous conduct a set of ritual duties.

Divorce
The legal dissolution of a legal marriage.

Dowry
Amount paid to the groom by the family of bride.

Dumont's theory of population
A Dumont's statement that as individuals rises in the social status system, they are less likely to reproduce because they lose interest in family life and race perpetuation.

Durkheim's stages of social development
Emile Durkheim's statement that there are two ideal types stages- mechanical solidarity and organic and voluntary solidarity which is associated with the functional organization of society.

Diffusion
This refers to the spread of cultural attributes from one culture to another culture through contact. This is opposed to evolutionary theory.Diffusionists saw culture as patchwork of borrowed traits.

Differential Gratification
A term used to describe a type of behaviour in which sacrifices are made in the present in the hope of greater future rewards. It is often regarded as a characteristic feature of middle class up-bringing accounting for the relatively greater educational success of middle class children. It is also a pre-condition of accumulation of capital in the earlier stages of capitalism.

Desocialization
The process by which earlier socialization is undone.

Descent
A persons' recognized social connection with his ancestors may be from male line or from female line. When descent is connected from both the lines it is called bilateral descent.

Dysfunction
Associated with R.K Merton anything is dysfunctional if it disrupts the normal functioning of a system.

Differentiation
A notion with a long history in sociology differentiation is mainly used in theories of social change. It refers to a process whereby sets of social activities performed by one social institution become split up between different institutions. Differentiation represents an increasing specialization of the parts of a society giving greater heterogeneity within the society.

Differential Association
A general theory of criminal behavior developed by E.H Sutherland. It attempts to explain the crime in terms of cultural transmission; crime is learned within primary groups whose members are criminally inclined. People become criminal as a consequence of excess of social definitions to crime over a unfavorable definitions. The theory was further revised by Sutherland and Cressy.It criticizes the conventional view of crime which treats criminals as abnormal persons.