Conformity and

Deviance
 Conformity
• behavior in accordance with socially accepted
conventions or standards

• The anticipated behavior to follow.

• is the desire to go along with the norms of a

group of people, so you will be accepted as an
in-group person (and not rejected as an out-
group undesirable person).
 Deviance
• departing from usual
or accepted
standards, especially
in social or sexual
behavior.

• A behavior that
violates expected
rules and norms
 Variety of Deviance

“What is deviant to one group may not be

considered deviant to another.”
1. The study of why people violates laws
or norms

2. The study of how society reacts to this

violations
• was an Italian
criminologist and
physician, founder
of the Italian
School of
Positivist
Criminology, often
referred to as the
father of
criminology
• Theory of anthropological
criminology essentially stated that
criminality was inherited, and that
someone "born criminal" could be
identified by physical (congenital)
defects, which confirmed a criminal
as savage or atavistic.
criminals had :
• less sensibility to pain and touch;
• more acute sight;
• a lack of moral sense, including an
absence of remorse;
• more vanity,
• impulsiveness,
• vindictiveness, and cruelty; and other
manifestations, such as a special
criminal argot and the excessive use of
tattooing.
 Deviance and the Social
Paradigms Basic Basis of
Assumptions Interpretation
Structural Deviance Deviance
Functionalism promotes performs
unity, serves important
as a moral functions in
compass, and the overall
provides operations of
opportunities society
where there
are none.
Paradigms Basic Basis of
Assumptions Interpretation

Historical Deviance is a Is a form of

Conflict result of civic action. It
unequal aims to rectify
distribution of the unfair and
social unjust
desirables and syndromes of
life chances. social
inequality.
Paradigms Basic Basis of
Assumptions Interpretation

Critical Is a result of the We are helping

Interpretivi exercise of these entities
sm power. Symbols maintain their
and ideas are privileged
manipulated by positions in
powerful people society
in the society in
order to protect
their economic
and political
interest
Theoretical Interpretations of
Deviance
Structural Strain Theory
• Offered a “side-by-
side” formulation of
conformity and
deviance.
• He developed the
structural strain theory
Robert
Merton
• Strain refers to the discrepancies
between culturally defined goals and the
institutionalized means available to
achieve these goals.
• This theory traces the origins of
deviance to the tensions that are
caused by the gap between cultural
goals and the means people have
available to achieve those goals
• Culture- establishes goals for people

• Social structure-provides (or fails to

provide) the means for the people to
achieve those goals.
 CONFORMISTS

• a person who conforms to accepted behavior

or established practices.
 RITUALIST
• A person who do not believe in the
established cultural goals of society,
but they do believe in and abide by the
means for attaining those goals.
 INNOVATORS
• Are those individuals that accept the
cultural goals of society but reject the
conventional methods of attaining those
goals
 RETREATISTS

• Who reject both the cultural goals and

the accepted means of attaining those
goals
 REBELS
• They are not only reject both the
established cultural goals and the
accepted means of attaining those goals
• They substitute new goals and new
means of attaining these goals
Labeling Theory
• explains why people's behavior clashes
with social norms.
• holds that deviance is not inherent to an
act, but instead focuses on the tendency
of majorities to negatively label minorities
or those seen as deviant from standard
cultural norms.
• Labeling theory holds that deviance is not
inherent to an act, but instead the result of
the externally-imposed label of "deviant".

• Labeling theory takes the view that

people become criminals when labeled as
such and when they accept the label as a
personal identity.
Social Control Theory
-developed by Travis Hirschi

-according to this theory, people care about

what others think of them and conform to
social expectations because their
attachments to others and what others
expect of them
• -this theory also suggests that most
people probably feel some impulse
towards deviant behavior at some time,
but their attachment to social norms
prevents them from actually participating
in deviant behavior.
Social Control and Deviance
“effective socialization makes conformity an
internally driven motivation, while
externally driven conformity always
engages the mechanisms of social control”
Refers to the idea that a person has the
innate right to be valued, respected,
and treated well.
Are legal, social, and ethical principles that
consider the human person as deserving
of liberties and protection by virtue of his
or her human being
 Are founded on natural rights,
which are universal and
inalienable, and are not
contingent on laws, customs,
beliefs, or values of a particular
culture.
The pursuance of the common good should
not be a cause for the violation of rights of
individual…