Deviance

Deviance
• Deviance is the recognized violation of cultural norms
• Norms guide almost all human activities
• Most familiar examples are negative instances of rule-
breaking.
• Especially righteous people also might be called
“deviant.”
• “Different” or “unexpected” are often used to describe
deviance from a sociological perspective.
• Some categories of people are defined as deviant
regardless of action or choice
– “Doing Nothing” (Letting someone being victimized or not
helping someone in dire need of help)
 Social Control
• Social Control: Attempts by society to regulate
people’s thoughts and behavior

• Informal Social Control

–parents; teachers; peers

• Formal Social Control

- Criminal Justice System: A formal response by
police, courts, and prison officials to alleged violations of
the law.
 Explanations for Deviance
Biological context
• Genetic factors together with environmental factors
(especially abuse early in life) are strong predictors of
adult crime and violence.

Personality factors
• Deviance is viewed as unsuccessful “socialization.”
• Reckless and Dinitz – Containment Theory
 Containment Theory
• Sociologist Walter Reckless (1967) suggested that people are
drawn toward deviance for various reasons (frustration,
media influence, poverty, etc).

– These negative influences pull all individuals toward deviance in some

way. There must, then, be some way of “containing” individuals
within the norms.
 Containment Theory
• Reckless suggested that people could be “insulated” from
crime
– If properly socialized by his parents and peers, the
individual will control (or “contain”) himself. The individual
provides his own “containment” (controlling those natural
impulses that could lead to the violation of norms).

– If the individual cannot “contain” himself from violating

norms, his family and/or peers may try to contain him. If
that fails, the other social institutions of informal social
control may provide containment.
 Social Foundations of Deviance
• Deviance varies according to cultural norms.
– No thought or action is inherently deviant.
• People become deviant as others define them
that way.
– How others perceive and label us
• People become deviant when other define them
that way
• How society sets norm and how they define rule
breaking both involve social power
– Karl Marx and how normative systems are created an
enforced
 Durkheim's Basic Insight
• Deviance affirms cultural values and norms.
– There can be no good without evil and no justice without
crime.
• Responding to deviance clarifies moral boundaries.
– People draw a boundary between right and wrong.
• Responding to deviance brings people together.
– People typically react to serious deviance with shared
outrage.
• Deviance encourages social change.
– Deviant people push a society’s moral boundaries.
 Merton’s Strain Theory
• The extent and type of deviance people engage in depend on whether a
society provides the means (such as schooling and job opportunities) to
achieve cultural goals (such as financial success).
– When there is a discordance between culturally accepted goals and socially accepted
ways of achieving them, the individuals and groups experience a frustration or strain
• Conformity
– Pursuing conventional goals through normal means
• Innovation
– Unconventional means to achieve approved goals
• Ritualism
– Accept institutional means; reject goals
• Retreatism
– Reject culturally accepted goals and the means
• Rebellion
– Define new goals and means to achieve goals
 Deviant Subcultures
• Cloward and Ohlin
– proposing that crime results not simply from
limited legitimate (legal) opportunity but also from
readily accessible illegitimate (illegal) opportunity.
In short, deviance or conformity arises from the
relative opportunity structure that frames a
person’s life.
– Development of criminal subcultures, such as
Capone’s criminal organization or today’s inner-
city street gangs.
 Deviant Subcultures
• What happens in places where illegal opportunity
is not available
– Conflict subculture
• such as armed street gangs that engage in violence out of
frustration and a desire for respect
– Retreatist subculture
• in which deviants drop out and abuse alcohol or other drugs
• Cohen
– Delinquency is most common among lower-class youths
because they have the least opportunity for conventional
success.
 Labeling Deviance
• Symbolic-interaction analysis
– The assertion that deviance and conformity result not so
much from what people do as from how others respond to
those actions.
• Primary deviance
– Norm violations that most people take part in with little harm
to self-concept (because usually people do not take notice of
it)
• Secondary deviance
– if people take notice of someone’s deviance and
really make something of it?
 Labeling Deviance
• Secondary Deviance Contd.
• After an audience has defined some action as primary deviance,
the individual may begin to change,
– taking on a deviant identity by talking, acting, or dressing in a different
way, rejecting the people who are critical, and repeatedly breaking the
rules.
– People also begin the person as deviant
– Lemert (1951:77) calls this change of self-concept secondary deviance.
• “when a person begins to employ . . . deviant behavior as a means of defense,
attack, or adjustment to the . . . Problems created by societal reaction,” deviance
becomes secondary.
• Stigma
– Powerful negative label that greatly changes a person’s self-concept and social identity
 Labeling Deviance
• Retrospective labeling
– Once people stigmatize an individual, they may
engage in retrospective labeling
– Re-interpreting someone’s past in light of present deviance
• Projective labeling
– Once a person has been stigmatized people predicts future
of that person as deviant based on that stigma
 Medicalization of deviance

• Transform moral and legal deviance into a

medical condition
• Swapping of labels
– Good to Well
– Bad to Sick
• No moral judgment of behavior (deviant
behavior) but the treatment perspective
 Sutherland’s
Differential Association
– All behavior is learned
– Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other
persons in a process of communication. 
– The principal part of the learning of criminal behavior
occurs within intimate personal groups. 
– When criminal behavior is learned, the learning
includes: (a) techniques of committing the crime,
which sometimes are very complicated, sometimes
are very simple; and (b) the specific direction of
motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes. 
– People also learn attitude towards law and its
violations 
 Sutherland’s
Differential Association
– A person becomes delinquent because of an
excess of definitions favorable to violation of law
over definitions unfavorable to violation of law.
This is the principle of differential association.

– Differential associations may vary in frequency,

duration, priority, and intensity.
 Hirschi’s Control Theory
• Social bonds stop people from committing crime
– Attachment
• Our connection to other and society. Strong social
attachments encourage conformity.
– Commitment
• Investment in social groups, social institutions, or society.
The greater the access to legitimate opportunity, the greater
the advantages of conformity.
– Involvement
• Extensive involvement in legitimate activities inhibits
deviance.
– Belief
• Strong belief in conventional morality and respect for
authority controls deviance.
 Social-Conflict Analysis
Deviance and Power
• Norms or laws reflect interests of rich and
powerful.
• Powerful have resources to resist deviant
labels.
• Belief that norms and laws are natural and
good masks political character
 Deviance and Capitalism
Steven Spitzer - likely targets of labeling:
• People who interfere with capitalism.
• People who cannot or will not work.
• People who resist authority.
• Anyone who directly challenges the status quo
• White-collar crime
– Those committed by people of high social position in the course of
their occupations
• Corporate crime
– Illegal actions of a corporation or people acting on its behalf
• Organized crime
– A business supplying illegal goods or services