Lecture 1A: Deviant Identity

Deviance Construction

The process of constructing and applying definitions of deviance, understood as a moral enterprise involving the creation of moral meaning and its association with specific acts or conditions.

Moral Enterprise

The creation of moral meaning and the association of these meanings with specific acts or conditions, often involving individuals drawing on power and resources of organizations, institutions, and communication.

Moral Entrepreneurs

People involved in "making" deviance, categorized into rule creators and rule enforcers.

Rule Creators

Moral entrepreneurs who formulate rules, such as politicians, crusading public figures, teachers, parents, and school administrators.

Rule Enforcers

Moral entrepreneurs responsible for applying rules to specific groups of people, such as police, courts, RAs, or neighborhood watch associations.

Danger Messages

Claims made by moral entrepreneurs to create awareness of a problem, often drawing on testimonials, statistics, and case examples.

Moral Conversion

The process by which rule creators convince others of their views to gain support for their campaigns, often involving media attention, sponsors, opinion leaders, and alliances.

Moral Panic

A societal threat created when efforts of moral entrepreneurs are highly successful, often amplified by media, moving beyond its original impetus and triggered by specific events, ultimately dying out but leaving residual effects.

Differential Social Power

The ability of certain groups, due to factors like money, race, gender, age, numbers, education, and social status, to construct and apply definitions of deviance to others.

Halo Effect

A phenomenon where powerful groups and persons are thought highly of, making them less likely to be perceived as deviant, regardless of their actions to counter such labeling.

Proactive Collective Identity Protection

Efforts by powerful groups and organizations (e.g., pharmaceutical companies) to build and sustain a positive social image, often through funding favorable research and using respected spokespersons, to prevent negative labeling.

Deviant Identity Development

The pathway an individual enters when former secret deviance is exposed or an abstract status impacts personal experience, leading to the acquisition of a deviant identity through a 'moral career'.

Deviant Identity Career

A multi-stage process through which individuals acquire a deviant identity, moving from innocent identities to being labeled as 'different' by society.

Retrospective Interpretation

Reflecting on past behavior to reinterpret it in light of new information about a person's current deviance, often occurring after public identification as deviant.

Spoiled Identity

A tarnished reputation that an individual develops when news of their deviance spreads, recognized by Goffman (1963) as difficult to reverse or socially rehabilitate.

Commitment Ceremonies

Formal events, such as trials or psychiatric hearings, where an individual is officially labeled as deviant by society.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

A situation where individuals, having been labeled as deviant, enact the labels placed upon them, as society expects them to commit further deviance.

Dynamics of Exclusion

The process, described by Lemert (1951), where former friends deride and ostracize an individual from their social group after they have been labeled as deviant.

Looking Glass Selves

Cooley's concept referring to the culminating stage of the identity career where individuals internalize the deviant label and begin to think of themselves differently, affecting future behavior.

Master Status

A social status that becomes dominant in a person's life, overpowering others and coloring how they are viewed, often infusing self-concept and others' reactions (e.g., a deviant identity).

Auxiliary Traits

Common social preconceptions and stereotypes that people associate with various master statuses (e.g., prostitutes/thieves associated with heroin addicts).

Primary Deviance

The stage where individuals commit deviant acts, but their deviance remains unrecognized by others.

Secondary Deviance

The stage where deviant acts are discovered, individuals are identified as deviant, and the labeling process along with the seven identity stages begin.

Vocabulary of Motive

Presenting legitimate reasons or justifications to others to explain the meaning of one's actions, often used in secondary deviance (e.g., Matza's Neutralization Techniques).

Tertiary Deviance

A stage where individuals engage in deviance embracement, accepting and internalizing their deviant identities, and often working to reject or change societal conceptions and treatment of their stigma.

Stigma Management

Efforts by individuals with deviant features to control and mitigate the social devaluation and exclusion associated with their stigma, often involving secrecy and informational control.

The Discreditable

Individuals with easily concealable deviant traits (e.g., ex-convicts, secret homosexuals) who manage themselves to avoid the deviant stigma by concealing their deviance.

Passing (as normal)

A strategy used by the discreditable to conceal their deviance and fit in with regular people in everyday life.

Stigma Symbols

Objects or behaviors that reveal a person's deviant condition, which the discreditable often avoid (e.g., certain medications, avoiding specific social situations).

Disidentifiers

Props, actions, or verbal expressions used by the discreditable to distract people and fool them into thinking they do not have a deviant stigma (e.g., homosexuals bragging about heterosexual conquests).

Double Life

A strategy employed by the discreditable, maintaining two different lifestyles with distinct groups of people, one aware of the deviance and one unaware.

The Discredited

Individuals who have revealed their deviance or whose deviance cannot be hidden (e.g., obese, racial minorities), whose stigma is known to others.

Deviance Disavowal

A social interaction process initiated by non-deviants toward the discredited, involving an initial ignoring of deviance, followed by more relaxed interaction focusing on non-deviant features, leading to the stigma being overlooked.

Deviance Avowal

A strategy where discredited deviants openly acknowledge their stigma and try to present themselves in a positive light, often using humor to bridge connections with non-deviants.

Expressive Dimension (of stigmatized groups)

The primary function of voluntary associations of stigmatized individuals to provide support, social activities, and a safe space for disclosures without fear of rejection, helping members adapt to their stigma.

Instrumental Dimension (of stigmatized groups)

The function of stigmatized groups to organize for political activism, often linked to tertiary deviance, fighting to change societal conceptions and treatment of their stigma.

Conformity (in stigmatized groups)

Stigmatized groups that adhere to the norms and values of conventional society, aiming to help members fit in with others who may not accept or understand them.

Alienation (in stigmatized groups)

Stigmatized groups that either willingly step outside conventional means to fight for changed definitions of their deviance, or embody multiple conflicting values with society, potentially resorting to violence or forming separate communities.