Social Deviance Exam

four categories for objectivists to spot deviance

1. Harm

2. Rarity of occurrence

   1. Underage drinking, domestic violence, ingestion of alcohol are things that could be considered deviant behaviours, but are still incredibly common.

3. Social reaction

   1. Just too hard to quantify

4. Norm violation

Critiques of Subjectivist Theory

• Doesn't factor for what causes these behaviours

• What about real impact and pain caused?

• Relativism can never be really defined

Formal Social control

• Exercised by recognized institutions (govt, organization, etc.)

• Formal sanctions (jail, ticket, demotion)

Informal Social Control

• No institutional actions, excercised socially by friends, peers, strangers even

• Informal sanctions (social reactions. Glances, whispers, etc.)

Retroactive Social Control

Deviant behaviour happens, we notice it, and then we attempt to correct it (the reaction happens after the event)

Preventative Social Control

Preventing deviance before it happens through social practices (telling people to stop, glaring, etc. before the action occurs)

Positivism Def.

Rational assertions about the world can be scientifically verified. A rejection of any religious explanations

Mechanical and Organic Solidarity (Durkheim)

• Mechanical: 

  • order via shared norms and values

  • low division of labour (roles and responsibilities of life were shared)

  • Strong collective conscience

  • Deviant behaviour will arise when someone exercises modest self-interest

• Organic Solidarity

  • What holds us together is our interdependence on one another

  • Roles aren’t shared, they are divided and highly specialized

Anomie

• Norms and bonds begin to deteriorate through this rapid social change

• state of societal normlessness

• When bonds deteriorate, social control is at it’s lowest

• Example: the great depression

  • When the economic system crashes, the social system and values shift

4 Anomic types of suicide

• Egoistic suicide (excessive individuation, essentially saying you are poorly integrated with people and systems around you)

• He alternatively believes people can also have too much integration

• Altruistic Suicide (over identification)

  • Eg. cult mass suicide

  • Profound dedication to group/community

• Anomic Suicide (social deregulation motivated)

  • During times of social crisis (eg. great depression)

• Fatalistic Suicide (no control over your behaviour)

  • No form of integration, being overregulated

  • (eg. prison suicide)

Merton says the population will respond to Anomie in 5 ways (4 of which are deviant)

• Conformist: (not deviant)

  • People will sense the disconnect of the social system but won’t give up

• Innovation 

  • Accepts the goals, but rejects the means of obtaining them (make money, but perhaps through crime)

• Retreatism

  • Rejects both means and goals

• Ritualism 

  • Rejects or doesn’t feel impassioned about societal goals, accepts means

• Rebellion

  • Rejecting goals and means, adding new goals and means

Primary vs. Secondary Deviance

• Primary deviance

  • People will do things to violate norms

  • Usually not serious

  • Act might  be recognized and labelled, but is deemed as typically an isolated behaviour

  • The act doesn’t define the person’s self, so there tends to be no reorganized or identity based on this action, they don’t internalize the label

• Secondary deviance

  • Violation of norms in a serious and persistent way

  • Stronger reaction from the community and consistent labelling

  • Label is internalized (maybe i am a criminal)

  • Once the label is internalized, people’s social status starts to change and their life has to rearrange itself in accordance with this label

  • Conventional opportunities become limited (maybe you can’t get/hold a job, so you keep selling drugs and delve further into deviance)

Kitsuse’s “Tertiary deviance”

• If you were part of a stigmatized group, and you decided to push back on the label

• Implies organized response (not at the individual level)

Information control (Goffman 1963)

• Biographic and symbolic information control

• Biographic: you don’t let people know about your label

• Symbolic: visible things, eg. a scar

Critiques of Labelling Theory

• Initial cause of deviance?

• Hard to say that the process of labelling is what causes deviance, it’s very difficult to prove

• Correlation does not equal causation!!!

Conflict theory

• Institutions, norms and values, and the powerful

• The idea that the norms are set by those with power to protect their interests

• Resistance is criminalized and controlled

Marxist Conflict Theory

• The poor deviate due to alienation and deprivation

• Laws of any capitalist system will represent the values of the bourgeoise and aims to control the lower class

• Wealthy are rarely criminalized

G20 Summit (Toronto 2010)

• Meeting of all the major world leaders to talk about economics

• “Anti-capitalist” resistance via protesters

• Protesters were concerned about worker’s right, the environment, human rights and were labelled as anti-capitalist because they challenged the ideals of the upper class capitalists

• Protesters arrested, as the laws are there to protect the people in the meeting rooms from annoyances as opposed to protecting the rights/interests of the protesters

Harris, Scott R. (2013). “Studying the Construction of Social Problems”: Objectivist vs. Subjectivist answers to social problems

Objectivist answer to social problems

• Focus on the objective aspects of the problems

  • Eg. how much harm does water pollution add to the problem

• Hard to quantify how many people some issues affect and in which ways

• Some issues would be considered harmful to some, and not to others (eg. gay marriage)

Constructionist answer to social problems

• Ambiguous situations

• For a constructionist view of a social problem to exist a person has to:

1. Notice a situation

   1. If a situation is not perceived, it’s not a significant problem (i have issue with this)

2. Interpret it as bothersome

3. Tell other people about it

• Problems are considered more or less serious in different regions, times, etc. So it can’t necessarily be objective as subjective cultural impacts are highly relevant

• Consutructionists prefer neutral language, they don’t want to make a decision until further into their analysis

Blumer (1971) “Social Problems and Collective Behaviour”

• His concerns were:

  • We analyze deviant problems objectively

  • We analyze a problem after it has been defined as such

• His suggestion

  • Focus on how does a condition get defined as a problem?

“Claims-makers”

• People who make claims about a problem

• Eg. the person trying to convince you the Polar Bears need help

• Helps if they are charismatic, have connections and resources

• Primary vs secondary claims-makers

Primary vs Secondary Claims Makers

• Primary: people who have first hand experience with the condition, faced victimization

• Secondary: the people who have knowledge of the issue and are trying to construct it as a problem, not victims (Often media personalities, friends, etc.)

Hierarchy of claimsmaking

• We often believe primary claims makers first

• If so many people are making claims, who do we believe?

• People are competing against one another to convince you that their perspective is the correct one

• Competing for attention and your support (monetarily or not)

Needs for successful claims-making

• Salience (significance)

  • Construct the condition (problem) as relevant

  • “It could happen to you”

• Scope/size

  • Establish the condition as widespread (statistics help!)

• Morality

  • Establish a moral imperative to act

  • Eg. abortion issues (both sides)

• Good victim and villain

  • Innocence and moral purity

  • They had no contribution to their victimization

  • Good villains need to be easily identifiable, kinda creepy looking, and directly responsible (eg. Harvey Weinstein)

• Call to action

  • Must avoid inconvenient solutions

  • Has to be realistic and feasible

De Young (2008) “Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic”: What is moral panic?

• An episode where some event becomes a threat to social values and interests

• Presented by the mass media

• Witch hunts, street crime scares, terrorism scares, AIDS crises, etc.

• Attributional Model

• De-emphasizes the role of the media and instead focuses on claims makers and disproportionately harmful claims

• Processual Model

  • Emphasis the role of media on controlling culture

Key elements of moral panic (7)

• Emergence

  • Anxiety caused by rapid social, technological and ideological changes

  • The changes are threatening to the legitimacy of institutions

  • Challenge comforting ideologies

  • ‘Master symbols’

• Folk Devils

  • The people or group who embody some unsettling social, political or economic ideologies

  • Predators, immigrants, single mothers, drug addicts, etc

  • Day care providers were the folk devils

• Media inventory

  • Media using language to perpetuate a story and holding the power to do so

• Moral entrepreneurs and experts

  • Moral panic has to be narrated by “moral entrepreneurs”

• Coping and resolution

  • Cohen (1972) says that ways of coping are often resorted to after a moral panic

  • Enforcement of security cameras, background checks, etc.

• Fade away

  • Time for moral panic is limited

• Legacy

  • Observance in retrospect

Constructing Deviance through Traditional Media

• Newspapers don’t promote social problems solely because they are social problems, there are other things to consider when communicating (or not communicating) a problem

• The popularity or engagement of news is a massive factor in what they publish

• Revenue!

• Newsworthiness (is your social problem relevant enough?)

  • Are powerful people involved?

  • Is the content dramatic?

  • Is it easy to read/understand

  • Thematic (does it fit a greater storyline?)

• Time and space (how much time and space does it take up and is it worth it?)

Constructing Deviance through Alternative Media

• Social media

• Randos are claims makers

• No hierarchy to work through, anyone can make claims

• Speed and reach is greater than ever

• Too many claims makers shoots credibility and drowns you in the crowd

Body Projects’ Concept

• The ways we adapt and change our bodies (voluntarily or involuntarily)

• Eg. poor eyesight, get glasses. Too short, wear heels

Four Categories of Body Projects

• Camouflaging 

  • The everyday ways we control our bodily appearance to fit cultural norms

• Extending 

  • Attempts to overcome physical limitations, such as using something like a cane, or wearing glasses/contacts

• Adapting

  • Alter the appearance of the body through methods involving more effort, losing or gaining weight/muscle

• Redesigning

  • Permanent changes such as cosmetic surgery or tattoos. 

The Dramaturgical Perspective

• Body modifying decisions are part of constructing our visible vs invisible changes (what are personal and what are for observation)

• Are some things for personal life vs professional? Eg. placement of tattoos

• More than 40% of people say they got a tattoo to honour a loved one

Reading: Facial Disfigurement Stigma: A Study of Victims of Domestic Assaults With Fire in India: 7 ways of managing stigma

• Irving Goffman’s idea of “Passing”

• Using strategy to pass off as “normal”

• Deligitmize critiques

  • You don’t get it, I don’t care

• Emphasize personal significance

  • That’s literally my grandpa who is dead that I got a tattoo for, chill

• Stigma can just be embraced

• avoidance/disengagement

  • Deliberately avoid any social situation where they feel they may be judged

  • Disengagement can frequently lead to further issues surrounding their mental health

• Compensation

  • Put more effort into other dimensions of their personality or appearance to improve social interactions

    • Really funny, really outgoing, good style

• Managing via the Internet

  • “Fatosphere”

  • Terms for websites or social media platforms where obese people provide each other for support

  • After interviewing Fatosphere bloggers/users, people reported that they felt a sense of empowerment and connectedness (no actual proof tho)

How can medicalization be used as a form of social control over bodies (typically obese bodies)

Medical intervention like Ozempic or Lipo

Goffman’s paradox of stigma

• Even though we stigmatize and marginalize, everyone is still part of society

• Stigmatization marginalizes you from society, but all of society embraces the same message (internalized values among us all)

Development of Mental Illness

• Minorities and disciminated against-groups are more likely to face developments of mental illnesses

• Certain more serious jobs (eg. first responders are more susceptible)

• Socioeconomic status is correlated

Social causation hypothesis

More life strain, fewer resources to cope

Social selection hypothesis

People with mental disorders can fall into lower economic strata because of difficulties in daily functioning

Community based treatment vs. hospital based treatments

• Community based is more cost effective, but people can slip through the cracks and that incurs a cost

Goffman’s Asylums (1961): The ‘total institution’

• He says there is no such thing as a perfect total institution

• An ideal type, which may not exist in reality but you can use this idea to compare to institutions

• The idea of the old self and the “degradation ceremony”

• They target your self-identity through humiliation and stripping you of your values

• Institutional vs. patient needs are different. The total institution will not allow your needs to exceed those of the institution (you missing your parents is your need. They don’t need that they need you to eat.)

Process of Deinstitutionalization

• By the 60’s major institutions were being heavily criticised 

• Advances in medicine made people question the necessity of institutions

• Minimize stigma by pulling people out of institutions and inviting them to be in society

• Care is possible within our own communities, nurses, therapists, support groups, etc.

Failures of deinstitutionalization

• We overestimated our ability to keep people tied to their communities

• We overestimated the ability to access resources within the community

• This lead to a lot of homelessness or criminality as people weren’t getting the care they needed in their communities

Medicalization (1980s) and the rise of big pharma

• Rise of Big Pharma

• Emphasis on profits lead to targets of selling pills to people who didn’t necessarily need them, but thought they needed them

• The medical industry lobbied very aggressively for medical classifications so that a drug would be the response

• How could this have contributed to over diagnosing and medicating?

Thomas Scheff’s Labelling Approach (1966)

• When people came to his clinic, most of them were presenting symptoms not of illness, but of “residual rule breaking”, or just people breaking social norms

• When he gets people mumbling, hallucinating, etc. he thinks it’s not symptomatic of an illness but they can be caused by stress, exhaustion, monotony, etc.

• Patients who resist diagnosis don’t get treatment

Critiques of Thomas Scheff’s Labelling Approach (1966)

• Insufficient evidence

• Patients will resist if they think what they are being told is wrong

Bruce Links’ Modified Labelling Approach (1989)

• People actually struggle from real conditions

• What he thinks is actually happening is not that the label causes poor health, but labelling within the medical community leads to stigmatization and internalization

• MI leads to devaluation and discrimination (those who are ill know this)

• MI fear devaluation and rejection (strain relations and additional negative outcomes as well as further internalization of the label)

• He thinks the patient begins to worry about rejection due to their MI, so they change their social behaviour

Peggy Thoits (2011)

• Not everyone can passively manage

• People do one of two things: deflect or challenge

  • Deflect

    • “Not important” or “it doesn't define me”

  • Challenge 

    • Challenging people’s understanding of MI

    • They are trying to transform your idea of MI to something usually more compassionate

    • Righteous indignation and positive self-esteem

    • They’re on a mission to tell you to change your ways, because it’s not fair the way they are being treated

      • Empowerment in stigmatization

      • Paradox of stigma

Handbook of the Sociology of Mental Health: Different Circumstances of Stigma (6)

• Concealability

  • How detectable certain characteristics are/how able they are to be masked and concealed

• Course

  • The extent that the stigmatization is thought to be reversible

  • Eg. substance use is reversible but being short is not

• Disruptiveness

  • The extent to which something disrupts your day to day life

• Aesthetics

  • Physical marks and how they interact with stigma

  • Facial scarring is not aesthetic

  • homeless/mentally ill people can sometimes be physically defined by their aesthetics

• Origin

  • How a certain condition came to be

  • The extent to which the individual’s behaviour may have caused the condition

  • Eg. birth defects are not in one’s control but substance abuse is

• Peril

  • How much of a perceived threat a condition is to others

Edwin Sutherland (1949)’s definition of white collar crime

• “Crime that’s committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation”

• Sutherland seems to imply that the people he had in mind were largely business executives (ignoring lower-level admin, other types of people with wealth and power)

Types of White Collar Crime

1. Individual

   • The offender acts on their own

   • Intended to self-benefit

   • Acts committed while working (crimes at home don’t count! This theory doesn’t care if you punch your neighbour)

   • Good example is pharmacists selling Oxy or other drugs off-market for a personal profit

   • When the criminal is caught, the condemnation is on the individual

2. Corporate/organizational

   • Usually starts at a high point within the company’s hierarchy

   • These actions are coordinated and take advantage of specific social networks within the organization

   • Difficult to trace blame to an individual

   • Meant to benefit the organization as a whole, not a certain person (even if a certain person does benefit as a result of benefitting the company)

   • These crimes are much harder to discern as they are intwined with companies, policies, and hundreds of people

   • Very hard to trace victimization

   • Because sums of money are so large, it’s difficult to track what is and is not legitimate

   • Additionally, they happen over large amounts of time and are incredibly complex to track and trace

   • Rarely prosecuted!

   • The amount that a company loses in penalties is often not major and in that sense it often makes white-collar crime worth it! You may be charged less than you stole!

   • Labelling theory is inconsistent here!! White-collar criminals do not see themselves as criminals. Weird neutralization?

Criminal Justice Review. Revisiting the guilty mind: The neutralization of white-collar crime Stadler, W. A., & Benson, M. L.: Cressey’s ‘vocabularies of adjustment’

People engage in neutralizing self-discussion to convince themselves what they’re doing is fine

Criminal Justice Review. Revisiting the guilty mind: The neutralization of white-collar crime Stadler, W. A., & Benson, M. L.: Payne’s six variables used as indicators of denial (WCC)

• Externalizing blame (someone else was responsible)

• Expressing no guilt over offense (white collar criminals are less likely to express regret over their crimes)

• Believing the offense is not serious (white collar criminals are less likely to consider their offenses to be serious)

• Believing they don’t deserve imprisonment

• Inmate comfort with the criminal label (accepting or denying it)

• Complete denial of wrongdoing

Taub, McLorg and Fanflik’s techniques of managing stigma

▪ Deflection 

▪ Normalization via “clock of competence” 

▪ Disidentify – distance yourself from stereotype by telling the real story 

• Advocacy