What is Normal?
Deviance, Norms, and Social Control 🤔⚖
The sociological study of deviance is defined as deviating from an accepted norm 📏. This study moves beyond individual opinions to analyze larger social patterns and processes.
Defining Deviance: Objective vs. Subjective Approaches
The definition of deviance can be approached from two major perspectives:
Objective Views 🎯🔍
Assume deviance is defined by inherent characteristics recognizable independently of attributed meaning. The focus is on identifying traits common to all deviance.
Key Objective Criteria and Limitations:
Statistical Rarity 📉: Suggests deviance is rare, but this is limited as not all rare things are deviant, and common things (like speeding) can still be deviant.
Social Harm 🤕: Suggests deviance causes physical, psychological, social, or ontological harm. Limitation: perceptions of harm are disputed and change over time.
Negative Societal Reaction 😡: Suggests deviance is defined by the negative reaction it generates. Limitation: reactions are not uniform, change over time, and depend on power.
Normative Violation 🚫: Suggests deviance violates a society’s norms.
Subjective Views 🎭🏷
Propose that nothing is inherently deviant; it is a label applied by others 🏷, dependent entirely on context and social norms. The focus is on the process of social construction.
Social Norms and Moral Codes
Norms are the standards of behavior in a society, and they vary in formality and seriousness:
Folkways: Informal norms that govern everyday behaviour; violating them might make you seem odd 🤷, but not criminal.
Mores: Standards seen as the foundation of morality 🕊; violating them may lead to being viewed as immoral.
Laws: The most formal and serious norms, officially reflected in the legal system 🏛.
Views on Norms (Normative Violation)
Consensus 🤝: Assumes norms emerge from general agreement, often reflected in law.
Conflict ⚔: Norms are effects of struggles between opposing powerful and less powerful groups.
Interactionist 🗣: Norms/laws reflect interests of specific groups effective at appealing to power (non-consensual view).
Other Key Normative/Moral Concepts
Absolutist view (of norms): Suggests that universal norms ✨ exist, implying what is wrong in one place must be wrong everywhere.
Dominant moral codes 📜: The prevalent “lists” of right and wrong ideas that dominate a particular society 👑 at a given time.
Social Construction and The Deviance Dance
The process of defining what is deviant is highly social.
Social construction 🏗: The ongoing process (macro to micro levels) through which dominant moral codes emerge, created through constant negotiations among groups.
Moral entrepreneurs 📢: Individuals or groups who try to define something as a social problem and try to influence dominant moral codes.
Deviance dance 💃🕺: The interactions, negotiations, and debates that occur among groups who hold different views on whether a behaviour is deviant and how it should be socially controlled.
Social Typing and Control
Social typing is the three-step process that determines how people labeled as deviant are treated in society.
Three Components of the Social Typing Process:
Description 🏷: A label is placed on an individual or act (e.g., “criminal,” “druggie”).
Evaluation ⚖: A judgment is attached to the person/act based on the label (e.g., lacking self-control).
Prescription 💊: Measures of social control or regulation emerge to treat the individual in a specific way due to the label and judgment.
Types of Social Control
Social control refers to the methods used to regulate behavior.
Formal social control: Official processes from institutional or organizational levels, such as the law 🚔 or a university’s code of conduct.
Informal social control: Elicits at the level of everyday social interaction 😊, involving patterns like smiling, frowning, or avoiding someone.
Retroactive forms of social control: Attempt to punish, fix, or cure deviance that has already occurred (e.g., fines, jail).
Preventative social control: Intended to prevent deviance from emerging in the first place, often through education and socialization efforts.
Self-control: Occurs when individuals regulate and judge their own behaviours 🧘 (e.g., hiding aspects of themselves).