Social Deviance
Doesn’t deviant just mean “bad”?
Short answer no
Long answer: maybe
Attempts to define deviance have introduced as many questions as answered
Not cut and dry as we might think
Example: cannabis in the united states
Cannabis is illegal but can be used if it is used in a medicinal act
Industry-standard definitions
Clinards typology
Reactivist definition: whatever a social audience labels “deviant”
Problem: deviance is an opinion for the most part
Absolutist definition: anything that violated UNIVERSAL cultural standard is “deviant”
Problem: does that even exist?
Statistical definition: anything that behavior that happens less often is “deviant”
Problem: yeah, but is 49.99999999% of the time really that much different?
Normative definition: a behavior that departs from NORMS leading to sanctions is deviant
Problem: what is a norm? What counts it as a sanction?
Adler and Adler's definition
Deviance is a violation of social norms, behavioral codes, and expectations of conduct
Combo of attitudes, behaviors, conditions
Proscriptive vs. Prescriptive norm violations (doing something we know we shouldn’t do)
Example: classroom etiquette
Proscriptive: interrupting a professor while in the middle of a lecture
Prescriptive: someone having a medical emergency and intentionally ignoring it
Focusing in on when, where, and how deviance occurs
Respect fluidity in this context
Key terms
Norm: a framework or code produces expected patterns of conforming behavior
Basic “unit” of sociological analysis
Role: a social position tied to norms that helps to reproduce or change them
“Doctors”, “professors”, “Mom”
Power: the ability to control resources
Different for of “capital”
Subcultures: collections of norms and roles that depart from the norms and roles occupied by those in power
Stigma: a “mark” of disgrace leading to formal and informal sanctions
We need to talk more about subcultures
Clinards says:
Subcultures are a culture within a culture. They are a collection of norms, values (morals), and beliefs (morals) with content distinguishable from the dominant culture
Specific connotations
Traditionally involves face-to-face interaction but let's be honest about the internet for a second
Organized around shared social practices
Serve as a way to bond or congeal identities
Traditionally considered disempowered
Variants
Countercultures, freaks, scenes, etc
Deviance vs. Morality: A False Continuum
Howie Becker (1963): stop pretending that we all don’t like to get a little freaky. It just manifests in different ways
Not a pathological (biological) phenomenon
The existence of an “outside” class leans too often into universalist assumptions
This leads to some of the negative outcomes sometimes falsely attributed to the deviant
Moral entrepreneurs
Attempts to impose their norms on others
Examples: activism, parent
Takeaway: norms are relative = deviance relative
Classic perspective on deviance
Erikson (1962): considered the “golden age” of deviance research
The deviant is the person who has moved to the margins of a group
Offered a new way to think of deviance by scale
When a deviant is recognized in society, it tells us about the boundaries between norms, values, and belief systems
Boundaries give a point of reference for where power is situated
Draws attention to “social control” agencies
Boundaries meant to be tested by deviants and defended by the mainstream
Deviant conduct is in some ways reinforced by the very agencies that are designed to stop them
Piercing your lip to spite your parents
Deviance requires some form of ritual or commitment ceremony that acts as an initiation into movies a person from being ordinary to deviant
Formal: courtroom (how someone becomes a deviant through being a criminal)
Informal: getting bracelets at a concert to show some kind of commitment to the artist
Consequently, deviance is not just something that disrupts society but also is a form of glue that keeps it stable
What role does the media play in this contest? Does the type of media matter?
Example: cartoons and cigarettes
Example: Vigilantism
Can amplify social division
Can create social solidarity
Is violence justified?
Short answer: no
Long answer:
Clinard says: deviance is a departure from norms that draw or are likely to draw social disapproval and elicit negative sanctions if detected
Heckerts says: that positive deviance does exist, violates norms, and elicits admiration
Outrage does not mean admiration
Norm violation v positive deviance
Norms and deviance
Heckert and Heckert (2005)
Integrated model: that blends the normative/reactivist definitions
Negative deviance: negatively evaluated underconformity
Example: treason
Rate busting: negatively appraised
Example: workaholic
Deviance admiration: positively reacted to unconformity
Example: competitive eating
Positive deviance: positively sanctioned overconformity
Example: religious fasting
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
Famous book called “leviathan” wrote in 1600s
Hobbesian problem of “order”
We are all in a “social contract” whether you like it or not
Consciously or tacitly
What is social control
Three solutions to the Hobbesian problem:
Normative: we are socialized through various institutions (e.g., the family, schools, churches, etc) to internalize a set of broad norms
Emile Durkheim on suicide
Relational: we need things from other people and because we are selfish we don’t want to be left out in the cold
Utilitarianism or “rational-choice” theory (cost and benefits)
Coercion: people with authority force us to conform to their will
Law enforcement
Suffice it to say we would act like degenerates if it wasn’t for social control
Janowitz (1975): sociological theory and social control
Social control conditions self-control through socialization
Informal social control (e.g., unofficial/private sanctions)
Examples: peer pressure, boycotting, canceling
Formal social control (e.g., official/legal sanctions)
Examples: jail time, expulsion, car inspections
Forms of social control appeal to issues of morality, reason, and fear
Social control and surveillance
Overview:
Interviews with cannabis businesses in 2018-2020
Talked with people in california, arizona, and texas
Research question: How do cannabis businesses manage being illegal and legal at the same time
Answer: they look to how they are being surveilled to figure out how to comply with state laws while not pushing the envelope too much
Seems obvious…except cannabis businesses sometimes conduct surveillance without being asked to by the state
Social control and cannabis
Social control can “span” categories
Social control is not always a problem, sometimes it’s a resource
Question: what were the three governmentalities of surveillance?
Sometimes formula and informal depending on context
Examples: using incentives to get people to leave the black market
Social control and constructing deviance
Joel best: constructing deviance different than defining deviance
Who makes the labels and the definitions?
Answer: elites
Social constructionism:
Contextualizes “deviant” events
Turns attention to roles, places, times, acts, and careers
Focuses on who has power and who does not have power
Secondary deviance
Considered a relativist stance
Introduction deviant career
How and why do people engage in deviance?
Deviance fluid at the person level just like social level
Caution once a deviant not always a deviant
The career model of deviance
Entry: the movement when a person engages in a deviant act(s)
How and why??
Management: the period of active deviance and maintenance of consequences
Practices of secrecy (sometimes)
Handling stigma
Self reinforcement strategies
Recurring participation
Ext: the moment when a person stops engaging in a deviant act(s)
How and why??
Permanence??
“Post deviance” : how they perform once back in society
Phase 1: entering deviance
Becker (1953): becoming a marihuana user
Everybody just smokes it and loves it right?
WRONG
He finds three stages a person goes through
1.) learn how to correctly consume cannabis so that it can actually cause an altered state
2.) learn to recognize the symptoms of this alteration
3.) learn to associate the symptoms of this alteration as pleasurable
Subcultural theory of drug use
Subcultural theory of deviance that rejected dominant pathological paradigm
Phase 2: managing deviance
Whitesel and Shuman (2009)
A study of social smoking
Strageies of deviance management
1.) self-regulation: maintaining some standard of personal accountability
2.) reframing: shifting stigma to prestige
Using smoking to get into cliques
3.) negotiating: boundary work
An active interplay between finding an anchor to and a form of distance from the deviant act
Phase 3: exiting deviance
Uggen and Maaoglia (2003): desistance form crime and deviance
Life course theory
A few things help to explain why people move from deviance
1.) getting older = harder to find fellow deviants/interacting with more desistors
2.) more education = changing views
3.) better work = different priorities
A series of interacting processes that led to reintegration with prevailing societal norms
Understanding deviant careers
All deviant “careers” are “deviant” careers, but not always the other way around
Deviant behavior = human behvior
A process model designed to add context to deviance
Seeing deviance as “senseless” is a gross under simplification
Centers insider accounts
A core framework for employing unconventional sentimentality in deviance research