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Deviance

and Social Control

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What is Deviance?

  • “It is not the act itself, but the reactions to the act, that make something deviant.”
    • Howard Becker, 1966
  • Definition: Violation of Norms

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Deviance Terminology

  • Deviance
    • Violation of Rules or Norms
    • Examples: Minor- Jaywalking, Major- Murder
  • Criminal Deviance
    • Violation of Norms that have been written into Laws
  • Stigma
    • Discredit one's claim to a “Normal” Identity
    • Examples: blindness, mental handicaps, birthmarks
    • Defines a person’s master status, superseding all other statuses the person occupies

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What words come to mind when you see this picture?

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What about when you see this picture?

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Same Action: Picking “boogers”.

Is one more acceptable than the other?

Is one more deviant than the other?

Why is that?

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What is Deviance?

  • Relative Deviance
    • What is Deviant to Some is not Deviant to Others
    • “Deviance” is Nonjudgmental Term

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Examples of Relative Definitions of Deviance: Using Mental Health Examples

  • Definitions of mental disorders occur in much the same fashion that other forms of deviance receive their definitions.
  • Many times the definition is quite vague and varies "depending on the culture, audience, and context."
  • Behavior alone does not add up to mental disorder. Context is important.

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Class Context

  • If a poor woman shoplifts a roast, people call her a common criminal.

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Stealing Small Amounts Of Food When In Desperate Need Is Not A Crime, Rules Italy’s Highest Court

(May 2016)

“A small theft because of hunger is in no way comparable to an act of delinquency, because the need to feed justifies the fact.”

  • Sept. 2016- Maryland Woman Arrested For Stealing 3 French Fries From A Police Officer (Charged with 2nd degree theft)

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Class Context

  • On the other hand, if a rich woman steals a roast, her deviant status is kleptomaniac -- a form of mental illness.
    • Example: Winona Ryder is caught shoplifting in 2001 at Marc Jacobs store
    • Her comment: “Psychologically, I must have been at a place where I just wanted to stop. I won’t get into what happened, but it wasn’t what people think,” Ryder said.

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What do people call someone who is sexually promiscuous?

If they are a Woman?

If they are a Man?

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Brainstorm a list of several terms for both Women and Men.

Once you’ve done that, click to the next slide and see what other students have suggested.

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What do people call someone who is sexually promiscuous?

If they are a Woman?

  • Slut
  • Tramp
  • Whore
  • Thot
  • Loose
  • Easy
  • Horny
  • Human being with natural urges
  • Semen swiper
  • Cum dumpster
  • Thirsty
  • trashy

If they are a Man?

  • Scrubs
  • f* boi
  • Himbo
  • Player
  • Douche
  • Pimp
  • “The guy”
  • Dog
  • Chimney sweep
  • Porn star
  • Nasty
  • Stud
  • Bachelor

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Note- These terms were contributed by previous Sociology classes!

The majority of the labels for women are NEGATIVE.

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Sexual Context

  • If a woman is considered sexually promiscuous, she might find herself labeled as a nymphomaniac, while a man is a stud, macho, swinger, etc.

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Professional vs. Domestic Context

  • A man may be punctual and obedient during the week while he is at work, but on Saturday afternoon he raises hell while watching the afternoon football game.
  • Both behaviors, while appearing contradictory, are "normal" in their respective contexts.
  • But, if he took Saturday's behavior to the office he would find himself labeled as strange and he might even get fired.
  • On the other hand, passive behavior at a Saturday afternoon football game would be considered a social drag and his peers would not want to watch football with him anymore.

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Cultural Context

  • Abstinence for two years after marriage in the West would be viewed as weird and grounds for annulment.
  • Such behavior is, however, required for newlyweds in the Dani Tribe of New Guinea.
  • Sexual activity for the Dani before two years would be viewed as sexual deviance.

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Time Context

  • People used to be burned at the stake for engaging in behavior that most twentieth-century people see as normal.

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Witchcraft can also be viewed in a Cultural Context (Children accused of witchcraft in Zambia)

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Norms Make Social Life Possible

  • Makes Behavior Predictable
  • No Norms = Social Chaos
  • Social Control
    • Group’s Formal and Informal Means of Enforcing Norms

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Sanctions

  • When a norm is violated, sanctions are imposed:
  • Negative Sanctions
    • Examples: frowns, gossip, imprisonment
  • Positive Sanctions
    • Examples: smiles, awards

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Shaming and Degradation Ceremonies

  • Shaming is a Sanction
  • Can Be Centerpiece of Public Ritual
  • Effective when used by primary group or in a small community
  • Degradation Ceremony
    • Formal attempt to label someone as an outsider
    • Example: Court Martial, Public hanging, tar and feathering, public flogging, foot whipping, flagellation

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Shaming and Degradation Ceremonies

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Explanations of Deviance

Sociobiology- Look for Answers Inside Individuals

  • Genetic Predispositions
    • Examples:
      • Lower Intelligence- Compared WWI recruits with prisoners: 47% of recruits vs 20% of prisoners!!!?
      • XYY- extra chromosome in men leads to crime (1/1,800-3000)
      • Body type- squarish, muscular persons more likely to commit street crime

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Heredity

“Jukes & the Kallikaks”

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The great-great-grandfather of Deborah was Martin Kallikak. We had also traced the good family back to an ancestor belonging to an older generation than this Martin Kallikak, but bearing the same name. Many months later, a granddaughter of Martin revealed in a burst of confidence the situation. When Martin Sr., of the good family, was a boy of fifteen, his father died, leaving him without parental care or oversight. Just before attaining his majority, the young man joined one of the numerous military companies that were formed to protect the country at the beginning of the Revolution. At one of the taverns frequented by the militia he met a feeble-minded girl by whom he became the father of a feeble-minded son. This child was given, by its mother, the name of the father in full, and thus has been handed down to posterity the father’s name and the mother’s mental capacity. This illegitimate boy was Martin Kallikak Jr., the great-great-grandfather of our Deborah, and from him have come four hundred and eighty descendants. One hundred and forty-three of these, we have conclusive proof, were or are feeble-minded, while only forty-six have been found normal. The rest are unknown or doubtful

(Goddard, 1912, p. 18).

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Heredity

This is a typical illustration of the mentality of a high-grade feeble-minded person, the moron, the delinquent, the kind of girl or woman that fills our reformatories. They are wayward, they get into all sorts of trouble and difficulties, sexually and otherwise (p. 12)

It is also the history of the same type of girl in the public school. Rather good-looking, bright in appearance, with many attractive ways, the teacher clings to the hope, indeed insists, that such a girl will come out all right. Our work with Deborah convinces us that such hopes are delusions (p. 12–13)

Here is a child who has been most carefully guarded. She has been persistently trained since she was eight years old, and yet nothing has been accomplished in the direction of higher intelligence or general education. To-day if this young woman were to leave the Institution, she would at once become a prey to the designs of evil men or evil women and would lead a life that would be vicious, immoral, and criminal (p. 13).

Repercussions:

In 1927, The Callicac Family [sic] was entered into the record as evidence in Buck v. Bell, the case that resulted in the Supreme Court decision establishing that involuntary sterilization of “mentally defective” people was constitutional.

The Kallikak Family was reprinted in German in 1933, the same year Nazi Germany passed the “Law for Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Defects Act.” That Act was based on the model sterilization law drawn up by American eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin, a star witness in Buck v Bell, and legalized involuntary sterilization of Germans with disabilities.

From 1934 to 1939, Hitler’s Nazi regime involuntarily sterilized somewhere near 150,000 Germans with disabilities, and beginning in the winter of 1939, implemented a program of extermination that, by its end 20 months later, had resulted in the murder of 80,000 disabled Germans.

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Body Type

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  • Study-200 boys, Hayden Goodwill Institute. 7 point somotyping scale, 650 psychological attributes. Disproportionately mesomorphic--more prone to delinquency.
  • Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck (1950's): 800 adjudicated delinquents/matched sample of non-delinquents==> delinquents more likely to be mesomorphs.

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Explanations of Deviance

Psychology

  • Focuses on Abnormalities Within Individuals
  • Personality Disorders
    • Example: bad toilet training, suffocating mothers

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Explanations of Deviance

Sociology

  • Look for Answers Outside Individuals
  • Social influences may “recruit” some people to break norms
    • Socialization
    • Membership in Subcultures
    • Social Class

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Symbolic Interactionist PerspectiveDifferential Association Theory

  • Those who associate with groups oriented toward deviant activities are more likely to engage in deviant activities
    • Families
    • Friends, Neighbors
    • Subcultures

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Symbolic Interactionist PerspectiveControl Theory

  • Everyone is propelled towards deviance, but a system of controls work against these motivations to deviate
  • Inner Controls- our capacity to withstand temptations toward deviance
    • Examples
      • Morality and Conscience
      • Religious Principles
      • Fear of punishment
      • Desire to be good
  • Strong bonds to society, based on attachments, commitments, involvements, and beliefs, lead to more effective inner controls.

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Symbolic Interactionist PerspectiveControl Theory

  • Outer Controls- involve groups that influence us not to deviate
    • Examples:
      • Family
      • Friends
      • Police

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Symbolic Interactionist PerspectiveLabeling Theory

  • View that the labels people are given affect their own and others’ perceptions of them, thus channeling their behavior either into deviance or into conformity.
  • Focuses on the Significance of Labels
  • Labels Become Part of Self-Concept
  • Propel Towards or Away from Deviance

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Symbolic Interactionist PerspectiveRejecting Labels

  • “Techniques of neutralization” are strategies deviants employ to resist society’s label
  • They are used to help justify the actions.

  • Examples:
    • Denial of Responsibility.. I was forced to do it. Given the choices…
    • Denial of Injury...No one got hurt.
    • Denial of a Victim.. They deserved it. They started it.
    • Condemnation of Condemners.. If you weren’t such a….
    • Appeal to Higher Loyalties.. Plead, cry, beg….

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Symbolic Interactionist PerspectiveLabeling Theory

Most people resist being labeled deviant, but some revel in a deviant identity

    • Embracing Labels
      • Outlaw Bikers, Juggalos

    • The Power of Labels - Saints and Roughnecks

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Functionalist PerspectiveCan Deviance Be Functional?

  • Clarifies Moral Boundaries and Affirms Norms
  • Promotes Social Unity
  • Promotes Social Change

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Functionalist Perspective�Strain Theory

  • What happens when people are socialized to desire cultural goals but denied the institutionalized means to reach them
  • Strain Leads to Anomie
    • strain people experience when they are blocked in their attempts to achieve those goals
    • The most common reaction to cultural goals and institutionalized means is conformity (using lawful means to seek goals society sets).

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Functionalist PerspectiveFour Responses to Anomie

  • Innovation
    • Innovators are people who accept the goals of society.
    • For some reason, like poverty, they cannot achieve society's' goals by legitimate means.
    • They have to use illegitimate means such as stealing.

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Functionalist PerspectiveFour Responses to Anomie

  • Ritualism
    • People who ritualize have similar problems that the innovator experiences, but for ritualists the individual rejects the goals, but accepts the means.
    • Example: choose to work hard knowing that he or she is not going to achieve the goals that society defines as worthy because they do not get paid enough.

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Functionalist PerspectiveFour Responses to Anomie

  • Retreatism- rejecting cultural goals, dropping out
    • People who are retreatists reject both the means and goals of society.
    • Examples: Drug addicts and vagrants are examples of people who retreat.

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Functionalist PerspectiveFour Responses to Anomie

  • Rebellion- seeking to replace society’s goals
    • The individual rejects the culture (values, goals, norms).
    • Pursue alternative cultures.
    • Examples: revolutionaries and some gangs.
  • According to strain theory, deviants are not pathogenic individuals but the products of society.

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Functionalist PerspectiveIllegitimate Opportunity Structures

  • Explain why social classes have distinct styles of crime
  • Unequal Access to Institutional Means to Success
  • Street Crime
    • robbery, burglary, drug dealing, prostitution, pimping, gambling
  • White-Collar Crime
    • crimes that people of respectable and high social status commit in the course of their occupations
    • Very costly
    • Can involve physical harm, sometimes death
    • Example: unsafe working conditions kill about 100,000 Americans each year, or about five times the number of people killed by street crime
  • Gender and Crime
    • Growing number of female offenders

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The Conflict Perspective

  • Means of social control represent interests of the wealthy and powerful
  • Criminal justice system focused on violations of the working class
  • Publicity of white-collar crime provides evidence of fairness
  • Law is an instrument of oppression- a tool designed to maintain the powerful in privileged positions and keep the powerless from rebelling and overthrowing social order

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Reaction to Deviance

  • Degradation ceremony- public trial
  • Imprisonment
    • Popular reaction
    • Does not teach inmates to stay away from crime
    • US has more criminals in prison than every other nation, and a larger percentage of its population in prison
    • African Americans are disproportionately represented in prison

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Reaction to Deviance

  • Recidivism
    • (the proportion of persons rearrested) in the US is high
  • For those sentenced to prison for crimes of violence, within just three years of their release, 62 percent are rearrested, and 52 percent are back in prison.

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Reaction to Deviance

  • The Death Penalty Bias
  • Many argue that there are biases in the use of the death penalty.
  • These reflect regional, gender, social class, as well as racial and ethnic biases.

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Reactions to Deviance

  • The definition of behavior as deviant varies across societies, groups, and time periods.
  • Legal Change in US
    • Hate Crimes

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Reactions to Deviance

  • Crime Statistics
  • Caution is needed in interpreting official crime statistics because the reactions of authorities are influenced by social class of the offender
  • Police discretion—deciding whether to arrest someone or to ignore a situation— is a routine part of police work.
    • Crime statistics reflect this and many other biases.

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Reactions to Deviance

  • Medicalization of Deviance
      • view of deviance as a symptom of some underlying illness that needs to be treated by physicians
  • Thomas Szasz argues that mental illness is simply problem behaviors: some forms of “mental” illnesses have organic causes (e.g., depression caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain); while others are responses to troubles with various coping devices.
  • suggests that social experiences, and not some illness of the mind, underlie bizarre behaviors.
  • Being mentally ill can sometimes lead to other problems like homelessness; but being homeless can lead to unusual and unacceptable ways of thinking that are defined by the wider society as mental illness.

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Reactions to Deviance

  • With deviance inevitable, one measure of society is how it treats its deviants.
  • The larger issues are how to protect people from deviant behaviors that are harmful to their welfare, to tolerate those that are not, and to develop systems of fairer treatment for deviants

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