The word
deviance connotes odd or unacceptable behavior, but in the sociological sense of the word,
deviance is simply any violation of society’s norms. Deviance can range from something minor, such as a traffic violation, to something major, such as murder.
Each society defines what is deviant and what is not, and definitions of deviance differ widely between societies. For example, some societies have much more stringent rules regarding gender roles than we have in the United States, and still other societies’ rules governing gender roles are less stringent than ours.
Relativism and Deviance
Deviance is a relative issue, and standards for deviance change based on a number of factors, including the following:
- Location: A person speaking loudly during a church service would probably be considered deviant, whereas a person speaking loudly at a party would not. Society generally regards taking the life of another person to be a deviant act, but during wartime, killing another person is not considered deviant.
- Age: A five-year-old can cry in a supermarket without being considered deviant, but an older child or an adult cannot.
- Social status: A famous actor can skip to the front of a long line of people waiting to get into a popular club, but a nonfamous person would be considered deviant for trying to do the same.
- Individual societies: In the United States, customers in department stores do not try to negotiate prices or barter for goods. In some other countries, people understand that one should haggle over the price of an item; not to do so is considered deviant.
Deviant Traits
A person does not need to act in a deviant manner in order to be considered deviant. Sometimes people are considered deviant because of a trait or a characteristic they possess. Sociologist
Erving Goffman used the term
stigma to identify deviant characteristics. These include violations of the norms of physical ability or appearance. For example, people who are confined to wheelchairs or who have IQs over 140 are deviant because they do not represent the usual behaviors or characteristics of most people.
Social Control
Punishing people for deviant behavior reminds people what is expected of them and what will happen if they do not conform to society’s norms. Every society has methods of
social control, or means of encouraging conformity to norms (see Chapter 1). These methods of social control include positive sanctions and negative sanctions. A
positive sanction is a socially constructed expression of approval. A
negative sanction is a socially constructed expression of disapproval.
Positive Sanctions
Society uses positive sanctions to reward people for following norms. Positive sanctions can be formal, such as an award or a raise. They can also be informal and include words, gestures, or facial expressions.
Example: The smile that a mother gives her child when he says “thank you” is a positive sanction.
A reaction to an individual’s actions can be a positive sanction, even if it is not intended to be.
Example: If a three-year-old learns a four-letter word at day care and says it to her parents, they might giggle and tell the child not to say it anymore. But the child repeats it because she likes seeing them laugh. Without realizing it, the girl’s parents positively sanction her actions by laughing when she says her new word. Even though what they said was intended to discourage her, their actions conveyed the opposite meaning.
Negative Sanctions
Like positive sanctions, negative sanctions can range from formal to informal.
Example: A speeding ticket or a prison sentence is a formal negative sanction. A raised eyebrow or a stare is an informal negative sanction.
Some subcultures dole out negative sanctions for behaviors generally condoned by the rest of society. In our society, academic achievement is usually held in high esteem. But in some subcultures, succeeding in a way that the dominant society approves of is not considered a good thing. In some gangs, getting good grades is not acceptable, and gang members who do well in school are criticized by their friends for “selling out.” Conformity to traditional figures of authority, such as teachers, is negatively sanctioned.
*****
In the latter part of 2000, Houston-based Enron Corporation claimed that it had lost more than $500 million and filed for bankruptcy. An investigation revealed that Enron’s accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, had reported artificially inflated earning figures and hidden Enron’s debts, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars. Thousands of Enron workers lost their jobs and millions in retirement savings. Overall responsibility for the financial debacle fell on the shoulders of two people: Andrew Fastow (CFO) and Kenneth Lay (Chairman and CEO).
Fastow and Lay, two wealthy white men who did not commit a violent crime, don’t seem to fit the label
deviant. However, Fastow and Lay did violate the norms of society. Sociologists can use these men and their behavior to illustrate how definitions of deviance vary between cultures and between societies—even between communities—and how consequences for deviant behavior can vary depending on many factors.
***
Symbolic Interactionist Perspective
→
What Is Deviance?
Structural Functional Theory
Sociologists use a variety of theoretical perspectives to make sense of the world. These perspectives or theories provide a framework for understanding observations on topics such as deviance. The
symbolic interactionist perspective of sociology views society as a product of everyday social interactions of individuals. Symbolic interactionists also study how people use symbols to create meaning. In studying deviance, these theorists look at how people in everyday situations define deviance, which differs between cultures and settings.
Theory of Differential Association
Sociologist
Edwin Sutherland studied deviance from the symbolic interactionist perspective. The basic tenet of his
theory of differential association is that deviance is a learned behavior—people learn it from the different groups with which they associate. His theory counters arguments that deviant behavior is biological or due to personality. According to Sutherland, people commit deviant acts because they associate with individuals who act in a deviant manner.
He further explained exactly what one learns from people who commit deviance. He said that the future deviant learns values different from those of the dominant culture, as well as techniques for committing deviance.
Example: In a gang environment, current gang members resocialize new members to norms that oppose those of the dominant culture. From the gang, these new members learn that stealing, carrying a gun, and using drugs are acceptable behaviors, whereas they were not before. In the meantime, the norms they learned at home are no longer acceptable within the gang environment, and they must reject those norms and values to accept the new ones. Current gang members also teach new members how to commit specific deviant acts, such as hotwiring a car or breaking into a home.
Part of Sutherland’s theory is that if people learn deviance from others, the people with whom we associate are of utmost importance. The closer the relationship, the more likely someone is to be influenced. Parents who worry that their children are socializing with an undesirable crowd have a justified concern.
Example: If an adolescent changes schools and his new peer group smokes marijuana, the new student is more likely to smoke marijuana. On the other hand, if a student moves to a new school where no one smokes marijuana, he is less likely to take up the habit.
Deviant Subcultures
When individuals share a particular form of deviance, they often form a
deviant subculture, a way of living that differs from the dominant culture and is based on that shared deviance. Within the deviant subculture, individuals adopt new norms and values and sometimes feel alienated from the larger society. They end up relying more on the group to which they feel they most belong. When an individual becomes a member of a deviant subculture, the members of his immediate group often become his primary source of social interaction. The deviant feels comfortable among others who have also been rejected from the dominant society.
Example: People released from prison often find that the dominant society does not welcome them back with open arms, and they often drift toward other ex-convicts to attain a sense of belonging and purpose, thereby forming a subculture. This deviant subculture helps to explain why rates of recidivism, or repeated offenses by convicted criminals, are so high. The ex-convict subculture sanctions and encourages further acts of deviance.
Control Theory
Sociologist
Walter Reckless developed the control theory to explain how some people resist the pressure to become deviants. According to
control theory, people have two control systems that work against their desire to deviate. Each person has a set of inner controls and outer controls.
- Inner controls are internalized thought processes such as a sense of morality, conscience, or religious beliefs. People may also refrain from doing acts of deviance because they fear punishment or couldn’t live with the guilt that would come from acting outside of society’s norms. Inner controls represent a sort of internalized morality.
- Outer controls consist of the people in our lives who encourage us not to stray. They could be family members, police officers, clergy, or teachers. Whoever they are, they influence us to conform to society’s expectations. A person who is tempted to engage in a deviant act can resist the temptation by imagining how others would react to his or her behavior.
Travis Hirschi and Control Theory
Sociologist
Travis Hirschi elaborated on the control theory. He identified four elements that would render an individual more or less likely to commit deviance: attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief.
- Attachment: People who feel a strong attachment to other people, such as family or close friends, are less likely to be deviant. If people have weak relationships, they feel less need to conform to the other person’s or group’s norms. They are more likely to commit a deviant act.
- Commitment: Individuals who have a sincere commitment to legitimate goals are more likely to conform to society’s norms. Those goals could be a legitimate job, higher education, financial stability, or a long-term relationship. When people have little confidence in the future, they are more likely to engage in deviance.
- Involvement: The more involved people are with legitimate activities, the less likely they are to deviate from appropriate behavior. A person with a job, a family, and membership in several clubs or organizations is less likely to commit deviance. Not only does he not have time to waste in potentially harmful activities, but he has a lot to lose if he does.
- Belief: An individual who shares the same values as the dominant society, such as respect for authority, the importance of hard work, or the primacy of the family, is less likely to commit deviance. Individuals whose personal belief systems differ from those of the dominant society are more likely to commit deviance. A person raised to believe that it is acceptable to cheat, lie, and steal will probably not integrate into mainstream society as well as someone whose beliefs conform to the values of the larger society.
Labeling Theory
A key aspect of the symbolic interactionist perspective of deviance is labeling theory. First proposed by sociologist
Howard Becker in the 1960s,
labeling theory posits that deviance is that which is so labeled. No status or behavior is inherently deviant until other people have judged it and labeled it deviant.
Example: Some parents absolutely prohibit physical punishment of children, such as spanking, while other parents regularly use physical punishment to enforce household rules. Are parents who spank their children deviant? The answer depends on what is considered acceptable behavior within that given household, or within the greater society in which the family lives. Though spanking is inherently neither right nor wrong, it is subject to the often harsh judgment of others.
Primary and Secondary Deviance
Sociologist
Edwin Lemert differentiated between primary deviance and secondary deviance. The difference between primary deviance and secondary deviance is in the reactions other people have to the original act of deviance.
Primary deviance is a deviant act that provokes little reaction and has limited effect on a person’s self-esteem. The deviant does not change his or her behavior as a result of this act.
Example: An adolescent who smokes cigarettes with other adolescents is not at risk of being labeled a deviant among her peers, since they all smoke. Even though adolescents who smoke cigarettes are considered deviant by the larger American society, that teenager’s actions go relatively unnoticed, unpunished, and therefore unchanged. The primary deviance is of little consequence.
Secondary deviance includes repeated deviant behavior that is brought on by other people’s negative reactions to the original act of primary deviance.
Example: The same adolescent moves to a new school where his peers never smoke and where smoking is considered a deviant behavior. The students call him names and exclude him from all of their social activities. Because of their reactions to his smoking, he feels like an outcast and begins to smoke more, perhaps engaging in other deviant activities, such as alcohol or drugs.
According to Lemert, the reactions to the adolescent’s primary deviance provoked a form of secondary deviance. Because his alleged friends reacted so negatively to his behavior, he began to engage in more of the deviant behavior. This repeated deviance results in the adolescent having a deviant identity. He now has a “reputation,” and no one looks at him in quite the same way as before.
Chambliss and the Saints and Roughnecks
In the 1970s, sociologist
William Chambliss studied two groups of high school boys to find out how strongly labels affected them. The eight boys in the group Chambliss called the Saints came from middle-class families. Society expected them to do well in life. The six boys in the other group, the Roughnecks, came from lower-class families in poorer neighborhoods. The community generally expected them to fail. Both groups engaged in deviant behavior—skipping school, fighting, and vandalizing property—but suffered different consequences. The teachers, the police, and the community excused the Saints’ behavior because they believed the Saints were good boys overall. The same people saw the Roughnecks as bad and prosecuted them for their behavior more often.
Years later, all but one of the Saints had gone to college and subsequently into professional careers. Two Roughnecks went to college on athletic scholarships, graduated, and became coaches. Two never graduated from high school, and the other two ended up in prison.
Chambliss discovered that the boys’ social class had much to do with the public’s perception of them and the ways the public perceived their acts of deviance. He also hypothesized that a deviant label can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Roughnecks had heard for so long that they were never going to amount to much that they behaved in accordance with the negative expectations others had of them.
****
Structural Functional Theory
→
Symbolic Interactionist Perspective
Conflict Perspective
Another framework sociologists use to understand the world is the
structural functional theory. Its central idea is that society is a complex unit, made up of interrelated parts. Sociologists who apply this theory study social structure and social function. French sociologist
Émile Durkheim based his work on this theory.
Functions of Deviance
Durkheim argued that deviance is a normal and necessary part of any society because it contributes to the social order. He identified four specific functions that deviance fulfills:
- Affirmation of cultural norms and values: Seeing a person punished for a deviant act reinforces what a society sees as acceptable or unacceptable behavior. Sentencing a thief to prison affirms our culturally held value that stealing is wrong. Just as some people believe that the concept of God could not exist without the concept of the devil, deviance helps us affirm and define our own norms.
- Clarification of right and wrong: Responses to deviant behavior help individuals distinguish between right and wrong. When a student cheats on a test and receives a failing grade for the course, the rest of the class learns that cheating is wrong and will not be tolerated.
- Unification of others in society: Responses to deviance can bring people closer together. In the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, people across the United States, and even the world, were united in their shock and grief. There was a surge in patriotic feeling and a sense of social unity among the citizens of the United States.
- Promoting social change: Deviance can also encourage the dominant society to consider alternative norms and values. Rosa Parks’s act of deviance in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s declaration that segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional.
Strain Theory of Deviance
Sometimes people find that when they attempt to attain culturally approved goals, their paths are blocked. Not everyone has access to
institutionalized means, or legitimate ways of achieving success.
Strain theory, developed by sociologist
Robert Merton, posits that when people are prevented from achieving culturally approved goals through institutional means, they experience strain or frustration that can lead to deviance. He said that they also experience
anomie, or feelings of being disconnected from society, which can occur when people do not have access to the institutionalized means to achieve their goals.
Example: In a class of graduating high school seniors, 90 percent of the students have been accepted at various colleges. Five percent do not want to go to college, and the remaining five percent want to go to college but cannot, for any one of a number of reasons. All of the students want to succeed financially, and attending college is generally accepted as the first step toward that goal. The five percent who want to attend college but can’t probably feel frustrated. They had the same goals as everyone else but were blocked from the usual means of achieving them. They may act out in a deviant manner.
Institutionalized Means to Success
In the 1960s, sociologists
Richard Cloward and
Lloyd Ohlin theorized that the most difficult task facing industrialized societies is finding and training people to take over the most intellectually demanding jobs from the previous generation. To progress, society needs a literate, highly trained work force. Society’s job is to motivate its citizens to excel in the workplace, and the best way to do that is to foment discontent with the status quo. Cloward and Ohlin argued that if people were dissatisfied with what they had, what they earned, or where they lived, they would be motivated to work harder to improve their circumstances.
In order to compete in the world marketplace, a society must offer institutionalized means of succeeding. For example, societies that value higher education as a way to advance in the workplace must make educational opportunity available to everyone.
Illegitimate Opportunity Structures
Cloward and Ohlin further elaborated on Merton’s strain theory. Deviant behavior—crime in particular—was not just a response to limited institutionalized means of success. Rather, crime also resulted from increased access to
illegitimate opportunity structures, or various illegal means to achieve success. These structures, such as crime, are often more available to poor people living in urban slums. In the inner city, a poor person can become involved in prostitution, robbery, drug dealing, or loan sharking to make money. While these activities are clearly illegal, they often provide opportunities to make large amounts of money, as well as gain status among one’s peers.
Reactions to Cultural Goals and Institutionalized Means
Merton theorized about how members of a society respond to cultural goals and institutionalized means. He found that people adapt their goals in response to the means that society provides to achieve them. He identified five types of reactions:
- Conformists: Most people are conformists. They accept the goals their society sets for them, as well as the institution-alized means of achieving them. Most people want to achieve that vague status called a “good life” and accept that an education and hard work are the best ways to get there.
- Innovators: These people accept society’s goals but reject the usual ways of achieving them. Members of organized crime, who have money but achieve their wealth via deviant means, could be considered innovators.
- Ritualists: A ritualist rejects cultural goals but still accepts the institutionalized means of achieving them. If a person who has held the same job for years has no desire for more money, responsibility, power, or status, he or she is a ritualist. This person engages in the same rituals every day but has given up hope that the efforts will yield the desired results.
- Retreatists: Retreatists reject cultural goals as well as the institutionalized means of achieving them. They are not interested in making money or advancing in a particular career, and they tend not to care about hard work or about getting an education.
- Rebels: Rebels not only reject culturally approved goals and the means of achieving them, but they replace them with their own goals. Revolutionaries are rebels in that they reject the status quo. If a revolutionary rejects capitalism or democracy, for example, he or she may attempt to replace it with his or her own form of government.
Merton’s Goals and Means
Method of adaptation
Cultural goals
Institutionalized means
Conformists
Accept
Accept
Innovators
Accept
Reject
Ritualists
Reject
Accept
Retreatists
Reject
Reject
Rebels
Reject/Replace
Reject/Replace
******
Conflict Perspective
→
Structural Functional Theory
Crime
A third important sociological framework is the conflict theory. Unlike the structural functional theory, which views society as a peaceful unit,
conflict theory interprets society as a struggle for power between groups engaging in conflict for limited resources.
Karl Marx is the founder of conflict theory. Conflict theorists like Marx posit that there are two general categories of people in industrialized societies: the capitalist class and the working class.
The
capitalist class, or elite, consists of those in positions of wealth and power who own the means of production or control access to the means of production. The
working class consists of relatively powerless individuals who sell their labor to the capitalist class. It is advantageous to the elite to keep the working class in a relatively disadvantaged position so that they can maintain the status quo and their own privileged positions.
Conflict Theory and Crime
Conflict theorists believe that the broad division of people into these two categories is inherently unequal. They cite the criminal justice system to support their claim. The capitalist class passes laws designed to benefit themselves. These same laws are detrimental to the working class. Both groups commit acts of deviance, but the system the capitalists created defines deviance differently for each group. The criminal justice system judges and punishes each group differently.
In addition, the elite can often afford expensive lawyers and are sometimes on a first-name basis with the individuals in charge of making and enforcing laws. Members of the working class generally do not have these advantages.
White-Collar Crimes
Conflict theorists also look at the types of crimes committed by members of the two classes. The working class is more likely to commit so-called street crime, such as robbery, assault, or murder. Members of the elite are less likely to commit acts of violence but more likely to engage in
white-collar crime, or nonviolent crime committed by the capitalist class during the course of their occupations.
Example: White-collar criminal acts include embezzlement, insider stock trading, price fixing, and breaking regulatory laws.
White-collar criminals are difficult to catch and prosecute for two main reasons:
- White-collar crime is difficult to identify. It leaves little physical evidence and no easily identifiable victim. In order to detect white-collar crime, authorities must have knowledge of high finance to discover that embezzlement, for example, has taken place.
- White-collar criminals are sometimes able to use their power and influence to avoid prosecution. Because of their social and economic clout, white-collar criminals rarely face criminal prosecution. When prosecuted, they are much less likely than members of the working class to receive a prison sentence. They are more likely to pay a fine as punishment for their crime.
Deviance and Power
Conflict theorist
Alexander Liazos points out that the people we commonly label as deviant are also relatively powerless. According to Liazos, a homeless person living in the street is more likely to be labeled deviant than an executive who embezzles funds from the company he or she runs.
Because the people in positions of power make the laws of any given society, they create laws to benefit themselves. According to the conflict view of deviance, when rich and powerful people are accused of wrongdoing, they have the means to hire lawyers, accountants, and other people who can help them avoid being labeled as deviant. Lastly, members of a society generally believe that laws are inherently fair, which can draw attention away from the possibility that these laws might be unfairly applied or that a law itself might not be good or just.
***********
Crime
White-collar crime is just one type of crime.
Crime, or the violation of a written law, is a specific kind of deviance. What constitutes a crime varies from society to society.
In our society, sociologists have identified three general categories of crime:
- Crimes against the person: These are crimes in which an act of violence is either threatened or perpetrated against a person. A mugging is an example of a crime against the person.
- Crimes against property: These are crimes that involve the theft of property or certain forms of damage against the property of another. Arson is an example of a property crime.
- Victimless crimes: These are crimes in which laws are violated, but there is no identifiable victim. Prostitution is often classified as a victimless crime.
Profile of a Criminal
Sociologists studying crime and deviance study statistics on who commits crime. Identifying a criminal profile can help sociologists understand the causes of crime and other deviance. Sociologists use the categories of age, gender, social class, and race and ethnicity to create this profile.
Age
Young people, roughly between the mid-teens and early twenties, commit almost 40 percent of all crimes. The likeliness to commit crime, particularly violent crime, decreases as one ages.
Gender
Men are arrested for crimes far more often than women. Men are arrested for approximately 70 percent of all property crimes and 80 percent of all violent crimes. Several theories, including the following, attempt to explain this situation:
- In all known societies, men are allowed more behavioral freedom than women are. More freedom means more opportunity to engage in deviant acts.
- Traditionally, police have been less willing to define a woman as a criminal, and the court system has been less likely to convict a woman and sentence her to jail or prison.
The gap between the number of arrests for men and the number of arrests for women is narrowing, however. This could be due to greater gender equality or, as some believe, to the rising number of women who commit crimes.
Social Class
Street crime, particularly violent crime, is more prevalent in poor, inner-city neighborhoods than in affluent communities. Violent crime in inner-city neighborhoods tends to be committed by the same group of seasoned criminals. Their victims are most often the law-abiding inhabitants of those neighborhoods. White-collar crime tends to occur in more affluent communities.
Race and Ethnicity
African Americans represent approximately 12 percent of the population in the United States and comprise 30 percent of property-crime arrests and 38 percent of violent-crime arrests. White people represent 66 percent of the arrests for property crimes and 60 percent of the arrests for violent crimes.
******
viˈeɪ
