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Last revised - February 15, 1998
CHAPTER 5
I. WHAT IS DEVIANT BEHAVIOR?
A. Deviant behavior is behavior that violates social norms and
values shared by people in a particular culture.
1. Sociologists do not use the term 'deviant' to make
a moral judgment, but to refer to behavior that differs
from particular cultural norms and values.
2. Crime is a form of deviance consisting of acts that
violate norms which have been enacted into criminal law.
3. There are important pressures for conformity; yet deviance
also flourishes in all societies. One reason is that
contemporary cultures also encourage its members to
express their individuality.
B. Modern societies are pluralist; they comprise groups with diverse
and often conflicting norms and values.
1. Different groups have different definitions of deviance.
2. Also, some concepts of deviance are contested; for
example the murder or killing is considered deviant; this
co-exists with capital punishment. Yet even those states
that allow capital punishment rarely practice it.
3. Consensus is rare; what is deviance depends ultimately
on who has the power to make the label stick.
C. under certain circumstances, what appears to be deviant in most
situations can become normal; this is true even of such horrific
acts such as genocide, the institutionalized practice of systematically
killing the members of a particular racial, religious, or ethnic group.
1. According to Hannah Arendt, Adolph Eichmann, the German
overseer of the Nazi plan to exterminate Jews, gypsies and
homosexuals, was not a unique monster but rather an average
bureaucrat. She called this revelation -- that acts of terror
are not extraordinary but relatively easily undertaken under
the property of circumstances -- the 'banality of evil.'
2. Arendt's insight is corroborated by Christopher Browning's
account of the 'ordinary' lower-middle and working-class men
who comprised on e of the German police units responsible for
executing Jews in Poland.
II. BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF DEVIANCE
A. Early studies of deviance favored biological analyses, arguing that
body type, genes, or mental capacity could be correlated with deviant
behavior.
B. Sociobiologists, who attempt to find the genetic origins of behavior,
conducted studies of twins to determine rates of deviance among those
with similar and identical genes.
1. Some similarities have been found by analyzing the criminal
history of twins, although sociologists have criticized such
studies for failing to account for the large majority of cases
where one twin had a criminal record and the other did not.
2. Secondly, correlation's with biological factors tend to be low
and these studies ignore types f deviance that do not fit the
theory (such as white-collar crime)
3. Finally, most studies examine those who are already incarcerated,
thus disregarding the sociological process of law enforcement.
III. FUNCTIONALIST EXPLANATIONS OF DEVIANCE
A. Functionalist theory attempts to explain the presence of deviance in
society in terms of the function it serves for society as a whole.
B. Emile Durkheim, the founder of functionalism, argued that deviance serves
the function of defining the moral boundaries of society.
1. According to Durkheim, societies share a consensus on normalcy and
deviance. When the consensus breaks down, anomie (the absence of
clear-cut norms, or normlessness) is the result.
2. Society provides a sense of what is normal and acceptable behavior
through, in part, identifying and punishing what is not normal.
C. Robert K. Merton adapted Durkeim's notion of anomie to provide a functionalist
explanation of deviance.
1. According to Merton, structural strain creates a form of anomie that
occurs when a gap exists between the goals society sets for people to
achieve and the means society provides for people to achieve those
goals.
2. Those without the means to achieve society's goals may resort to one
of four types of deviant behavior: innovation, ritualism, retreatism,
or rebellion.
3. Merton's strain theory is undermined by the fact that groups with
access to the social means to achieve their goals still commit many
deviant acts.
D. Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin argue that the existence of a
particular opportunity structure will help to shape the type of
deviance that occurs.
1. Not everyone has equal access to deviant options; people
who are acquainted with bank robbers are more likely to
see bank robbing as a solution than those who have never
met a bank robber.
E. Control theories of deviance argue that the cause of deviance is
to be found in interpersonal attachments.
1. Gottfriedson and Hirschi theorized that forming strong
social bonds with others who disapprove of deviance will
keep a person's desire to engage in deviant acts under control.
2. Control theorist point out that most deviant acts are
spontaneous acts.
IV. CONFLICT EXPLANATIONS OF DEVIANCE.
A. Conflict theorists reject the notion that society is a unitary
organism based on a consensus, arguing instead that it is characterized
by conflictive differences, including different conceptions of deviance.
1. Certain acts come to be defined as deviant for the society as a
whole because those with power have the ability to make and
enforce their own notions of deviance.
2. Nevertheless, ruling definitions of deviance can be challenged
by those who have less power, as occurred during the civil rights
movement of the 1950's and 1960's.
3. Also, while there may be many instances of deviance defined in
ways that serve the interests of ruling groups, there are
instances where wealthy and powerful people -- including a U.S.
President -- have been held accountable for their deviant acts.
B. Structural contradiction theory argues that conflicts generated by
fundamental contradictions in the structure of society are an important
source of deviant behavior.
1. For example, for a capitalistic society to thrive, firms
must simultaneously promote the notion that people must engage
in virtually unlimited consumption to be happy, while keeping
wages and salaries down lest rising labor costs undermine
profitability.
2. The structural contradictions of capitalism then can lead
to declining incomes, job loss, and inequality making it
difficult for people to consume all they've been socialized
into believing is necessary. This, in turn, leads to a wide
variety of deviant behavior, from defaulting on one's bills
to cheating on taxes to outright theft.
V. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST EXPLANATIONS OF DEVIANCE
A. Labeling theory holds that deviance is the result of the labels
attached to us by others.
1. Primary deviance occurs when an activity is labeled
as deviant by others
2. Secondary deviance occurs when a person labeled as
deviant accepts the label as part of his or her
identity, and begins to conform to it.
3. William Chambliss' study of two teenage gangs illustrates
selective labeling according to social class. Although
both gangs were equally involved in deviant behavior,
only the lower-class gang members were labeled as deviant.
B. Cultural transmission theory suggests that deviant behavior is
learned through interaction with others, such that subcultural
behaviors can be normative for certain groups and deviant according
to others.
1. Differential association holds that deviant behavior
is largely the result of associating with other persons
whose behavior is deviant.
C. Symbolic interactionism accounts for all forms of behavior,
explaining how all norms and values are learned, deviant and
non-deviant.
1. It there fore cannot explain why deviance is more prevalent
in some groups than others, why some deviant behavior tends
to diminish with age, or why it is that some groups have more
power to label than others.
VI. FEMINIST THEORIES OF DEVIANCE
A. Feminist criminologists point out that studies of deviance are
biased because almost all of the research is on males.
1. By ignoring the female population, variation in rates
of deviance by gender are not explained.
B. Feminist theory incorporates gender-specific socialization, labeling, and victimization into theories of deviance.
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