Defining Deviance: Norms, Folkways, Mores, and Laws

Defining Deviance

• Deviance is any violation of societal norms or anything falling outside what is considered normal.
• Norms are the principles or rules people are expected to follow; violations lead to sanctions.
• Sanctions can be formal, such as imprisonment, or informal, like social ostracization.

Sumner's Three Types of Norms

• Folkways are simple, everyday norms based on customs, traditions, and etiquette, with violations not seen as serious but may change perception.
• Mores are norms based on moral values; violating them can be seen as a threat to social order and harmful to society, for example drug addiction.
• Laws are norms upheld by codified social sanctions, with violations considered a major threat to society and sanctions including imprisonment or death, for example murder.

Crime and Deviance

• Crime and deviance can overlap, such as in crimes of violence; however, much deviance isn't criminal, like physical disability.
• Some crimes aren't seen as deviant, such as white-collar crime.

ABC's of Deviance

• The ABC's of deviance include attitudes, behaviours, and conditions.

Deviant Attitudes

• Being labeled deviant for holding alternative attitudes or extreme beliefs, such as cult members. Mental illness also falls into this category.

Deviant Behaviours

• Overt acts are regarded as deviant, such as using drugs.

Conditions of Deviance

• Conditions are seen as deviant due to personal characteristics or traits, for example, extreme wealth.

Types of Deviance (Attitudes, Behaviours, Conditions)

• Achieved deviance can arise through political extremism.
• Ascribed deviance is inborn, such as mental illness.

The 3 S's of Deviance

• Sin, sick, selected, happens over time.

Sin of Deviance

• In the Middle Ages, deviance was seen as a satanic influence, with religious paradigms prevailing and exorcisms performed.

Sick of Deviance

• Medicalization of deviance occurred from the 19th to 20th century, used to explain drug addiction and sexual deviance, potentially motivated by money or prestige rather than medical concerns.

Selected of Deviance

• It is a movement resisting medicalized deviance, where behaviours/conditions are viewed as intentionally selected or voluntary lifestyle choices, exemplified by gambling

Kai Erikson on Deviance

• It is not necessarily bad, and can be beneficial for society.
• Social control agencies contribute to and may generate deviant behavior.

Boundary Maintaining

• Communities occupy a specific geographic and cultural space that serves as a reference point.
• Members limit their conduct and behavior.

Boundaries

• Human communities maintain boundaries to retain or promote solidarity, stability, and cultural integrity.
• Boundaries are learned through member behavior, social interactions, and rituals, such as war, ceremonies, religion and public events.
• Boundaries are publicized through interactions between deviant persons and official agents, particularly during official ceremonies.
• Official ceremonies include criminal trials, courts-martial, and psychiatric determinations, often involving public executions, media, and disappearances to facilities
• Public ceremonies, such as Veteran's Day parades, influence norm development; such as Anzac Day in New Zealand and Australia.

Valerie Morse

• A New Zealand activist known for her work in addressing social justice, environmentalism, and anti-colonialism.
• She gained national attention for burning a New Zealand flag on Anzac Day and involvement in the 2007 Urewera Raids, though terrorism charges were dropped.

Kai Erikson's 2nd Claim

• Public censure of deviance provides an opportunity to restate boundaries. Institutions designed to discourage deviance may perpetuate it.

Kai Erikson's Argument

• Society needs deviance and contributes to its generation.
• Commitment ceremonies are rites of passage that make it difficult for offenders to rehabilitate.

Difficulty Classifying Deviance

• Deviance varies across time, place, status, and group.
• It is culturally, socioeconomically, geographically, and temporally relative.

Tittle and Paternoster

• Used typology of deviance looked at norms of one group at one time; there will be a norm, violation, and example.

Two General Perspectives on Deviance

• The normative perspective by Merton.
• The reactivist (relativist) perspective by Becker.

Normative Perspective (Merton)

• Deviance is an objective study of people's violation of social norms, based on expectations of conformity.

Reactivist/Relativist Perspective (Becker)

• Deviance is a subjective reaction of a social audience.

Positive Deviance

• It traditionally had a negative connotation; however, if deviance relates to norms, then the opposite of normal distribution is over conformity.

Heckert & Heckert on Deviance

• Suggest a four-hold table relating under/over conformity, with positive/negaative evaluations

Four Types of Deviance

• Negative deviance: Under conformity/nonconformity and negative evaluations; for example, treason and theft.
• Rate busting: Over conformity and negative evaluations; for example, religious cults.
• Deviance admiration: Under conformity/nonconformity and positive evaluation; for example, extreme sports.
• Positive deviance: Over conformity and positive evaluations; for example, kamikaze pilots.

Heckert and Heckert

• Provides a dialectical solution to normative vs. reactivist perspectives.
• Directly takes power into account.
• Groups with the most power in one place decide normal/deviant behavior.

Norbert Elias

• Harvard professor Steven Pinker argued that Elias is an important thinker who's work was theoretically adventurous and appeared as a closeted Freudian.
• The title of Elias' work was offensive and sounded Eurocentric
• Civilizing process: is not necessarily good and it has it's dark side such as racism and colonialism

The Civilizing Process

• L. P. Hartley: said that the past is a foreign country and they do things differently there.
• Elias said that there were four enablers State formation, manners, money, division of labour and western civilized men did not always behave they way we do now

Samuel Pepy

• Samuel went to charing cross to see a major general hung.
• The major general was looking cheerful as can be in that state

King Charles and Dracula

• King Charles is believed to Vlad the Impalers Great Grandson, and this is through King George V's consort Queen Mary.

History of the Civilizing Process

• The history showed that More resources/land meant more wealth, and Frequent battles saw attrition of Territorial Lords.
• The lords lost more power to the monarchy becoming states as this emerged Kings faced a control problem.
• It stated that court societies were more common and that they understood two brains were better than one for expansion.
• They Kings then made a change into courtly manners a courtesy, leading to less violence.
• This contributed to the powerful warrior pacification.

State Formation Promoting Pacification

• The document showed that the there were monarchs and that they had threats
• The nations had the power and that it was controlled by its King

Other topics

• Showed violence was outlawed leading to division between homicides that were legal and illegal.
• It also discussed that Pinker social elites had a brutal peace underlings that lead to more power the higher up the person was.

Secord Enabler - Manners

• It talked about rudimentary manners, rudeness and expression to superiors.

Third Enabler

• Discussed that the economy ran on money.
• The fourth was that they had limited knoghts.
• They had increased the population and coin better specialists and the production was called the division of labor

Types Manners

• It showed that the more the business the smaller the class
• That these classes changed the principle of behaviours between animilistic and elites that had thoughts.

Latest Ruler On Manners

• Showed that the example German Court always followed the French ways.

Imitators

• It showed behaviours on the daily with children and how those behaviours would affect them.

Class Gain

• Discussed how the gain happened and how autocratics toned down.
• Discussed western societies being safest and calmer and uneventful.

Civilizing Process and Animalistic Act of Violence

• Described in certain centuries how crime was prosecuted.
• It also gave insight on executioners and the way they would do things at the time.

Elias's Civilizing Process – A Summary

• Elias argues that a number of enablers led to the pacification and division of violence and labour
• Violence was hidden from sight with the sensitivity it.

Perspectives On Deviance

• Four main perspectives on deviance:
• Normative perspective (Merton): Focuses on both the deviant act and the actor.
• Absolutist perspective: Also emphasizes the deviant act and the actor.
• Relativist/Reactionist perspective: This is a Social Constructionist Approach, focusing on how norms are created, the conditions, and who applies the norms.
• Social Power Perspective's approach shows how who and what applies norms

Absolutist Perspective

• Asserts social stability with a moral order and common worldview of with rapid changing society's that include industrialization
• Anomie Normlessness and deviance is caused, needing strong boundaries.
• With a willingness to share a concept of deviance and identify boundaries that promote stability with policymaker.

Relativist/Reactionist Perspective

• With advanced labeling to be Deviance is defined by audiences and there responses, not by the act itself.
• Constructed by diverse groups resulting in acts being deemed normal during one time period but deviant in another.

Quinney and Social Construction of Crime

• He argued that the most harmful crimes were not addressed.
• Used three perspectives to look at the crime and what the theory held.

Construction of Crime

• The construction of crime said that victims and governments are the problem.
• Powerful don't see illegal actions as crimes.

Vandalism Graffiti

• Talked that if it was on a school a child wouldn't do it again.

Creation Of Crime

• The document goes into the defaming that the law is a creation and that a crime can be legal depending on the people who are around to be charged from breaking what ever law is set.

What is Crime?

• It mentions legal and social behaviours and criminal codes that are in place to defend against laws for people to be have in a particular state.

Biological Theories of crime

• Attributes crime to abnormalities like the criminals being primitive beings.
• The Y chromosomes are a predisposition for crime being genetic with acts that Freud has had a criminal record.
• It says that the social norms and not the individuals are to blame for the crimes and for the use that some may need to have and seek the help.

Theory of Crime and Deviance

• shifted social standing to and from social classes
• advanced society being a moral norm, and a phenomena were people grew up and what their ideas lead them to.
• It describes what people could and couldn't due regarding actions that were set in place.

Strain Theory (Robert Merton)

• Focused: on the structural elements in regards to having a set social standing being more helpful as well as the economic conditions

Other Theories

• There was theories of race and opportunity that included that some would just have access to others and the ones in the top would make it hard for any to pass because they didn't have the means of the people at the top.
• Some would act as a social power against crime, society and interests.

Feminist

• Talked about females and the role that they plays,
• How there were some things and actions that only females could experience and how those things were over shadowed.
• The 1st - 2nd subculutarl thereoy's where about the social classes and the effects of the levels and standing that these people were living in what they caused.
• Intractinost theory would talk about how they would try and work and tease information for all the reasons and thing going on.
• Bonding in theory will talk about those who work and their achievements and those who have not yet achieved those things.
• How some have to risk everything to still find something to build off of for growth.
• Labelling theories include that if people label you then that means you've shamed them, had that act come to life that was bad.
• Some times once the arrest has been made the individual now has been changed into a different person by the public eye creating a new social standing.

Constructionist

• This social contructionist said that they could show you life based on the knowledge that they have and how some can be very particular to their actions.
• It was said, that the theorists pointed at what's elite and why the definitions of deviance are.
• That's why some get feminists charged and what the theorist will use to see who shaped life in the way that it is.
• The construct'ions domain is the way that the influencer will study, learn, evaluate, and express different things in different ways to get to people.