What is Deviant Behaviour?
- Deviance is any act that violates social norms. Deviance is anything that falls under what is considered normal
What are norms and what is the violation of norms lead to?
- Norms are the set of rules that people are expected to follow in society. They are the dos’ and don’ts of society.
- Violation of norms often leads to social sanctions through social control. These are known as reactions to norm violation.
- Both formal vs informal: (imprisonment vs ostracized)
Name Summer’s Three Types of Norms
Folkways: Folkways are customs, traditions, and etiquette. (Dress codes, eating habits, demeanours)
Mores: More critical values of society. Seen as the fabric to uphold culture. (drug addiction, cheating in marriage, illegitimate childbearing)
Laws: certain norms that are codified by law and social sanctions. (child pornography, treason, rape, assault)
How does society deal with violations of each of these norms?
Folkways: distasteful reactions. Usually viewed as a social prodigy and odd
Mores: the violation of these norms are seen as a threat to social order and the violator is harmful to society.
Law: social sanctions, imprisonment, or even death sometimes
Are Crime and Deviance the Same?
- Crime and deviance overlap with independent dimensions. But they are not subsets of one another
- Lots of crime is not considered deviant (white collar crimes)
- Lots of deviant acts is not criminal (mental illness, physical disability)
ABCS OF DEVIANCE
Attitudes: Choosing an alternative attitude or extreme belief system than what is considered normal. (Cults, religious ideologies, extreme worldviews, mental illness)
Behaviour: Acts that are considered norm-violating. (dress and speech conventions, kinky sexual acts, using drugs, murder)
Conditions (achieved): conditions that are seen as deviant such as personal characteristics and traits. (extreme wealth, self-harming, overweight)
ABCS Ascribed or Achieved
BOTH !
Achieved: political extremism, extreme wealth, kinky sexual behaviour, extreme wealth. Possible to return to normal state
Ascribed: mental illness, lisp, physical disability. Nothing can be done to return to normal state
Three Ss of Deviance
Sin: the religious perspective of deviance. Derives from the violation of religious norms and related to satanic influences.
- to navigate religious exorcism was performed
Sick: Medicalization of deviance in 19th and 20th century. Used to treat drug addiction, mental illness, LGBTQ, etc. (Diasnostical handbook of psychology)
- Conrad and Synder’s deviant behaviour is prospected with medical interest to see if there can be a gain of rewards for that profession
Selected: The movement to resist the medicalization of deviance. Intentionally selected deviant behaviour. E.g., gambling, veganism, self-injury, eating disorder
Smith and Pollack’s distinction of crime and deviance
- deviance should be conceptualized with violations of norms associated with crime, sin and poor taste
