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| The word “deviance” is related
the root for “deviate” which means to wander off track. In sociology,
our concern is just as much with what keeps people on the line as it is
about people getting off it. |
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| A deviation is a violation of a social
norm. The question then is just as much, “Why do we have and observe
social norms?” as “Why do we break them?” |
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| What is the difference between deviance
and crime? Both are violations of social norms. A crime has an added
characteristic in that a law has been passed against it, making it a crime
or criminal offence. Not everything illegal is criminal; a parking
ticket is not a criminal offence; driving while intoxicated is. |
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| Forces
for Keeping Us Inside the Lines: |
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| We start our search by considering
control. Social organisation means that people behave in predictable
patterns, with variety, perhaps, but within some boundaries. So the
sociological question is how are people kept within those boundaries? |
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| When people see individuals behaving
outside the norm, in both senses (mathematical and sociological), they
tend to do things that not only reflect their judgement, but also tend
to be aimed at affecting the individuals engaged in the deviation.
One response is to exclude them from some social interaction.
Punishment. This can amount to bigotry, and can include removing
rights of the individuals. Another response is to engage in behaviour
aimed at bringing the deviant individual in line, to change her or his
behaviour so as to conform to the norms of the community. |
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| The behaviour of other people can
be a set of forces that keep us in line. Their responses to our actions
can be as positive and negative sanctions, rewards and punishments.
Carrot and stick. If we act within their boundaries of expectations
and preferences, we are rewarded, and if we stray we are punished. |
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| Because we are socialised the way
we are, our assumptions about what other people are thinking affects how
we act. Those sanctions, positive and negative, can work on us not
even by how others respond, but because of our assumptions about how others
might respond. |
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| The difference between deviance and
crime is that crime is a social deviance for which a law has been passed
to forbid it, and for the state to punish someone who breaks the taboo.
That difference is basically the difference between gemeinschaft
and
gesellschaft.
Not every law is fair or based upon the will or consensus of the whole
population, and some actions may be technically illegal yet accepted among
the norms of the people. Some laws are not removed long after they
outlast their usefulness. It is still the law in Vancouver that horses
have the right of way over motor vehicles and pedestrians. Punishment
is the common legal response, but punishment is not a way to end crime,
even in the individual being punished. See Criminal
Sentences. |
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| After I first was introduced to sociology,
I took a course in deviance. I thought I might learn what a deviant
is, how s/he got that way, and what society did about it. I was surprised
to discover that it was not so important what a deviant was as who had
the power to label someone as a deviant. |
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| What constitutes a deviant, where
the lines are drawn, differs from culture to culture, therefore from community
to community. The boundary judgements belong to the judgmental dimension,
values. |
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| If everyone in the community has
exactly the same notion of whether a person is a deviant or not, then the
labelling process would be straight forward. No disagreement.
But it is very rare to find even two persons in a community with the same
precise set of values, let alone everybody in the community. |
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| Where there are differing ideas about
where to draw the lines, the community may recognize the authority of one
person or one category of persons, to decide. The person doing the
identification has the power. |
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| One mechanism for identifying and
responding to persons to be labelled as deviates is the medicalization
of deviance. This is a mental manipulation which takes the eccentric
and suggests that the reason for the aberration is rooted in disease, or
at least incomplete health. It puts a biological origin on to the
situation, an all too common approach in this day of biological explanations
for what are social conditions or situations. Medicalization
of deviance often is a mechanism for putting the power of identifying a
deviate onto those trained in medicine, again putting a biological “cause”
onto deviance. |
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| Who has the control
and how is it manifested? Who us a deviate? What is a deviate?
These are key questions here. |
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| One element of differentiating different
kinds and degrees of breaking norms is what is represented by the difference
between harmless eccentricity versus dangerous crimes. The social
response, along a continuum between those extremes, is a continuity or
spectrum also. |
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| Social
Change and Innovation as Deviance: |
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| Another aspect of deviation is its
role in social change. Urbanization itself is social change, and
urban communities tend to change more rapidly than rural ones. However
social change may come about, whoever is first is a deviate − by definition.
Invention, discovery and innovation are all social deviations at first,
until they become the accepted social norms. |
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| The classical example about which
we learn in secondary school is Galileo, when he was declared a heretic
by the Catholic church, for suggesting that the earth is not necessarily
the centre of the universe, because it goes around the sun. |
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| As mentioned in Notes
on Religion, the concept of nothing as a positive entity and goal was
heretical to the church leaders in the Middle Ages. The Arabs brought the
concept of zero along with their numbering system from India. The
first Europeans to use these were seen as deviants, heretics and criminals
in their own communities. |
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| In urban industrial and post industrial
societies, we value social change and new inventions, if they are useful.
We therefore value creativity more than in rural societies. Greater
creativity causes greater deviance, and faster social change. It
produces more variety of values, which in turn allows for increased accusations
of deviance, and greater culture conflict between sub cultures in a community.
For many reasons, cities have more deviants than
villages or rural areas, per population. |
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| Overall, the sociological concern
with deviance is not a question of definitions but one of power. |
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