What makes a person deviant

When a person violates a social norm, what happens? A driver caught speeding can receive a speeding ticket. A student who texts in class gets a warning from a professor. An adult belching loudly is avoided. All societies practise social control , the regulation and enforcement of norms. Think of social order as an employee handbook and social control as the incentives and disincentives used to encourage or oblige employees to follow those rules.

When a worker violates a workplace guideline, the manager steps in to enforce the rules. One means of enforcing rules are through sanctions. Sanctions can be positive as well as negative. Positive sanctions are rewards given for conforming to norms. A promotion at work is a positive sanction for working hard. Negative sanctions are punishments for violating norms. Being arrested is a punishment for shoplifting. Both types of sanctions play a role in social control.

Sociologists also classify sanctions as formal or informal. Informal sanctions emerge in face-to-face social interactions. For example, wearing flip-flops to an opera or swearing loudly in church may draw disapproving looks or even verbal reprimands, whereas behaviour that is seen as positive—such as helping an old man carry grocery bags across the street—may receive positive informal reactions, such as a smile or pat on the back. Formal sanctions , on the other hand, are ways to officially recognize and enforce norm violations.

If a student plagiarizes the work of others or cheats on an exam, for example, he or she might be expelled. Someone who speaks inappropriately to the boss could be fired.

Someone who commits a crime may be arrested or imprisoned. On the positive side, a soldier who saves a life may receive an official commendation, or a CEO might receive a bonus for increasing the profits of his or her corporation. Not all forms of social control are adequately understood through the use of sanctions, however. Black identifies four key styles of social control, each of which defines deviance and the appropriate response to it in a different manner.

Penal social control functions by prohibiting certain social behaviours and responding to violations with punishment. Compensatory social control obliges an offender to pay a victim to compensate for a harm committed.

Therapeutic social control involves the use of therapy to return individuals to a normal state. Conciliatory social control aims to reconcile the parties of a dispute and mutually restore harmony to a social relationship that has been damaged. While penal and compensatory social controls emphasize the use of sanctions, therapeutic and conciliatory social controls emphasize processes of restoration and healing.

Michel Foucault notes that from a period of early modernity onward, European society became increasingly concerned with social control as a practice of government Foucault In this sense of the term, government does not simply refer to the activities of the state, but to all the practices by which individuals or organizations seek to govern the behaviour of others or themselves. Government refers to the strategies by which one seeks to direct or guide the conduct of another or others.

These treatises described the burgeoning arts of government, which defined the different ways in which the conduct of individuals or groups might be directed.

The common theme in the various arts of governing proposed in early modernity was the extension of Christian monastic practices involving the detailed and continuous government and salvation of souls. The principles of monastic government were applied to a variety of non-monastic areas. People needed to be governed in all aspects of their lives. It was not, however, until the 19th century and the invention of modern institutions like the prison, the public school, the modern army, the asylum, the hospital, and the factory, that the means for extending government and social control widely through the population were developed.

Foucault describes these modern forms of government as disciplinary social control because they each rely on the detailed continuous training, control, and observation of individuals to improve their capabilities: to transform criminals into law abiding citizens, children into educated and productive adults, recruits into disciplined soldiers, patients into healthy people, etc.

Foucault argues that the ideal of discipline as a means of social control is to render individuals docile. That does not mean that they become passive or sheep-like, but that disciplinary training simultaneously increases their abilities, skills, and usefulness while making them more compliant and manipulable. The chief components of disciplinary social control in modern institutions like the prison and the school are surveillance, normalization, and examination Foucault Surveillance refers to the various means used to make the lives and activities of individuals visible to authorities.

In this way, Bentham proposed, social control could become automatic because prisoners would be induced to monitor their own behaviour. Similarly, in a school classroom, students sit in rows of desks immediately visible to the teacher at the front of the room. In a store, shoppers can be observed through one-way glass or video monitors.

Contemporary surveillance expands the capacity for observation using video or electronic forms of surveillance to render the activities of a population visible. London, England, holds the dubious honour of being the most surveilled city in the world.

The practice of normalization refers to the way in which norms, such as the level of math ability expected from a grade 2 student, are first established and then used to assess, differentiate, and rank individuals according to their abilities an A student, B student, C student, etc. Minor sanctions are used to continuously modify behaviour that does not comply with correct conduct: rewards are applied for good behaviour and penalties for bad. Periodic examinations through the use of tests in schools, medical examinations in hospitals, inspections in prisons, year-end reviews in the workplace, etc.

On the basis of examinations, individuals can be subjected to different disciplinary procedures more suited to them. Gifted children might receive an enriched educational program, whereas poorer students might receive remedial lessons. Foucault describes disciplinary social control as a key mechanism in creating a normalizing society.

The establishment of norms and the development of disciplinary procedures to correct deviance from norms become increasingly central to the organization and operation of institutions from the 19th century onward. Whereas the use of formal laws, courts , and the police come into play only when laws are broken, disciplinary techniques enable the continuous and ongoing social control of an expanding range of activities in our lives through surveillance, normalization, and examination.

While we may never encounter the police for breaking a law, if we work, go to school, or end up in hospital, we are routinely subject to disciplinary control through most of the day. Why does deviance occur? How does it affect a society? Since the early days of sociology, scholars have developed theories attempting to explain what deviance and crime mean to society. These theories can be grouped according to the three major sociological paradigms: functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory.

Sociologists who follow the functionalist approach are concerned with how the different elements of a society contribute to the whole. They view deviance as a key component of a functioning society.

Social disorganization theory, strain theory, and cultural deviance theory represent three functionalist perspectives on deviance in society. Moreover, Durkheim noted, when deviance is punished, it reaffirms currently held social norms, which also contributes to society Developed by researchers at the University of Chicago in the s and s, social disorganization theory asserts that crime is most likely to occur in communities with weak social ties and the absence of social control.

Rather than deviance being a force that reinforces moral and social solidarity, it is the absence of moral and social solidarity that provides the conditions for social deviance to emerge.

Early Chicago School sociologists used an ecological model to map the zones in Chicago where high levels of social problem were concentrated. During this period, Chicago was experiencing a long period of economic growth, urban expansion, and foreign immigration.

They were particularly interested in the zones of transition between established working class neighbourhoods and the manufacturing district. They proposed that these zones were particularly prone to social disorder because the residents had not yet assimilated to the American way of life. When they did assimilate they moved out, making it difficult for a stable social ecology to become established there. Social disorganization theory points to broad social factors as the cause of deviance.

A person is not born a criminal, but becomes one over time, often based on factors in his or her social environment. According to Hirschi, social control is directly affected by the strength of social bonds. Many people would be willing to break laws or act in deviant ways to reap the rewards of pleasure, excitement, and profit, etc. Those who do have the opportunity are those who are only weakly controlled by social restrictions.

Individuals who believe they are a part of society are less likely to commit crimes against it. Hirschi identified four types of social bonds that connect people to society:. An individual who grows up in a poor neighbourhood with high rates of drug use, violence, teenage delinquency, and deprived parenting is more likely to become a criminal than an individual from a wealthy neighbourhood with a good school system and families who are involved positively in the community.

Research into social disorganization theory can greatly influence public policy. For instance, studies have found that children from disadvantaged communities who attend preschool programs that teach basic social skills are significantly less likely to engage in criminal activity.

In the same way, the Chicago School sociologists focused their efforts on community programs designed to help assimilate new immigrants into North American culture. However, in proposing that social disorganization is essentially a moral problem—that it is shared moral values that hold communities together and prevent crime and social disorder—questions about economic inequality, racism, and power dynamics do not get asked.

From birth, we are encouraged to achieve the goal of financial success. A woman who attends business school, receives her MBA, and goes on to make a million-dollar income as CEO of a company is said to be a success. However, not everyone in our society stands on equal footing. A person may have the socially acceptable goal of financial success but lack a socially acceptable way to reach that goal. The discrepancy between the reality of structural inequality and the high cultural value of economic success creates a strain that has to be resolved by some means.

Merton defined five ways that people adapt to this gap between having a socially accepted goal but no socially accepted way to pursue it. As many youth from poor backgrounds are exposed to the high value placed on material success in capitalist society but face insurmountable odds to achieving it, turning to illegal means to achieve success is a rational, if deviant, solution.

Critical sociology looks to social and economic factors as the causes of crime and deviance. As a result of inequality, many crimes can be understood as crimes of accommodation , or ways in which individuals cope with conditions of oppression Quinney Predatory crimes like break and enters, robbery, and drug dealing are often simply economic survival strategies.

Personal crimes like murder, assault, and sexual assault are products of the stresses and strains of living under stressful conditions of scarcity and deprivation. Defensive crimes like economic sabotage, illegal strikes, civil disobedience, and eco-terrorism are direct challenges to social injustice. The analysis of critical sociologists is not meant to excuse or rationalize crime, but to locate its underlying sources at the appropriate level so that they can be addressed effectively.

Institutions of normalization and the criminal justice system have to be seen in context as mechanisms that actively maintain the power structure of the political-economic order. The rich, the powerful, and the privileged have unequal influence on who and what gets labelled deviant or criminal, particularly in instances when their privilege is being challenged.

As capitalist society is based on the institution of private property, for example, it is not surprising that theft is a major category of crime. By the same token, when street people, addicts, or hippies drop out of society, they are labelled deviant and are subject to police harassment because they have refused to participate in productive labour.

On the other hand, the ruthless and sometimes sociopathic behaviour of many business people and politicians, otherwise regarded as deviant according to the normative codes of society, is often rewarded or regarded with respect. In his book The Power Elite , sociologist C. Wright Mills described the existence of what he dubbed the power elite , a small group of wealthy and influential people at the top of society who hold the power and resources.

Wealthy executives, politicians, celebrities, and military leaders often have access to national and international power, and in some cases, their decisions affect everyone in society. Because of this, the rules of society are stacked in favour of a privileged few who manipulate them to stay on top. It is these people who decide what is criminal and what is not, and the effects are often felt most by those who have little power. While functionalist theories often emphasize crime and deviance associated with the underprivileged, there is in fact no clear evidence that crimes are committed disproportionately by the poor or lower classes.

There is an established association between the underprivileged and serious street crimes like armed robbery and assault, but these do not constitute the majority of crimes in society, nor the most serious crimes in terms of their overall social, personal, and environmental effects. On the other hand, crimes committed by the wealthy and powerful remain an underpunished and costly problem within society. White-collar or corporate crime refers to crimes committed by corporate employees or owners in the pursuit of profit or other organization goals.

They are more difficult to detect because the transactions take place in private and are more difficult to prosecute because the criminals can secure expert legal advice on how to bend the rules. PricewaterhouseCoopers reports that 36 percent of Canadian companies were subject to white-collar crime in theft, fraud, embezzlement, cybercrime.

Recent high-profile Ponzi scheme and investment frauds run into tens of millions of dollars each, destroying investors retirement savings. These were highly publicized cases in which jail time was demanded by the public although as nonviolent offenders the perpetrators are eligible for parole after serving one-sixth of their sentence. However, in — prison sentences were nearly twice as likely for the typically lower-class perpetrators of break and enters 59 percent as they were for typically middle- and upper-class perpetrators of fraud 35 percent Boyce This imbalance based on class power can also be put into perspective with respect to homicide rates Samuelson In , there were homicides in Canada recorded by police, an average of 1.

This is an extremely serious crime, which merits the attention given to it by the criminal justice system. However, in there were also 1, workplace deaths that were, in principle, preventable. Canadians work on average days a year, meaning that there were on average five workplace deaths a day for every working day in Sharpe and Hardt Estimates from the United States suggest that only one-third of on-the-job deaths and injuries can be attributed to worker carelessness Samuelson In , 51 percent of the workplace deaths in Canada were due to occupational diseases like cancers from exposure to asbestos Sharpe and Hardt The Ocean Ranger oil-rig collapse that killed 84 workers off Newfoundland in and the Westray mine explosion that killed 26 workers in Nova Scotia in were due to design flaws and unsafe working conditions that were known to the owners.

However, whereas corporations are prosecuted for regulatory violations governing health and safety, it is rare for corporations or corporate officials to be prosecuted for the consequences of those violations. Corporate crime is arguably a more serious type of crime than street crime, and yet white-collar criminals are treated relatively leniently. Fines, when they are imposed, are typically absorbed as a cost of doing business and passed on to consumers, and many crimes, from investment fraud to insider trading and price fixing, are simply not prosecuted.

From a critical sociology point of view, this is because white-collar crime is committed by elites who are able to use their power and financial resources to evade punishment. Here are some examples:. Women who are regarded as criminally deviant are often seen as being doubly deviant. For example, in the late 19th century, kleptomania was a diagnosis used in legal defences that linked an extreme desire for department store commodities with various forms of female physiological or psychiatric illness.

Feminist analysis focuses on the way gender inequality influences the opportunities to commit crime and the definition, detection, and prosecution of crime.

In part the gender difference revolves around patriarchal attitudes toward women and the disregard for matters considered to be of a private or domestic nature. For example, until , abortion was illegal in Canada, meaning that hundreds of women died or were injured each year when they received illegal abortions McLaren and McLaren It was not until the Supreme Court ruling in that struck down the law that it was acknowledged that women are capable of making their own choice, in consultation with a doctor, about the procedure.

Similarly, until the s, two major types of criminal deviance were largely ignored or were difficult to prosecute as crimes: sexual assault and spousal assault.

In the Criminal Code was amended to replace the crimes of rape and indecent assault with a three-tier structure of sexual assault ranging from unwanted sexual touching that violates the integrity of the victim to sexual assault with a weapon or threats or causing bodily harm to aggravated sexual assault that results in wounding, maiming, disfiguring, or endangering the life of the victim Kong et al. Johnson reported that in the mids, when violence against women began to be surveyed systematically in Canada, 51 percent of Canadian women had been the subject to at least one sexual or physical assault since the age of The goal of the amendments was to emphasize that sexual assault is an act of violence, not a sexual act.

Previously, rape had been defined as an act that involved penetration and was perpetrated against a woman who was not the wife of the accused.

This had excluded spousal sexual assault as a crime and had also exposed women to secondary victimization by the criminal justice system when they tried to bring charges. In particular feminists challenged the twin myths of rape that were often the subtext of criminal justice proceedings presided over largely by men Kramar The first myth is that women are untrustworthy and tend to lie about assault out of malice toward men, as a way of getting back at them for personal grievances.

The girl, of course, could not consent in the legal sense, but nonetheless was a willing participant. The accused and his wife were somewhat estranged cited in Kramar Consent to sexual discourse was redefined as what a woman actually says or does, not what the man believes to be consent.

Feminists also argued that spousal assault was a key component of patriarchal power. Typically it was hidden in the household and largely regarded as a private, domestic matter in which police were reluctant to get involved.

Interestingly women and men report similar rates of spousal violence—in , 6 percent had experienced spousal violence in the previous five years—but women are more likely to experience more severe forms of violence including multiple victimizations and violence leading to physical injury Sinha In order to empower women, feminists pressed lawmakers to develop zero-tolerance policies that would support aggressive policing and prosecution of offenders.

These policies oblige police to lay charges in cases of domestic violence when a complaint is made, whether or not the victim wished to proceed with charges Kramar In , 84 percent of violent spousal incidents reported by women to police resulted in charges being laid.

However, according to victimization surveys only 30 percent of actual incidents were reported to police. The majority of women who did not report incidents to the police stated that they dealt with them in another way, felt they were a private matter, or did not think the incidents were important enough to report.

List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. By Ashley Crossman. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Crossman, Ashley. Sociological Explanations of Deviant Behavior. Sutherland's Differential Association Theory Explained.

Deviance and Strain Theory in Sociology. Psychodynamic Theory: Approaches and Proponents. Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development. What Is Operant Conditioning? Definition and Examples. Information Processing Theory: Definition and Examples. Different degrees of violation result in different degrees of sanction.

There are three main forms of social sanction for deviance: 1 legal sanction, 2 stigmatization, and 3 preference for one behavior over another. Formal deviance, or the violation of legal codes, results in criminal action initiated by the state. Informal deviance, or violation of unwritten, social rules of behavior, results in social sanction, or stigma. Lesser degrees of social violation result in preference rather than stigmatization.

While society might deem it preferable to show up to most job interviews wearing a suit rather than casual attire, you will likely not be out of the running for the job if you are wearing khakis rather than a suit. However, should you show up nude to most interviews, you would likely be stigmatized for your behavior, since it would be such a drastic departure from the norm.

We say that the norm that governs wearing professional rather than casual attire to a job interview is a folkway because its violation results in lesser degree of social sanction—the development of a preference rather than stigmatization.

The norm that governs wearing clothing to most job interviews, rather than showing up nude, is a more because its violation results in a more serious degree of social sanction.

Social stigma in deviance is the disapproval of a person because they do not fit the require social norms that are given in society. Social stigma is the extreme disapproval of an individual based on social characteristics that are perceived to distinguish them from other members of a society. Social stigma is so profound that it overpowers positive social feedback regarding the way in which the same individual adheres to other social norms. For example, Terry might be stigmatized because she has a limp.

Stigma attaches to Terry because of her limp, overpowering the ways in which Terry might be social normative—perhaps she is a white, Protestant, or a heterosexual female with a limp. The limp marks Terry, despite her other traits. Stigma plays a primary role in sociological theory. Erving Goffman, an American sociologist, is responsible for bringing the term and theory of stigma into the main social theoretical fold.

Goffman identified three main types of stigma: 1 stigma associated with mental illness; 2 stigma associated with physical deformation; and 3 stigma attached to identification with a particular race, ethnicity, religion, ideology, etc. While Goffman is responsible for the seminal texts in stigma theory, stigmatization is still a popular theme in contemporary sociological research. Ultimately, stigma is about social control. A corollary to this is that stigma is necessarily a social phenomenon.

Without a society, one cannot have stigma. To have stigma, one must have a stigmatizer and someone who is stigmatized. As such, this is a dynamic and social relationship. Given that stigmas arise from social relationships, the theory places emphasis, not on the existence of deviant traits, but on the perception and marking of certain traits as deviant by a second party.

Stigma depends on a another individual perceiving and knowing about the stigmatized trait. As stigma is necessarily a social relation, it is necessarily imbued with relations of power. Stigma works to control deviant members of the population and encourage conformity. The Stigmatization of Homeless People : Homeless people are regularly stigmatized by society for being unemployed while living in the streets.

As technology has opened up a new space for cyberculture, new forms of deviance and social control have appeared. Some individuals use technology as a means of deviating from more traditional cultural norms. For example, in the United States, employees in offices are encouraged to remain productive and efficient, letting their minds wander off-task as little as possible.

In the past decade, most companies have installed high-speed internet access as a means of improving efficiency. However, employees often reappropriate the internet access to avoid work by using social networking sites. In addition to new forms of deviance in traditional cultural mores, new forms of deviance have arisen within cyberculture. New technologies result in new standards of how to engage with them. Deviance is a relative issue, and standards for deviance change based on a number of factors, including the following:.

In Japan, there are strict norms involving the exchange of business cards. One person presents his or her business card with the writing facing the recipient, who looks at it for a moment and asks a question about some of the information on the card.

The question may be irrelevant, but it tells the giver that the recipient has read the card and acknowledges the person and his or her company.

A Japanese executive who receives a business card and does not take the time to look at it and ask a question would be considered deviant.