Chapter 1 Flashcards
Deviance
A person, behaviour, or characteristic that is socially typed as deviant and subjected to measures of social control.
Conformity
A person, behaviour, or characteristic that is considered normal and acceptable; the opposite of deviance.
Does deviance describe someone that one person disapproves of?
No, deviance describes characteristics of a broader society and sociocultural processes.
Deviance Specialists
Scholars who study criminalized or non-criminalized forms of deviance.
Criminologists
Scholars who exclusively study criminalized forms of deviance.
Subjective Views of Deviance
There is no shared, observable characteristic that can clearly tell us who or what is deviant and who or what is normal. Instead, someone must tell us who is deviant.
Subjective Views of Deviance
There is no shared, observable characteristic that can clearly tell us who or what is deviant and who or what is normal. Instead, someone must tell us who is deviant.
What is the shift in recent views of deviance?
Go beyond the notion of dualism or a dichotomy. Moves to a continuum.
What is the shift in recent views of deviance?
Go beyond the notion of dualism or a dichotomy. Moves to a continuum, where aspects of both can be combined.
What are the four most popular characteristics that people can use to identify deviance, according to the objective viewpoint?
Statistical rarity, harm, a negative societal reaction, and normative violation.
Statistical Rarity
An objective definition of defiance that claims a person, behaviour, or characteristic is deviant if it is statistically rare.
Harm
An objective definition of defiance that claims a person, behaviour, or characteristic is deviant if it causes harm.
Societal Reaction
An objective definition of defiance that claims a person, behaviour, or characteristic is deviant if society’s masses react to it negatively.
Normative Violation
An objective definition of defiance that claims a person, behaviour, or characteristic is deviant if it violates society’s norms.
Which method of identifying deviance objectively is used in everyday conversation more than it is used by academics?
Statistical rarity. Also, harm.
What are some examples of behaviours that can be considered deviant under the statistical rarity gauge?
Smokers, people that have gone to prison, people with spiked green hair.
What are the 3 limitations with the statistical rarity gauge of determining deviance?
- What constitutes rare?
- Some behaviour are not rare, but are considered unacceptable.
- There are rare behaviours that are accepted in society.
What are the 4 types of harm that can determine deviance according to the harm gauge?
- Physical.
- Emotional.
- Social.
- Threat to the way we understand the world and our place in it.
Social Harm
Actions that interfere with the smooth running of society as a whole.
Give an example of a threat to the way we understand the world and our place in it.
For example, Joan of Arc stated that she did not need the fathers of the church to talk to God. This was deviant at the time.
What is an action that can cause all four types of harm?
Terrorism.
Give an example of how the physical measure of harm has been faulty in the past.
It was once believed that masturbation made you have hairy palms and break out.
Problem with harm principle in determining deviance:
Some things that are deviant are not harmful. Women fighting for the right to vote.
Give an example of when reactions to harm cause more harm than the initial action itself:
Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport. Racism and eugenics cause more problems than marijuana.
Are societal reactions more or less uniform?
Not necessarily.
Absolutist conception of normative deviance:
A particular behaviour or characteristic was perceived as being inherently and universally deviant.
What led many objectivists to abandon the absolutist view?
The simplicity.
What is the modern conception of normative deviance?
Culturally specific.
Culturally specific conception of normative deviance:
Deviance is based on a given society’s moral code rather than on any type of absolute moral order.
3 levels of norms:
Folkways, mores, laws.
Folkways
Norms that govern informal everyday behaviours.
Mores
Norms that are considered to be the foundation of morality in society.
What is the problem with looking at laws as a source for norms?
Sometimes the law does not reflect what the citizens’ views are. Law is a political activity.
Conflict View
The view that laws are created by the powerful to serve their own interests.
What is the conflict view also known as?
Social power perspective.
Interactionist View
The view of law that suggests that society’s powerful define the law at the behest of interest groups, who appeal to those with power to rectify a perceived social ill.
High-Consensus Deviance
Forms of deviance about which there are high levels of agreement in society.
Low-Consensus Deviance
Forms of deviance about which there are low levels of agreement in society.
What is a critiques of using norms to determine deviance?
Question of the situational applicability of broad social norms. Killing someone is not always necessarily murder.
Dominant Moral Codes
The “lists” of right/wrong, appropriate/inappropriate, moral/immoral that predominate in a particular society at a given time in history and that are enforced in multiple ways.
Social Constructionism
The perspective proposing that social characteristics are creations or artifacts of a particular society at a specific time in history, just as objects are artifacts of that society.