lecture 10 slides Flashcards
what is deviance?
deviance is so subjective (due to social, historical, contextual, cultural relativity)
what is deviant behaviour?
- the violation of norms
- local and or societal (peer groups have specific norms ex. religion, sports)
anomie theory
- merton (functionalist theory)
- we are socialized to strive for that “american dream”
- people are guided by culturally appropriate goals and means (go to school, get an education, get money)
- strain occurs when these goals/means cannot be attained
innovation
- accept the goals, reject the means
- most likely to be associated with crime
- ex. gangster (commit crimes in order to get stuff)
- the innovator is not inherently criminal
- ex. mark zuckerberg (dropped out of school and still became successful)
ritualism
- reject the goals, accept the means
- ritualists are still deviant, but not necessarily criminally
- go to school, get the job, but not have goals
- ex. middle man with desk job and no aspirations
retreatism
- reject the goals, reject the means
- not following culturally prescribed path
- ex. drug addicts, voluntarily homeless
rebellion
- reject goals and means- seeks to replace them with other goals and means
- want to change society
merton’s strain theory of deviance
combining a person’s view of cultural goals and the conventional means to obtain them allowed Robert Merton to identify various types of deviance
control theory
- starts with the assumption that we are inherently evil
- social control keeps us in line
- strength of our social ties
- ex. purge movies
- why don’t we engage in deviant behaviour all of the time?
social bonds theory
- hirschi
- we are prone to selfish, deviant behaviour
- our bonds impact our likelihood to end deviant
- 4 components
- attachment (strong relations to family and school is essential to reducing deviance)
- commitment (focus on valued social relationships, when you know you have something to lose you are less likely to be deviant)
- involvement (if you don’t have anything to do, you will stir up shit )
- belief (how much individual believes in the values/norms of society, more important values are less likely to be violated, ex. monogamous relationships are the base line, pologymy is deviant)
differential association theory
- we leave to be deviant/ criminal
- sutherland
- learning theory
- learn criminal behaviour from our primary groups (groups we are attached to, ex. family, peer groups, can learn to associate positive meaning with deviant behaviours)
- classical conditioning (associations through stimuli and responses, passive actors that receive and respond to stimuli, ex. severe alcoholics are given medication to make them sick every time they drink)
sutherland’s 9 principles
1) criminal behaviour is learned
6) a person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavourable to violation of the law
differential identification theory
-can apply beyond in person and significant attachments
-glaser building off the gaps in sutherland’s work (agrees deviant behaviour is learned)
-we can learn from non significant others
-example of slender man (girls stabbed someone in order to protect family from
slender man)
-ex. learning from media
-regardless of real relation or not, the person must strongly identify with them and behave accordingly
routine activities theory
- felson and cohen
- emphasizes the role of everyday routines in criminal activity
- if opportunity arises, people will take it
- all stars need to align for criminal act to occur
venn diagram
- motivated offender
- suitable target
- absence of guardian
- all 3 of these need to come together for be criminal act to occur
labelling theory
- grounded in symbolic interactionism
- becker
- focus is on reactions to “deviance”
- eye of the beholder
- nothing is inherently deviant, it is the label/society’s reaction that makes it deviant
- in order to be deviant, acts must be viewed in a negative light and categorized as deviant
labelling theory 2
- emphasis on rule breaking, not norm violations
- it’s not about the act, but the reaction
- some types of reactions:
- denial (ignore the rule violation even happened)
- normalization
- excuses (recognition that violation is deviant, but excuses are made)
- balance (recognition that it is deviant but it is de emphasized )
primary deviance
-the initial act (violation of some norm, it is occasional and not reacted to negatively)
secondary deviance
- internalization of deviant identity
- happens often
- reacted to negatively
techniques of neutralization
- denial of responsibility (victim of circumstances)
- denial of injury (“no one got hurt”)
- denial of victim (“they had it coming”)
- condemning the condemners (“yeah i did it but you are just as bad as i am”)
- appeal to a higher loyalty (what was done for the greater good, ex. had to do it to feed the family )
reactions to deviant behaviour
-if you are labelled as deviant, you start to own it
informal labelling
- informal rules broken
- informal social control
- ex. grounded
- norms violated in context of family/peers
- not documented
formal labelling
- label placed by institution, social service
- documented
- formal social control
societal benefits of formal labelling
- point of reference (gives us a model of what not to do)
- scapegoat to release tension (when someone is publically labelled as deviant we can place our anxieties on them)
- sense of community and solidarity (unite against our enemy)
