Week 5: Deviance

Question 1

Deviance

Answer 1

behaviours that violate social norms or common expectations for behaviour

Question 2

Norms

Answer 2

rules and expectations that guide behaviour

Question 3

Folkways

Answer 3

informal, less serious norms (eg smoking outside; customs, etiquette

Question 4

Mores

Answer 4

very important norms; strongly tied to values (eg drinking and driving)

Question 5

Laws

Answer 5

codified norms (mostly mores)

Question 6

Taboos

Answer 6

extremely important mores, never acceptable to break

Question 7

Stigma

Answer 7

when a characteristic of an indv. or group is deemed as undesirable & they face negative sanctions for it

Question 8

Social Control

Answer 8

when the society is in control of social behaviour

Question 9

Labelling Theory

Answer 9

Becker’s theory that people who are labelled as deviant will become that (self-fulfilling prophecy)

Question 10

Necessary Conditions for Deviance:

Answer 10

1. A norm or rule exists
2. Someone violates it (or is thought to)
3. People collectively judge the norm violation to be wrong

Question 11

Moral Panics

Answer 11

short-lived, intense periods of concern about a moral social issue that is perceived as a major problem, combined with hostility at those suspected to be the cause

• fear is out of proportion to the threat
• eg tide pod challenge, anti-Asian hate crime during Covid, satanic panic 1980s

Question 12

Moral entrepreneuers

Answer 12

indv or groups who raise concerns & help to create a moral panic

Question 13

Functionalist theories of deviance

Answer 13

Durkheim: deviance is a social fact & stabilizing element of social life, serves a purpose in society. -affirming society’s ideas of right & wrong

Question 14

Anomie

Answer 14

a situation where we don’t have morals/social expectations to guide our behaviour

Question 15

Merton: Strain Theory

Answer 15

not having access to the means necessary to achieving goals can cause someone to resort to deviance
-call it strain

Question 16

Opportunity Theory

Answer 16

-we don’t all have the same opportunity to act in deviant ways–some more likely exposed

Question 17

Conflict Theories of Deviance:

Answer 17

C. Wright Mills: power in the hands of a select few sharing a worldview-elites assume their interests are also society’s best interests

• elites can define and police deviance with the intent of maintaining their class status–creates collectively understood ideology that supports the dominant group’s hegemony
• deviance and crime are a function of wealth and power

Question 18

Theory of Differential Association: (sutherland)

Answer 18

-deviance is a learned behaviour , we learn to imitate & the motivations for acting in deviant ways

Question 19

Control Theory

Answer 19

focuses on how our ties to mainstream social groups and institutions makes us less likely to be deviant