Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution, or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
Deviance and Social Control
by
Charles Lamson
What is Deviance?
In the next couple of posts we look at some current trends in deviance and crime and examine issues of social control---that is, what societies do to attempt to curb deviance. Research on these and related issues is a major field within sociology. No one can offer definitive answers, but sociologists are frequently looking for research on trends in deviance and criminal behavior and for explanations of these trends.
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| IMAGE 1 Deviant Person - Dexter: Fictional mild-mannered blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police by day, serial killer who only targets other murderers by night (TV Series 2006-2013, Showtime)
Deviance, broadly defined, is behavior that violates the norms of a particular society. But because all of us violate norms to some degree at some time or other, we must distinguish between deviance and deviants. Deviance can be something as simple as dying one's hair purple or wearing outrageous clothing or becoming tipsy at a stuffy party. Or it may be behavior over which the individual has little control, such as being homeless and living on the street, or it may consist of more strongly sanctioned departures from the society's norms---such acts as rape, mugging, and murder. Not all deviance is considered socially wrong, yet it can have negative effects for the individual. For example, "whistleblowers," who publicize illegal or harmful actions by their employers, deviate from the norms of bureaucratic organizations and are often threatened with the loss of their jobs. Yet at the same time they benefit the public by calling attention to dangerous or illegal activities.
A deviant person (see Image 1), by contrast, is someone who violates or oppresses opposes a society's most valued norms, especially those that are valued by elite groups. Through such behavior deviant individuals become disvalued people, and their disvalued behavior provokes hostile reactions (Davis, 1975, Deviance: Perspectives and Issues in the Field; Goffman, 1963, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity; Sagarin, 1975, Deviants and Deviance: A Study of Disvalued People and Behavior; Schure, 1984, Labeling Women Deviant: Gender, Stigma, and Control). Deviant may be a label attached to a person or group. Or the word may refer to behavior that brings punishment to a person under certain conditions.
The Social Construction of Deviance
No one knows how the witchcraft hysteria began, but it originated in the home of the Reverend Samuel Parris, minister of the local church. In early 1692, several girls from the neighborhood began to spend their afternoons in the Parris kitchen with a slave named Tituba, and it was not long before a mysterious sorority of girls, aged between 9 and 20, became regular visitors to the parsonage. (Erickson, 1966, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance, p. 141)
The girls quickly drew the concerned attention of Salem ministers and it`s doctor. Unable to understand much about their hysterical state or to deny their claim that they were possessed by the devil, the doctor pronounced girls bewitched. This gave them the freedom to make accusations regarding the cause of their unfortunate condition.
Tituba was the first to be accused and jailed. She was followed by scores of others as the fear of witchcraft swept through the community. Soon women with too many warts or annoying ticks were accused, tried, and jailed for their sins. Then the executions began. In the first and worst of the waves of executions, in August and September of 1692, at least 20 people were killed, including one man who was pressed to death under piled rocks for standing mute at his trial (see Image 3).
For the sociologist, the Salem witch-hunt of 300 years ago has meaning for today's world. Erikson showed that the punishment of suspected witches served as a defense against the weakening of puritan society. By casting out the "witches," the Puritans were reaffirming their community values: strict adherence to religious devotion, fear of God, abstinence from pleasures of secular society (e.g., drink, sex, music, dance), and the like.
For Erikson, the trial and punishment of the so-called witches illustrates Emile Durkheim's earlier discovery that every society creates its own forms of deviance and in fact needs those deviant acts. The punishment of deviant acts reaffirms the commitment of a society's members to its norms and values and thereby reinforces social solidarity. On the surface, Durkheim argued, deviant acts may seem to be harmful to group life, but in fact the punishment of those who commit such acts makes it clear to all exactly what deviations are most intolerable. By Durkheim's reasoning, the stark images of punishment---the guillotine, the electric chair, the syringe, the wretched life behind bars---become opportunities to let the population know that those who threaten the social order will be severely judged.
The study of deviance is central to the science of sociology, not only because deviance results in major social problems like crime, but also because it can bring about social change. Indeed, the Puritans were a deviant group in England at the time of their immigration to the new world. They challenged the authority of the king and many of the central norms that upheld the stratification system of feudal England. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony they created their own society, one in which they were no longer deviant. But, as Erikson showed, they also created their own forms of deviance, which reflected their unique problems as a society on a rapidly changing social frontier.
Forms of Social Control
The ways in which a society prevents deviance and punishes deviants are known as social control. The norms of a culture, the means by which they are instilled in us through socialization, and the ways in which they are enforced in social institutions---the family, the schools, government agencies---establish a society's system of social control. In fact, social control can be thought of as all the ways in which a society establishes and enforces its cultural norms. It is the capacity of a social group, including a whole society, to regulate itself (Janowitz, 1978, The Last Half Century: Societal Change and Politics in America, p. 3).
The means used to prevent deviance and punish deviants are one dimension of social control. They include the police, prisons, mental hospitals, and other institutions responsible for applying social control, keeping order, and enforcing major norms. But if we had to rely entirely on official institutions to enforce norms, social order would probably be impossible to achieve (Chwast, 1965, Value Conflicts in Law Enforcement. Crime and Delinquency, 2, 151-161). In fact, the official institutions of social control deal mainly with the deviant individuals and groups that a society fears most. Less threatening forms of deviance are controlled through the everyday interactions of individuals, as when parents attempt to prevent their children from piercing their tongues (shown below) or wearing their hair in dreadlocks.
IMAGE 4 Pierced Tongue
In the next several posts we look first at the dimensions of deviance and add how its meanings emerge and change as a society's values change. Then we explore the major sociological perspectives on deviance and social control. The final section of Deviance and Social Control deals with the ecology of deviance---its distribution among people in different subcultures and income categories---and ends with its introduction to the organization and functioning of institutions of social control such as prisons.
*MAIN SOURCE: SOCIOLOGY IN A CHANGING WORLD, 6TH ED., 2003, WILLIAM KORNBLUM, PP. 182-183*
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