Issues Of Deviance And Social Control Sociology Essay

Issues Of Deviance And Social Control Sociology Essay Deviance is a term used by society to define behaviors that differ from the everyday social norm, this means that majority of people in a society must agree or conform to a certain action or behavior. In 1906, William Sumner came up with the concept to categorize norm into three different groups: folkways, mores, and laws. He defines folkway as the simple day-to-day norm which was based on customs, traditions and mannerisms. If one were not to follow the way of folkway norm it would probably cause others to believe that they are strange or abnormal but would not cause fury. Typical folkway norms include style of dressing, character, physical distance or closeness with others, and eating patterns. Moving on, mores are norms which reflect wide-ranging social ethics. Interracial marriage, having an illegitimate child, and abusing drugs and alcohol would violate the mores laws and would cause a havoc and produce more serious social denunciation. Being in an interracial marriage may make one seem racially impure, bearing an illegitimate child can threaten social definition of a marriage, and abusing or being addicted to drugs and alcohol shows victory of hedonism over prudence. Those who dont comply with mores norm may seem sinful, and set themselves up as a potential threat to society. Furthermore, the laws norm is the strongest custom out of the other two norms. This is because it is backed up by codified social approval. Those who infringe this norm are punished in ways ranging from a fine to imprisonment. Although one may break laws and regulations, it wouldnt necessarily label the offender as deviant. With this said, deviance and crime can respectively fall into one category. Consider this, if certain individual decides to burglarize or vandalize someones property, or even causing harm to another being, it considered both deviant and a crime. Also, there are many other deviant acts that are not considered criminal, such as being over or underweight, being physi cally or mentally handicapped, being in an interracial marriage, and having an illegitimate child. To restate a prior point, these can be considered deviant because although it is not considered a crime, it violates the norm accepted by society. With that said, we can consider crime and deviance as overlapping categorizes with its own individual magnitudes. Attitude, behavior, and condition are the ABCs of deviance. People may be labeled deviant based on their attitudes or belief system which includes religion, political views and beliefs in the supernatural. Having a mental sickness can also fall into the deviant category. The B in the deviant ABCs stands for behavior which people are the most familiar with. Deviant behavior can happen intentionally or unintentionally, for example, one might unintentionally violate a dress-code, or a couple may intentionally engage in bizarre sexual activities, or one may commit murder. Lastly, the C stands for condition. Those who are considered d eviant because of their condition probably acquired it from birth such as being born un-wealthy, being a person of color in a mainly Caucasian dominated community, being born physically handicapped, or being height deviant. In this case, the individual has done nothing wrong or taken any negative actions to be labeled deviant; this also makes it almost impossible to change their deviant status. Although some actions that an individual chooses to take will be universally labeled as deviant behavior, others are judged strictly based on social customs. Heckerts idea of positive deviance would primarily refer to engaging in less selfish actions and more devotion toward the society. Heckert has defined many different ways in which positive deviance is evitable such as altruism, pacifism, cooperation, temperance and many more. Altruism is one of the most cherished form of positive deviance because it brings out the loyalty. All the martyrs fall under this category as they sacrificed themselves for their nation and they can never be forgotten. Those who spread the sign of peace throughout the societies also fall under positive deviance such as Gandhi. Positive deviance is clearly evident in every community where certain individuals or groups are more successful than other when everyone has received same resources but the approaches were different. Positive deviance is how successfully a person, a group or a community move forward to a better future and creates an example for other. Societies require positive deviance so they could move on with the rest of the world. Example of positive deviance could be to move forward and stop child labor in developing countries and putting them in a school for education. Labeling theory which is also known as social reaction theory suggests that deviance is not an inherit to act instead its the people who obtain labels from how other view their tendency or behavior. Its the society that makes the criminals by keep being either unfair or by false accusations. Suppose a person does commit a crime under very difficult circumstances and later on gets the label of a criminal will have negative effect on his personality and this person will be always considered as a criminal. If the society has choose to consider a person dangerous for reasons such as past criminal record or the color of his/her skin than perhaps it wont be any harder next time for this person to commit crime. Our societies also look for auxiliary traits within a position or career. For example, a doctor is consider as an white male, upper middle class and more. On other hand, black people were more attached to criminal activities and those who turned out to be doctors were hard to believe by the society because they were never seen in that form. Basically , an individuals past action create or shape his/her future and this lacks the fairness in sense this person could have adopted better human traits. Students who study deviance should not make an assumption if the person is actually a criminal or broken rule because the process of labeling may not be infallible. According to the conflict perspective, deviance is a social creation and the power structure in any society defines what to be consider normal and what is not. So basically there is no such thing as human nature, hence deviance is the creation of the social structure rather than something build into our nature. On the other hand, functional deviance approach believes that its the majority members of the society who defines what is normal and what is not. Both approaches look at the society as a whole rather than on individual level. Conflict theory mainly defines societies made up of powerful or powerless. Powerful has no right to be in power but manipulates other convince public about their legitimacy. This can be related to Durkheims state of anomie. Anomie is the result of collective conscious being collapsed. In this situation, people tend to look away from fundamental social expectations and solely focus on their self-interest. The long term collapse of order and harmony in both approaches are harmful to the society. In conclusion, Human norms refer to the set behavioral standards on which human are supposed to act. Deviance is a study that helps understand the reason behind violation of human norms. There is not one particular answer that is enough to justify human norms violation, hence many sociological scholars have presented different set of theories that can help us understand deviance with broad perspectives. Some of the scholars that have played tremendous part in understanding deviance are Erikson, Hackerts and lastly the father of Sociology Emile Durkheim. Deviance will be present no matter how perfect the society is, as Durkheim explained about the society of saints which is perfect but the identification of deviance level would be so high that even smallest error can be regarded as a strong disapproval from the society.