Understanding Deviance

Connecting Classical and Contemporary Perspectives

Tammy L. Anderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781134756377
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this collection of 48 reprinted and completely original articles, Tammy Anderson gives her fellow instructors of undergraduate deviance a refreshing way to energize and revitalize their courses. [36 are reprints; 12 are original to this text/anthology]

First, in 12 separate sections, she presents a wide range of deviant behaviors, traits, and conditions including: underage drinking and drunk driving, doping in elite sports, gang behavior, community crime, juvenile delinquency, hate crime, prison violence and transgendered prisoners, mental illness, drug-using women and domestic violence, obesity, tattooing, sexual fetishes, prostitution, drug epidemics, viral pandemics, crime control strategies and racial inequality, gay neighborhoods, HIV and bugchasers, and (lastly) youth, multicultural identity and music scenes.

Second, her pairing of "classic" and "contemporary" viewpoints about deviance and social control not only "connects" important literatures of the past to today's (student) readers, her "connections framework" also helps all of us see social life and social processes more clearly when alternative meanings are accorded to similar forms of deviant behavior. We also learn how to appreciate and interact with those who see things differently from ourselves. This may better equip us to reach common goals in an increasingly diverse and ever-changing world.

Third, a major teaching goal of Anderson's anthology is to sharpen students' critical thinking skills by forcing them to look at how a deviant behavior, trait or condition, can be viewed from opposing or alternative perspectives. By learning to see deviance from multiple perspectives, students will better understand their own and other's behavior and experiences and be able to anticipate future trends. Balancing multiple perspectives may also assist students in their practical work in social service, criminal justice and other agencies and institutions that deal with populations considered "deviant" in one way or another.

SECTION 1 Defining Deviance

Introduction

Tammy L. Anderson

DOI: 10.4324/9781315879635-5

No one has gone where two states in the American West, Washington and Colorado, are now going with the pioneering blueprints for how to sell pot legally. Depending on your view, it's either Lewis and Clark crossing the Continental Divide for the first time, or a step into slow-motion quicksand.

(Egan 2013: 1)

Marijuana was outlawed in the United States by the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act after years of complaints about it being immoral, lacking medical value, and being downright dangerous. Now, more than 75 years later, laws against weed are wilting. Two new patterns of control have emerged. One seeks to medicalize marijuana for the private treatment of disease and illness and a second seeks to decriminalize it altogether, making it available to the general public. Both paths will likely redefine laws, norms, social customs, ideology, values, and morals about marijuana now and into our future, changing our understanding of marijuana use and sales as deviant behavior.

What is deviance? How is it determined? Who plays a role in defining deviance and who doesn't? How do definitions of deviance matter in our lives? Who benefits? Who loses? Section 1 includes four readings by Durkheim, Erikson, Becker, and Moynihan that begin to answer these questions. They have been pivotal in originating the study of deviance in sociology. In this Introduction, I discuss these scholars’ positions on deviance through today's debate about marijuana. In my connections reading on youth alcohol use, drunk driving, and binge drinking, I provide a deeper understanding of definitions of deviance and answers to the questions above.

As you read in the Preface, a central purpose of this book is to compare classic and contemporary concepts that have relevance for the study of deviance today. These pairings and connections will help you think more critically about our society and the interactions and experiences we have with each other daily. The concepts covered here often begin by taking a certain stance on what deviance is, who gets to say so, and how that impacts our lives. For example, the term deviant career (Section 7) uses a social reaction or labeling theory type of definition, while functionalism and anomie (Section 2) employ a more morally based one. Critical criminology and culture of control (Section 9) use a conflict orientation to answer the questions above. Section 1 begins, therefore, with a review of the basic ways sociologists have defined deviance in our society and have attempted to answer the questions above.

We begin with a basic idea: deviance is simply a breach of a socially acceptable standard. While it's important to understand the types and causes of such breaks, it is also helpful to understand the types of things they regulate. For example, in today's society, standards are created for behavior—such as smoking or selling marijuana. However, there are also values and norms for states of being or conditions (i.e., being intoxicated or sober), lifestyles (hedonistic or conventional), speech or language (drug argot, slang, or proper English), and even our identities, physical traits, and personal styles. Thus, the study of deviance cannot simply focus on behavior. It must, instead, focus on all of these things and how they are controlled in our society.

Once we get a better idea of the range of phenomena that are used to set standards for people in a society, we can also study how those standards originate. In the early days, sociologists articulated a few major ways deviance and social norms could be defined. The Durkheim (1982) reading in this section provides a scientifically based statistical viewpoint, arguing that deviant behavior is the rare phenomena or the very infrequent event. When we hear about how “the majority of people” drink alcohol or that “most” people are heterosexual, we are learning about statistically defined standards and norms. Deviance then becomes the minority or rare case. From Durkheim's viewpoint then, marijuana use is normal, since most (65%) Americans have tried it and about 17% smoke it almost daily (NSDUH 2012).

Erikson (1962)—author of another reading in this section—articulated a more morally based way to define norms and deviance. He relied on morals, customs, and traditions that were often tied to religious doctrine. For example, the classification of inebriated states (drunkenness and being high) as deviant behavior is based in Christian morality and the Bible. Today, religious figures are divided on the morality of marijuana use but were vehemently opposed to it around the time of the Marijuana Tax Act (Jones 2013). If morally defined deviance works to set boundaries for behavior, build solidarity among citizens, and assist the smooth functioning of society, as Erikson contends, then will marijuana decriminalization destabilize and weaken our society?

Howard Becker (1963) spelled out a labeling theory or social reaction approach to deviance. You will read his viewpoints in an excerpt from his classic book in this section. He called deviance anything people in society so label and argued that norm violations had to be witnessed by others in order for deviance to command our attention. Becker's point was that deviance doesn't objectively exist. It is in the eyes of the beholder. Becker wrote about marijuana and the passage and impact of the Marijuana Tax Act because he was heavily involved in the 1940s and 1950s jazz scene, which featured casual marijuana use by musicians and fans.

It is important to note that sociologists have also defined deviance in other ways. Sections 4 and 12 describe medical viewpoints and show that more and more deviant traits, behaviors, and conditions are being reclassified as forms of disease and illness in our society every day. In fact, you could argue this is one reason criminal controls against marijuana use and sales are changing. Marijuana advocates have convinced Americans that the drug is an effective and safe treatment for a variety of ailments and drug experts tell us often that drug addiction, in general, is a disease rather than a moral failing.

Finally, classifying and controlling deviance should also be considered acts of power. This is a basic position of more critical or conflict-oriented theories, which are covered in Section 9 of this book. Consider that when something or someone is defined as normal or acceptable, it is almost certain that something or someone else is rendered deviant. Moreover, there are consequences for deviant behavior and discrimination against those who engage in it or who possess deviant traits or conditions. And when we look at who and what is classified as deviant in our society and who has done the cataloguing, we see considerable inequality. For example, even though official data sources such as the NSDUH (2012) show almost equal rates of marijuana use by race and ethnicity, minority group members—especially African Americans—have been arrested for it and find themselves behind bars much more often than whites (Mauer and King 2007). Thus, there is inequality between racial groups when it comes to thinking about and responding to marijuana-related behavior and drug-related deviance overall.

The reading by Moynihan (1992) in this section cautions us that when we define deviance down—reclassify unacceptable behaviors as acceptable or trivialize their significance and impact—we wander into dangerous territory and threaten the very stability of our society. In his reading, Moynihan points out a few ways this is done, and we can easily see these methods at work with marijuana reform today as drug addicts are treated by healthcare professionals instead of being punished by the criminal justice system and as marijuana industries evolve into profit-making businesses in our economy (Jones 2013).

What do you think? Will marijuana reform define deviance down in ways that endanger society and our way of life? Will it improve things? For whom? As you read the papers in this section, consider what deviance means and how the viewpoints expressed here complement and contradict each other and are relevant to your life. Pay attention to who benefits and suffers from their implementation. Can we see conceptual similarities across types of deviance— for example, marijuana, drunk driving, and the many other types of nonconforming behaviors, traits, and conditions—discussed in this book? Attending to questions like these, and those asked by the contributors and I throughout this book, may just show you how relevant the study of deviance is to all of our lives today.

References

• Becker, Howard S. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press.
• Durkheim, Emile. 1982. “Rules for the Distinction of the Normal and the Pathological.” In Rules of the Sociological Method, 85–101. New York: Free Press.
• Egan, Timothy. 2013 (June 6). “Big Pot.” New York Times. Retrieved June 10, 2013, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/big-pot/.
• Erikson, Kai T. 1962. “Notes on the Sociology of Deviance.” Social Problems, 9(4): 307–314.
• Jones, Robert P. 2013. “Christians Divided on Morality, Legalization of Marijuana Use.” Public Religion Research Institute. Retrieved June 10, 2013, http://publicreligion.org/2013/05/our-corner-christians-divided-on-morality-legalization-of-marijuana-use/.
• Mauer, M. and King, R. S. 2007. Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity. Washington, DC: Sentencing Project.
• Moynihan, Daniel. 1992. “Defining Deviance Down.” The American Scholar 62(1): 17–30.
• NSDUH. 2012. “Results from the 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Summary of National Findings.” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Rules for the Distinction of the Normal from the Pathological

Emile Durkheim

DOI: 10.4324/9781315879635-6

Observation conducted according to the preceding rules mixes up two orders of facts, which are very dissimilar in certain respects: those that are entirely appropriate and those that should be different from what they are—normal phenomena and pathological phenomena. We have even seen that it is necessary to include both in the definition with which all research should begin. Yet if, in certain aspects, they are of the same nature, they nevertheless constitute two different varieties between which it is important to distinguish. Does science have the means available to make this distinction?

The question is of the utmost importance, for on its solution depends one's conception of the role that science, and above all the science of man, has to play. According to a theory whose exponents are recruited from the most varied schools of thought, science cannot instruct us in any way about what we ought to desire. It takes cognisance, they say, only of facts which all have the same value and the same utility; it observes and explains but does not judge them; for it, there are none that are reprehensible. For science, good and evil do not exist. Whereas it can certainly tell us how causes produce their effects, it cannot tell us what ends should be pursued. To know not what is but what is desirable, we must resort to the suggestions of the unconscious—sentiment, instinct, vital urge, and so on—by whatever name we call it. Science, says a writer already quoted, can well light up the world but leaves a darkness in the human heart. The heart must create its own illumination. Thus science is stripped, or nearly, of all practical effectiveness and consequently of any real justification for its existence. For what good is it to strive after a knowledge of reality if the knowledge we acquire cannot serve us in our lives? Can we reply that by revealing to us the causes of phenomena, knowledge offers us the means of producing the causes at will and thereby to achieve the ends our will pursues for reasons that go beyond science? But, from one point of view, every means is an end, for to set the means in motion it requires an act of the will, just as it does to achieve the end for which it prepares the way. There are always several paths leading to a given goal, and a choice must therefore be made between them. Now, if science cannot assist us in choosing the best goal, how can it indicate the best path to follow ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1: Classical and Contemporary Approaches to Deviance
• Part 2: Emergent Possibilities and the Future of Deviance
• Contributor Biographies
• Credits
• Index