Becoming Deviant

David Matza, Thomas G. Blomberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351297622
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Becoming Deviant describes a process by which people move from an affinity for certain prohibited behaviors to full-blown deviance. This process includes affiliation with circles and settings that include or sponsor offenses, followed by understanding and identification of the offenses as prohibited behavior by the transgressor. The process can be summarized as affinity, affiliation, and signification. The sequential process Matza describes allows for non-recurrent offending behavior, recidivism, and offending again. His perspective is motivated by the view that criminological theories do not explain a number of the fundamental empirical features and nuances known to be associated with delinquency. This includes the frequent termination of delinquent behavior at the onset of adulthood, the often conformist nature of delinquent behavior, and the large numbers of non-delinquents that are often found in otherwise "high-delinquency areas." In Becoming Deviant Matza reasons that most, though not all, delinquent behavior constitutes relatively uniform phenomena that is developmental in character. Individuals proceed from trivial to more serious infractions. He argues that delinquent behavior represents youths searching for adventure and is accompanied by withdrawal from conventional values and associated behavior. Matza further claims that many delinquents are not fully committed to a delinquent lifestyle, and this explains why delinquent behavior often ends with adulthood. Matza's compelling and integrated theoretical explanation makes this a classic in the increasingly sophisticated criminological literature. Thomas Blomberg's new introduction shows why Becoming Deviant remains of central importance to the field.

1

Natural Deviation

My aim in this introduction is to suggest a revised idea of naturalism and an elementary conception of deviation. The first—naturalism—refers to the perspective commended in this book; the second—deviation—to the general topic considered; thus, the title “natural deviation.”

To assert the natural character of phenomena is the broadest meaning of naturalism, and, accordingly, the least useful. No contemporary view of human behavior—deviant or conventional—would deny its natural character. But the meaning of the term “natural” varies enormously among viewpoints, and correspondingly variable is the quality and measure of naturalist affirmation. To take viewpoints at their word may be misleading. We may be deceived into equating an idle and thus meaningless verbal affirmation with an abiding commitment. Only the latter warrants the designation “naturalism.” Naturalism is a commitment, and to decide whether a given viewpoint is naturalist or not we must first answer the question: to what is naturalism committed?

The commitment of naturalism, as I conceive it, is to phenomena and their nature; not to Science or any other system of standards. Such a conception of naturalism differs somewhat from ordinary usage. Thus, I must defend and clarify this somewhat unorthodox conception.

Marvin Färber draws the typical contrast. Naturalism is the “philosophy based upon the findings and methods of the sciences.” Subjectivism, its opposite, maintains “the primacy of experiencing being.”¹ The tie between naturalism and science—the view that naturalism was committed to the method of science—is contained in Ralph Perry’s definition of naturalism as “the philosophical generalization of science.”² This usage is common, but misleading. A conception of naturalism as “the philosophical generalization of science” has confused accident with essence—something that philosophers, of all people, should not do. It has mistaken a superbly serviceable means for probing the nature of certain things for the more profound meaning of naturalism. It has transformed a means into an end. Perry’s conception has transformed into naturalism itself a main method by which we might commit ourselves to certain phenomena and engage their nature.

This common conception of naturalism is familiar. Most often it has been expressed by philosophers of science or by social scientists who are concerned with philosophical issues.³ With very few exceptions, the writers claiming jurisdiction over the term naturalism have forwarded this conception whether or not they favored the philosophic generalization of science. For instance, Natanson, a phenomenologist, is as taken by this conception of naturalism as those more positivist in spirit.⁴ In the dominant conception, naturalism is equivalent to scientific philosophy, experimental method, a stress on objective, external, or observable features of phenomena, and, in general, positivism. In the same conception, naturalism’s opposites are idealism, existentialism, phenomenology, and, in general, a stress on subjective experience and a corresponding reliance on intuition and insight rather than rigorous, replicable procedure.⁵ Naturalism is counterposed to subjectivism. My thesis is that this conception and juxtaposition mistakes the nature of naturalism, and does so largely as a result of confusing temporal or ephemeral features of naturalism with its lasting or persistent nature.

One writer, John Randall, Jr., has been sensitive to the error inherent in conceiving naturalism’s commitment as being to the method of science.⁶ Such a view would better be termed “scientism,” and it has been so designated. Naturalism, as the very term implies, is the philosophical view that strives to remain true to the nature of the phenomenon under study or scrutiny. For naturalism, the phenomenon being scrutinized is to be considered object or subject depending on its nature—not on the philosophical preconceptions of a researcher. That specific nature commands the fidelity of naturalism. This does not mean that the nature of phenomena is readily apparent; their nature may sometimes be at issue. But the resolution of that issue must be based on experience or more rigorous empirical methods. How the phenomenon is conceived, as object or as subject, is henceforth to be guided by that empirical resolution rather than by convenience or the distinguished precedents set by other disciplines.

So conceived, naturalism stands against all forms of philosophical generalization. Its loyalty is to the world with whatever measure of variety or universality happens to inhere in it. Naturalism does not and cannot commit itself to eternal preconceptions regarding the nature of phenomena. Consequently, it does not and cannot commit itself to any single preferred method for engaging and scrutinizing phenomena. It stands for observation or engagement of course for that is implicit in fidelity to the natural world. But naturalistic observation may also include experience and introspection, the methods traditionally associated with subjectivism.

Randall suggests that the adversaries of naturalism were first super-naturalism and, more recently, reductionism. He says:

The “new” or “contemporary” naturalism . . . stands in fundamental opposition not only to all forms of supernaturalism, but also to all types of reductionist thinking which up to this generation often arrogated to itself the adjective “naturalistic” and still is suggested by it to the popular mind. Second only to the unanimity with which these writers reject supernaturalism and acclaim scientific procedures is their agreement that the richness and variety of natural phenomena and human experience cannot be explained away and “reduced” to something else. The world is not really “nothing but” something other than it appears to be: it is what it is, in all its manifold variety, with all its distinctive kinds of activity. . . . Human life in particular displays characteristic ways of action which have no discoverable counterpart in the behavior of any other being. Man’s searching intelligence, his problems of moral choice and obligation, his ideal enterprises of art, science, and religion are what they inescapably are. . . . Inquiry can find out much about them, about their conditions and consequences, their functions and values; but what it finds is an addition to our knowledge of what they are, not the amazing discovery that they are not, or ought not to be.⁷

Given Randall’s conception the aim of naturalism is to render the phenomenon cogently in a manner that maintains its integrity—not the integrity of any philosophic viewpoint. Once that is understood, it becomes possible to separate temporal from more essential and permanent features. The temporal features of naturalism were inherent in the philosophic viewpoint of science and were successful in comprehending certain phenomenal levels while maintaining the integrity of things existing at that level. The nature of phenomena existing at the level most vulnerable to the philosophy and method of science was itself complex. But one general feature was outstanding and of immediate relevance. These phenomena were, by nature, objects. Though in somewhat different terms, Gordon Allport asserts the subjectivity of being human. The activity of certain levels of being in contrast to the mere reactivity of other levels suggests the inadequacy of likening man to object:

We are told that every stone in the field is unique, every old shoe in the closet, every bar of iron, but that this ubiquitous individuality does not affect the operations or the progress of science. The geologist, the physicist, the cobbler, proceed to apply universal laws, and find the accident of uniqueness irrelevant to their work. The analogy is unconvincing. Stones, old shoes, bars of iron are purely reactive; they will not move unless they are manipulated. They are incapable of becoming. How is it then with uniqueness in the realm of biology where in addition to reactivity each plant manifests the capacities of self-repair, self-regulation, adaptation? One leaf of the tree is large, another small, one deformed, another healthy. Yet all obey the sure laws of metabolism and cell structure. . . . But here too the analogy is weak. Unlike plants and lower animals, man is not merely a creature of cell structure, tropism and instinct; he does not live his life by repeating, with trivial variation, the pattern of his species.⁸

At first, it was proper for naturalists to conceive the phenomena scrutinized as objects. By and large, though variably, the phenomena scrutinized during this period were objects. The philosophical viewpoint of science was uniquely suited to the study of such phenomena. Its assumptions, with regard to being, happily coincided with the nature of phenomena it chose to scrutinize and analyze. Indeed, its assumptions were largely derived from the ascendant, and as it turned out, truthful view of the then controversial nature of certain realms of existence. Early naturalism inferred a truth—objectivity—from important and ubiquitous levels of existence. Its followers then proceeded to generalize that truth and apply it to other realms of existence. The result was predictable—falsification.

The opposition to the methods of experience, intuition, and empathy that developed during the early growth of naturalism was understandable and legitimate. Fidelity to objective phenomena hardly necessitates these forms of scrutiny. Indeed, it was mandatory that the study of the physical and organic realms be purged of supernatural conceptions of phenomena. The objective, and especially the mechanistic view, opposed and more or less vanquished ideas of vitalism and teleology.⁹

Thus, the objective view of naturalism was positive and appropriate when the object of inquiry was in fact an object. The confusion arose when the spirit of naturalism turned to the study of man. The major result of that confusion was a longstanding misconception of man from which the disciplines purporting to comprehend him are only beginning to recover. The minor result was the one immediately relevant—a misconception of the meaning of naturalism.

The confusion began when primitive social scientists—many of whom are still vigorous—mistook the phenomenon under consideration—man— and conceived it as object instead of subject. That was a great mistake. Numerous theories appeared positing man as merely reactive and denying that he is the author of action, but none were convincing.

The misconception of man as object oscillated between two major forms: the first radical, the second heuristic. In the first, man was object. In the second, scientists deemed it heuristic merely to act as if man were object.¹⁰ In both views, however, a similar consequence appeared. Irrespective of whether man was object or merely heuristically treated as object, the terms of analysis were set in a fashion that minimized man’s causal capacity, his activity, his tendency to reflect on himself and his setting, and his periodic struggles to transcend rather than succumb to the circumstances that allegedly shaped and constrained him.¹¹

These minimizations of man persisted as presumptions which guided research and shaped operative theory. They were maintained despite classic repudiations of the objective view by Max Weber and George Herbert Mead and despite Robert Maclver’s explicit and brilliant, but still unappreciated discussion of various existential realms and the distinctive features of each.¹² The initial mistake continues to plague sociology, as well as the other human disciplines. For instance, the opinion cited by Donald Cressey affirming the utility of mathematizing Sutherland’s theory of differential association is not simply an act of disciplinary statesmanship or professional promotion. He who says “that the only difference between physical science and social science is a billion man-hours of work” simply continues to miss the fundamental point made by Weber, Mead, and Maclver.¹³

Man participates in meaningful activity. He creates his reality, and that of the world around him, actively and strenuously. Man naturally—not supernaturally—transcends the existential realms in which the conceptions of cause, force, and reactivity are easily applicable. Accordingly, a view that conceives man as object, methods that probe human behavior without concerning themselves with the meaning of behavior, cannot be regarded as naturalist. Such views and methods are the very opposite of naturalism because they have molested in advance the phenomenon to be studied. Naturalism when applied to the study of man has no choice but to conceive man as subject precisely because naturalism claims fidelity to the empirical world. In the empirical world, man is subject and not object, except when he is likened to one by himself or by another subject. Naturalism must choose the subjective view, and consequently it must combine the scientific method with the distinctive tools of humanism—experience, intuition, and empathy. Naturalism has no other choice because its philosophical commitment is neither to objectivity nor subjectivity, neither to scientific method nor humanist sensibility. Its only commitment is fidelity to the phenomenon under consideration. Thus, in the study of man, there is no antagonism between naturalism and a repudiation of the objective view, nor a contradiction between naturalism and the humane methods of experience, reason, intuition, and empathy. Naturalism in the study of man is a disciplined and rigorous humanism.

The fidelity of naturalism to the empirical world has created a certain stress on the mundane, the matter-of-fact—even the vulgar. Naturalism has therefore been an anti-philosophical philosophy in one key sense. The common view of being philosophical, of holding to a philosophy, emphasizes the precedence of abstraction, theory, or metaphysics over the world. That stereotype of philosophy has never been wholly incorrect; even naturalism, which began with a commitment to the world, turned away from the concrete and attached itself to the abstraction—science. But for naturalism at least, that attachment may be regarded as an infidelity, or so I have suggested. Moreover, the world was paid tribute, despite its being cuckolded. Though small consolation to its subject matter—for the cuckold there are no minor infidelities—the antagonism toward abstraction, formalism—toward what the common man means by philosophy—persisted and survived. A preference for concrete detail, an appreciation of density and variability, a dislike of the formal, the abstract, the artificial, served to unify what otherwise may seem disparate developments: the naturalism of plant and animal life, literary naturalism, and the emergent naturalism of sociology. Only through its differences with science has the unity of naturalism in art, journalism, literature, zoology, botany, ecology, and sociology become evident. That unity has been expressed in an anti-philosophical tendency.

But unfortunately, no philosophy can succeed in being anti-philosophical. A countertendency to abstract, classify, and generalize appeared partly because it was inevitable: the very act of writing or reporting commits the author to a rendition of the world, and a rendering is a sifting. Moreover, the naturalist could find in the world itself, especially among human subjects, a warrant for the countertendency: The human world itself was given to abstraction, generalization, and classification and thus it contained a measure of order and regularity. In this way, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Content Page
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Acknowledgments
• I
• 1 Natural Deviation
• 2 Correction and Appreciation
• 3 Pathology and Diversity
• 4 Simplicity and Complexity
• II
• 5 Affinity
• 6 Affiliation
• 7 Signification
• Index