Deviance

The Interactionist Perspective

Earl Rubington, Martin Weinberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138467927
• eBook ISBN: 9781317348795
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This highly successful reader presents the interactionist approach to the study of deviance, examining deviance as a phenomenon that is constituted through social interpretations and the reactions of persons caught up in this social process. This book focuses on issues such as how individuals interpret and label people, how people relate to one another based on these interpretations, and the consequences of these social processes. This perspective helps students understand both social process in general and the sociology of deviance in particular.

PART ONE

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THE SOCIAL DEVIANT

Sociology is the study of social relations. Sociologists study how people arrive at common constructions of their situation; how they form groups based on such constructions; and how they go on to set down rules of conduct, assign social roles to each other, and enforce their rules. Sociologists examine these questions as part of the larger question: How do people attempt to produce and sustain social order?

Deviance implies an alleged breach of a social norm. By looking at deviance we can come to a better understanding of social interaction. At the same time, the study of deviance also sheds light on the way “deviant” patterns and lifestyles are organized.

There are at least two ways of studying deviance as a social phenomenon. The first is to approach deviance as objectively given; the second, as subjectively problematic.

DEVIANCE AS OBJECTIVELY GIVEN

Sociologists who treat deviance as objectively given delineate the norms of the society under study and regard any deviation from these norms as “deviant.” These sociologists generally make three assumptions. First, they assume that there is widespread consensus in the society in the realm of norms; this widespread agreement, they believe, makes it relatively easy to identify deviance. Second, they assume that deviance typically evokes negative sanctions such as gossip or legal action. Third, they assume that the punishment meted out to the deviant reaffirms for the group that it is bound by a set of common norms. The major questions raised by this approach are the following: What sociocultural conditions are most likely to produce deviance? Why do people continue to deviate despite the negative sanctions that are brought to bear on them? How can deviance best be minimized or controlled?

From these assumptions and questions, certain procedures have evolved for studying deviants. First list the “dos” and “don’ts” of the society or group. Then study the official records kept on persons who violate these rules. Interview persons appearing in these records, and consult agents of social control such as police and judges. Try to discover the ways in which deviants differ from nondeviants (e.g., are deviants more likely than nondeviants to come from broken homes?) in order to discern the kinds of social and cultural conditions that seem to make deviant behavior more likely. Try to derive a theory to “explain” deviance, and then apply the theory for the correction and prevention of deviance.

The strength of this approach is the sharpness and simplicity with which it phrases questions. The weak points of this approach follow from its key assumptions. The United States has so many different groups and ways of thinking that people often do not agree on norms. Because of this lack of agreement, and also because of the fact that some people get caught whereas others avoid discovery, it is often very difficult to identify who is deviant and who is not. Also, most social control agencies operate with selective enforcement, so that certain categories of people are more likely than others to be punished for their deviance. Thus, the nature, causes, and consequences of deviance are neither simple nor uniform.

DEVIANCE AS SUBJECTIVELY PROBLEMATIC

Sociologists who focus on the social differentiation of deviants generally make another set of assumptions. First, they assume that when people and groups interact they communicate with one another by means of shared symbols (verbal and body language, style of dress, etc.). Through such symbolic communication, it is assumed, people are able to type one another and formulate their actions accordingly. Second, they assume that deviance can best be understood in terms of this process, that deviant labels are symbols that differentiate and stigmatize the people to whom they are applied. Finally, sociologists using this approach assume that people act on the basis of such constructions. Thus, people treat the alleged deviant differently from other people. The alleged deviant, in turn, may also react to this definition. On the basis of these assumptions, sociologists using this perspective focus on social definitions and on how these influence social interaction. On the one hand, they focus on the perspective and actions of those who define a person as being deviant. They look at the circumstances under which a person is most likely to get set apart as deviant, how a person is cast into a deviant role, what actions others take on the basis of that construction of a person, and the consequences of these actions. On the other hand, these sociologists also focus on the perspective and reactions of the person adjudged to be deviant. They consider how a person reacts to being so adjudged, how a person adopts a deviant role, what changes in group memberships result, and what changes occur in the alleged deviant’s self-concept.

Whereas the objectively given approach focuses primarily on the characteristics of the deviant or the conditions that give rise to deviant acts, the subjectively problematic approach focuses on the constructions and actions both of the deviants themselves and of the people who label them deviant, and on the social interaction between the two. Thus, we call the latter approach the interactionist perspective.

This book adopts the interactionist perspective, approaching deviance as subjectively problematic rather than as objectively given. In this book, then, deviants are considered simply as people who are socially typed in a certain way. Such typing usually involves an attempt to make sense of seemingly aberrant acts. As people seek to make sense of such acts, they generally employ stereotypical interpretations that define the actor as a particular kind of person (a kook, a drunk, a sociopath, etc.), that include a judgment about the moral quality of the deviant or his or her motives, and that suggest how a person should act toward the deviant. The social constructions of deviance, then, consist of a description, an evaluation, and a prescription. For example, a “kook” is a person who is mildly eccentric (description). The term connotes that “kooks” are odd but not particularly evil or dangerous (evaluation). Thus, one may display dislike or friendly disrespect toward them (prescription). A person who comes to be defined as a “sociopath,” on the other hand, is considered to be both odd and severely unpredictable (description). The sociopath is often regarded as self-centered, evil, and dangerous (evaluation), and the sociopath is to be taken seriously at all times; a person who shows dislike or disrespect toward a “sociopath” does so at great personal risk (prescription). Thus, the construction of a person as a particular type of deviant organizes people’s responses to that person, and the more people who share the definition that a person is a particular type of deviant, the greater the social consequences.

Taking the subjective approach to deviance, Part One of this book examines such phenomena more specifically. The topics treated in this part of the book include how people type, or label, others as deviants, the cultural context of typing, the accommodations people make to the so-called deviance, and how people may collaborate to exclude deviants from their midst.

THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL TYPING

Sociologically, deviance is approached here in terms of social differentiation. This differentiation arises from the perception that something is amiss. If a potential typer, or labeler, ignores or excuses the alleged aberrant quality of a person or event, it goes unlabeled as deviant. For instance, a person who works hard is expected sometimes to be tired and cranky, and in such situations people may not attach any particular importance to this behavior. Once an act or a person is typed as “deviant,” however, a variety of social phenomena may come into play. These phenomena include who types whom, on what grounds, in what ways, before or after what acts (real or imputed), in front of what audience, and with what effects.

Let us for a moment consider the conditions that seem to make typing more effective. First, typing generally has the most effect when the typer, the person typed as deviant, and other people all share and understand the deviant definition in their social relationships. The typer and others act toward the “deviant” in accord with their shared understanding of the situation. Aware of having been so typed, the deviant, in turn, takes that shared understanding into account in relating to people. Thus, willingly or otherwise, all parties may subscribe to the definition. When all agree in this way, the construction of the person as a particular type of deviant is most socially effective, or confirmed. As an example, Frank Tannenbaum, one of the fathers of the interactionist perspective on deviance, has said: “The process of making the criminal … is a process of tagging, defining, identifying, segregating, describing, emphasizing, and evoking the very traits that are complained of…. The person becomes the thing he is described as being.” Tannenbaum says that “the community cannot deal with people whom it cannot define” and that “the young delinquent becomes bad because he is defined as bad and because he is not believed if he is good.”¹ In contrast, people with physical disabilities (such as individuals in wheelchairs) and other people with whom they come in contact do not always share the same definition of the deviance or understanding of the situation. This can lead to misunderstandings about how to relate to one another in certain circumstances (e.g., in stores and restaurants).

Second, social types are generally more apt to be accepted by other people if a highranking person does the typing. Effective social typing usually flows down rather than up the social structure. For example, an honor bestowed by the president of the United States is more likely to be consequential than an honor bestowed by a low-ranking official. Conversely, a denunciation by a high-ranking person such as the CEO of a company will usually carry more weight, and be confirmed by more people, than a denunciation by a low-ranking person such as one of the company’s janitors.

Third, deviant typing is also more apt to be effective if there is a sense that the alleged deviant is violating important norms and that the violations are extreme. For instance, if factory workers are tacitly expected to turn out only a limited amount of work, a worker who produces much more than the norm may be singled out and ostracized as a “rate-buster.” On the other hand, a person who jaywalks is unlikely to be typed and treated as a deviant. Likewise, people who are redheads (a characteristic that is not an extreme violation of an important norm) often feel stigmatization when they are children and adolescents, but in adulthood relinquish the effects of negative typing.

Fourth, it also seems that negative social typing is more readily accepted than positive typing. For one thing, “misery loves company”; people find comfort in learning about the frailties of others. In addition, norms seem to be highlighted more by infraction than by conformity. Also, negative typing is seen as a valuable safeguard if the type indicates an aberrant pattern that will probably continue and that has major consequences. Some police officers, for instance, expect upper-class adolescents to misbehave in their youth but later to become influential and respected citizens, while they expect slum adolescents who are vandals, troublemakers, or delinquents to become hardened criminals in adulthood; thus, such police officers are more likely to negatively type slum youths than upper-class youths who break the same laws.

Fifth, typing will be accepted more readily if the audience stands to gain from the labeling. Endorsing attention to another person’s deviant behavior, for example, may divert attention from one’s own. It may also sustain a status difference between oneself and the so-called deviant.

When social typing is effective, three kinds of consequences most often follow: self-fulfilling prophecy, typecasting, and recasting. In the self-fulfilling prophecy, typing is based on false beliefs about the alleged deviant, but the actions other people take on the basis of these false beliefs eventually make them become a reality. For example, both black and white police officers believe that it is more difficult to arrest blacks than whites. As a result, they tend to use more force in arresting blacks, and in turn they experience more resistance from blacks. In typecasting, the deviant stereotype is so widely accepted that confirmation of the typing proceeds rapidly, and typer, audience, and the person typed relate to each other in an automatic manner. For instance, if one person types another as a thief, any audience can generally predict and understand the typer’s attitudes and actions. In recasting, the most complex of the three consequences, the deviant is expected to behave conventionally and is encouraged to disprove the deviant typing (e.g., to reform). Probation officers, for example, may encourage conventionality by restricting the opportunities of their probationers to continue their deviant ways. In the first two consequences of typing, the typer and audience restrict the deviant’s opportunities to disprove the deviant typing. In recasting, the typer and the audience restrict the deviant’s opportunities to confirm the deviant typing.

THE CULTURAL CONTEXT

The process of social typing occurs within a cultural context. Each culture, for example, has its own assortment and corresponding vocabulary of types. Thus, in our own culture we no longer talk about “witches”; consequently, no one is so typed. Similarly, if we had no word for or concept of “sociopath,” no one would be so typed. The culture’s repertoire of deviant types and stereotypes is ordinarily created, defined, sustained, and controlled by highly valued realms of the culture (e.g., psychiatry, law, religion). It should also be noted that different categories are used in different subcultures. “Sinners,” for example, are typed only in the religious sector. Similarly, the term “crack-baby,” when originally applied in the delivery room subculture, signified the moral judgments those within that subculture placed on the baby’s mother. This pejorative construction has now entered into the dominant culture.

Different groups and cultures have different ideas about deviance. This difference in cultural contexts leads lower-class families more than middle-class families to accept their children who are labeled as intellectually disabled. Another example is how the cultural context of some work settings shapes viewing certain behaviors as “sexual harassment” while in other work settings similar behaviors may be perceived only as joking or harmless flirting. A final example is how the dominant culture privileges some social categories over others. Thus, because of the more negative cultural interpretations that are applied to women’s bodily functions than men’s, heterosexual women are more likely than heterosexual men to experience great concern when there is an audience to their private toilet behavior.

Also, typing often has an ethnocentric bias. People in one culture or subculture may be quick to type an outsider as deviant, for instance, simply because the outsider’s life...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• General Introduction
• Part One The Social Deviant
• Part Two The Formal Regulation of Deviance
• Part Three Relations among Deviants
• Chapter 9 Entry into Deviant Groups
• Chapter 10 Acculturation to Group Norms
• Chapter 11 Social Diversity
• Part Four Deviant Identity