• Control occurs at all levels
• Most respect and accept
• Expect same of others (predictability)
• Failure leads to sanctions (formal and informal)

Social Control

• Conformity and Obedience
  • Conformity --going along with one's peers (Asch)
    
    See the original: https://youtu.be/atb_41EDqIA [transcript]
    
    
  • Obedience--Compliance with authority (institutionalized power) Milgram (1974) (Slide Show) (Listen: Refusing [transcript], Pain [transcript], You are required, The third guy! [transcript]) (Ethical questions concerning Milgram's experiment). NY Times article, "Decades Later, Still Asking: Would I Pull That Switch?," 7/1/2008 (local copy); see also: Griggs, Richard A 2016. Milgram's Obedience Study: A Contentious Classic Reinterpretation. Sage: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0098628316677644
    
    
  • https://youtu.be/eTX42lVDwA4 [transcript]
  • ABC repeats in 2014: https://youtu.be/JnYUl6wlBF4
    
• Informal and Formal--Last resort: failure of informal
• Internal (socialization) and External
• Special case: Law
  1. Norms considered essential to social order
  2. Political--made by government--people in control of state
  3. Interpreted by courts
  4. Backed by legitimate force

Law==> Sociological interest: Creation of law, Changing standards, determination of violation, appropriate sanctions (age of victims)

Deviance:

• Behavior (or identity) that violates (or is interpreted as violating) the standards of conduct or expectations of a group or society.
  • Comprehensive term
  • No Moral connotation
  • All have violated, not all deviant: Social process and social context.
  • Can't separate "normals" from "deviants"--definitions and interpretations.
  • Relativity: situation, Actor, Victim (if any)
  • Harm?
  • Audiences
• Is it deviant or Sport?
• Is it Deviant: Marijuana as Medicine?
• Is it Deviant: Tattoos?
• Is it Deviant: flash mobs? (see also)(Doing Nothing)[transcript](Holding Hands)[transcript](Best Buy)[transcript]

The Social Context

• Deviance exists only in relation to cultural norms
• People become deviant only as others define them that way
• Both norms and defining processes involve POWER

Early Explanations

1. The Demonic
2. Classical--Now Rational Choice/Deterrence
3. Biological and psychological: Individual versus social factors?

Sociological Theories

Functionalism

Durkheim:

• Normal and Necessary
  • Boundary Maintenance
  • Group solidarity: Ritual of Punishment
  • Innovation
  • Tension Reduction
• Anomie and deviance out of control

Merton:

• Structural Strain/Anomie Theory
• Socially structured disjuncture between culturally defined and accepted goals (aspirations) and socially approved means for obtaining these goals (expectations).

Hirschi: Control Theory- The Social Bond

• Why we don't violate?
• Elements of the Bond:
  1. Belief (internal)
  2. Attachment (external)
  3. Commitment (external)
  4. Involvement (external)

Interactionism:

• Not WHY, but HOW
• A process, a relationship
• Deviant Identity and career

Cultural Transmission: Learning Theories

Walter Miller:

• Lower-class subculture
• Family structure and alienated youth: Gangs
• Focal concerns
  1. Trouble
  2. Toughness
  3. Excitement
  4. Autonomy
  5. Fate

Edwin Sutherland: Differential Association

• Learn behavior (behavior is behavior)
• Motives
• Learning depends on:
  1. Intensity
  2. Frequency
  3. Duration
• Learning involves:
  • Techniques
  • Motives and attitudes
  • Definitions
• Acquire definitions favorable to norm violation--violate the norms

Case study: Howard Becker, "Becoming a Marijuana Smoker" (1963)

David Matza and Gresham Sykes: Drift and Techniques of Neutralization

1. Deny Victim
2. Deny Harm
3. Deny Responsibility
4. Condemn Condemners
5. Appeal to higher Loyalty

Erving Goffman "Reframing": Ken Levi--Being a Hit Man

• Societal Reaction
• Stigma (people with disabilities)
• Secondary Deviance
• Moral Careers
• Self-fulfilling prophecy (self-concept and exclusion: Looking-Glass Self)
• Relativity and contingencies:
  1. Chambliss: Saints and Roughnecks, Power, Social Class and the ability to resist the label. Focus on the agents of social control and the impact of the labeling process.
  2. Becker: The Outsiders- "The deviant is one who is successfully labeled as such."
  3. Mental Disorder: Szasz, Scheff and Rosenhahn ("Being Sane in Insane Places"):
  • Myth of Mental Illness
  • Residual Deviance
  • Retrospective Interpretation

Conflict:

• Competing groups and interests
• Crime and deviance as political reality
• Discretionary powers

Radical:

1. Law a tool of the state controlled by the dominate class.
2. Laws reflect and protect their interests.
3. Quinney: Bias, Discretion, Differential enforcement and treatment--Capital punishment, African Americans and prison, Street versus White collar crime.

Structural:

1. System and inequality-- alienates==> Deviance
2. McChesney-Lind: Sexism, Patriarchy and Female Delinquency
3. Colvin and Pauly: Class and Workplace Control==> Family Control Structure==> Alienation==> School failures==> Peer subcultures==> Community opportunities==> Deviance

CRIME

• Law
• Index Crimes

Sociological Categories

Professional Crime: Sutherland--"it's my job." Learning, career, group, integration into everyday life.

Organized Crime: Activities of an organization which is primarily directed toward illegal activity. Bureaucratic, Secretive, Ethnic Succession.

White Collar Crime: Crimes committed by high status individual and corporations as a part of their everyday business activity. Less visible, VERY costly, hard to control, rarely significant penalties imposed. Violators often aren't defined a criminal. Even with conviction--little harm done to person's career.

Victimless Crime: cost, police criminality in investigating, morality

Information/Computer Crime: hacking, identity theft, "phishing"

Crime Statistics

• Crime rates and the "Crime Clock"
• UCR: Index Crimes--Murder, Assault, Rape, Robbery, Burglary, Theft, Motor Vehicle, Arson (?)
• Victim survey NCVS
• Self reports
• Reporting problems--The Dark Figure

Index Criminal versus Real Life: reporting, visibility, and definitions

• Age
• Gender
• Race
• Class

Controlling Crime: The Death Penalty?

• Beccaria's Classical Perspective
• Specific and General Deterrence
• Research on deterrence
• Race and Bias
• Just Desert?

Economic Stratification

URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/010/deviance.html
Owner: Robert O. Keel rok@umsl.edu
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Last Updated: Tuesday, October 3, 2017 9:31 AM