DV - Theoretical Perspectives and Deviance Lesson
Theoretical Perspectives and Deviance Lesson
Now that you know the basic stance that each approach takes to deviance, let's look at the individual theories that are present within each perspective.
Structural-Functional Perspective
As the founder of this perspective, Émile Durkheim's claims on deviance set the foundations for this perspective's approach to deviance. While studying deviance in societies around the world, Durkheim concluded that deviance was not only present everywhere but necessary to social stability. Durkheim identified four functions of deviance:
- Deviance corroborates a society's cultural values and norms. (By labeling that which is not "normal," a society restates that which is.)
- In responding to deviance, a society establishes its moral boundaries. (By responding to that which is not "normal," a society draws the line between what is "right" and what is "wrong.")
- Responding to deviance also draws people closer together. (Society will bond in its response to what is not "normal," thereby reaffirming its ties.)
- Deviance encourages social change. (Those members of society who act out of the "normal" way are showing the other members of society an alternative path that could be taken. In these cases, the deviant are "trailblazers.")
Through these functions, Durkheim reasoned that deviance helped counter-balance those problems that might arise in a society's collective consciousness as a result of social change. In this sense, Durkheim identified deviance as necessary in combatting anomie.
But while Durkheim focused on the necessity of deviance within a society, most of his Structural-Functionalist successors theorized as to why deviance exists at all. They became especially interested in how society promotes too much deviance, particularly in the area of criminal deviance. Basic to these theories is the notion that society is a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. Durkheim's successors worked primarily in the area of what happens when a person within a society cannot find a role in which to participate in that solidarity and stability.
Robert K. Merton's Deviance Typology
Robert Merton developed the Strain Theory to explain what happens when an individual is unable to succeed within a society. Merton looked at the opportunities of individuals to succeed using conventional methods in society. He concluded that society establishes cultural goals and conventional means for attaining them but that not all people are able to reach those goals or behave in conventional ways. Merton theorized that those people who could not or would not succeed in the conventional sense experienced frustration or strain. Thus, he identified five types of deviance that emerge based on a person's acceptance or rejection of these goals and means as a result of the strain they experienced. His findings are explained below.
Learn more Merton's Deviance Topology by selecting the question mark (?) hotspots.
Building on Merton's Strain Theory, Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin argued that the lack of access to conventional means to success was not the only explanation as to the appearance of deviance. While we know that deviance is not just of the criminal element, Cloward and Ohlin focused their study on the criminally deviant and identified a subculture that arises when opportunities support criminal activity. According to Cloward and Ohlin, when the structure of opportunity favors criminal activity a criminal subculture develops. Using Al Capone as an example, Cloward and Ohlin pointed out that as a poor child of immigrants Capone's access to conventional American methods of success was, indeed, limited. However, what pushed Capone into his "profession" was the presence of people who taught or socialized him on the methods of selling alcohol during Prohibition. Due to the presence of an illegitimate opportunity structure and the absence of a legitimate one, a criminal subculture emerges with successful criminal "role models" and a "career structure" for aspirants. Yet not all criminal deviance relies on the presence of criminal opportunities- sometimes there is no opportunity present at all. In those cases, either a conflict subculture or a retreatist subculture materializes. In the case of the conflict subculture, the deviant person vents his or her frustration at finding no success in either a conventional or illegal way into violence as a misdirected attempt to achieve some element of respect. In the case of the retreatist subculture, the deviant person finds no success in any of the other criminal subcultures and abandons all attempts to interact with any society often turning to alcohol or drugs as a way to "drop out."
Once these "delinquent" subcultures were defined, Walter Miller developed a list of characteristics that applied to each. According to Miller, these subcultures are identified by the presence of:
- TROUBLE- a result of conflicts between the subcultures and authority figures;
- TOUGHNESS- a result of value being placed on physical attributes;
- SMARTNESS- a result of members within the subculture "outsmarting" each other and authority figures;
- NEED FOR EXCITEMENT- a result of proving oneself through survival of dangerous situations along with a desire to find stimulation through thrill-seeking;
- A BELIEF IN FATE- as members of these subcultures feel that they have very little control over what happens in their lives, they tend to look at fate as the explanation behind what happens in their lives;
- DESIRE FOR FREEDOM- which is often expressed as anger towards authority figures and brings the characteristics of delinquent subcultures back to trouble.
Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay came up with a new idea to explain delinquency while studying Chicago's crime problem in the 1940s. They determined that delinquent subcultures lingered in certain neighborhoods in Chicago despite the racial and ethnic transitions of their populations and called their proposition the Social Disorganization Theory. Shaw and McKay concluded that ecological conditions specific to certain neighborhoods established crime rates beyond the characteristics of the individual residents. In part, they based this conclusion on the fact that when the residents of these certain neighborhoods moved away, the crime rates did not follow them to their new communities. The fundamental similarity that Shaw and McKay saw in these neighborhoods in Chicago was the level of residential mobility which caused social disorganization. These neighborhoods were temporary homes for people of little to no financial means who moved out as soon as fiscally possible. Later theorists expanded Shaw's and McKay's theory to explain that in neighborhoods that aren't plagued with residential mobility, residents form tight relationships that allow for the identification of strangers, the reporting of deviant behaviors to parents, and an ability to pass warnings of approaching trouble along. In so doing, these residents are able to restrict the level of criminally deviant behavior within their community. However, residents living in neighborhoods with frequent shifts in occupancy find their means of forming and benefiting from these tight relationships disrupted by the constant change in population. Another hypothesis argues that the extreme isolation occurring in these neighborhoods from the rest of society at large also adds to the inability of residents to curtail deviance. Theorists argue that the social disorganization endemic (peculiar to a particular people or locality indigenous) to neighborhoods designed to be temporary residences and characterized by many high rise buildings (with the purpose of sheltering as many people as possible for as cheaply as possible) resulted in higher levels of crime more so than any cultural trait of the residents there.
As with most social science theories, there are critics of the Structural-Functional Approach to deviance. According to the critics there are a number of problems with this perspective's explanation of deviance. First, sometimes a community does not rally together in its response to a crime as suggested by Durkheim. Therefore, deviance might not play a role in creating a solid and stable society. Second, none of these theories really address those crimes that stem from "passion" or mental instability. Third, most of these theories rely on a conventional understanding of what success versus failure or right versus wrong looks like in order to determine who should be labeled deviant. This means that a lot of harmless behavior gets labeled while a lot of harmful behavior does not.
Symbolic-Interaction Perspective
Speaking of labels--- that is the subject of the theory comprising the main contribution of the Symbolic- Interaction Approach to deviance. In 1963, Howard Becker rationalized that people only become criminals once they are labeled thusly and, in turn, internalize the label as part of their own self-identity. With this reasoning, Becker introduced sociology to his Labeling Theory along with the notion that deviance is not based on what people do so much as it is based on how people respond. Over the years, other Symbolic-Interactionists added to this theory. As the Labeling Theory evolved, a Symbolic-Interactionist, known as Edwin Lemert, identified two types of deviance that evolved into further steps along a deviant path.
Labeling Theory Process Activity
Following the assignment of a stigma (whether there is a degradation ceremony or not,) are two more possibilities. Symbolic-Interactionists identified the Retrospective Labeling step as the point when others begin looking at the offender's history in the light of the new stigma. During this step, others will retrospectively label previous actions by the stigmatized person according to the present deviant stigma. Surely you've witnessed this step- how many times have you watched the news and seen the neighbor of a criminal give an interview telling of past misdeeds that no one mentioned until after the label of criminal was given? Symbolic-Interactionists also identified the Projective Labeling step as the point when others will use the stigma to predict future deviant behaviors of the stigmatized. Surely, you've seen this too. Once a person is labeled as "bad," people hypothesize on possible "bad" behaviors to come. Symbolic-Interactionists argue that once Retrospective and Projective Labelings are administered, an increase in deviant behavior on the part of the labeled rises in probability.
An interesting aspect of the Labeling Theory is the dominant role of the person or people doing the labeling. With that sort of power, it can be assumed that not everyone can play the role of defining deviance and then applying the label. Keep this in mind for our next module, Social Inequality.
While the Labeling School of Thought is Symbolic-Interactionism's main offering in deviance study, it is not the only one to come from this perspective. In the 1930s, Edwin Sutherland introduced his Differential Association Theory. In it, Sutherland proposed that a person's inclination to conform to or deviate from cultural norms depended on the amount of contact between the person and significant others (people with whom a person forms a primary relationship; individuals that are the most important in the development of self-like parents) who encouraged or rejected conventional behavior. According to Sutherland, a person was much more likely to conduct deviant behaviors if he or she was encouraged to do so by others either verbally or through example. In so determining, he connected deviance with socialization.
In the module on Social Control, you were introduced to Travis Hirschi and his Social Bonding Theory. During the course of his career, Hirschi changed the name of this theory to the Social Control Theory and adapted it to his study on delinquency. Building on his argument that four elements bound people to each other and society, Hirschi added the idea that these elements encouraged conformity:
- Attachment- strong attachment to people within the society encouraged conformity
- Commitment- strong commitment to achieving shared goals encouraged conformity
- Involvement- an increased amount of participation within society encouraged conformity
- Beliefs- strong conviction to conventional morality brought respect for authority figures and encouraged conformity
With one more change, Hirschi rounded off his Social Control Theory. He substituted "Opportunity" for "Commitment" in his list of elements, reasoning that a person's access to legal or conventional opportunities encouraged conformity in its presence and nonconformity in its absence. Within his Social Control Theory, Hirschi assumed that all people found at least some deviance tempting. Through his explanation of Attachment, Opportunity, Involvement, and Belief and their roles in encouraging conformity, Hirshi also made the case that social control depended on people anticipating the consequences of their behavior and choosing to conform.
Similar to the previous theoretical perspective, the Symbolic-Interaction Approach has its fair share of critics. Mostly, these critics take issue with the Labeling Theory. They point out that in relying so heavily on the relevance of cultural norms in determining deviance, the perspective ignores those behaviors that are deemed deviant universally, such as murder, and that the theory should only be applied to those deviant behaviors of a less serious nature. They also point out that the perspective passes over those people who do not resist a deviant label, such as political activists who willingly embrace the label to highlight a need for social change. Lastly, critics claim that there is not enough data to support the claim that a deviant label result in more deviant behavior.
Social-Conflict Perspective
As the Social-Conflict Perspective is a framework for building sociological theory that sees society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and change, it should come as no surprise that this approach focuses on the inequality present when and where the term "deviant" is used. While Social-Conflict theorists join their Structural-Functionalist colleagues in musing over criminal deviance, Social-Conflict theories of the past few decades focused more on the labeling of deviance in relation to socioeconomic power. In 1972, Alexander Liazos, a prominent social-conflict theorist, called upon his colleagues in "The Poverty of the Sociology of Deviance: Nuts, Sluts, and Perverts," to revamp the sociological thought on deviance. He wrote, " ... all is not well with the field of 'deviance'." Close examination reveals that writers of this field still do not try to relate the phenomena of "deviance" to larger social, historical, political, and economic contexts. The emphasis is still on the "deviant" and the "problems" he presents to himself and others, not on the society within which he emerges and operates. Therefore, it is important that we redefine drastically the entire field, especially since it is a flourishing one. Throughout his article, Liazos quoted traditional sociological findings on deviance and determined that there were several glaring omissions within them that stemmed from not identifying institutional deviance. "The covert, institutional forms of 'deviance' are nowhere to be found. Reading these authors, one would not know that the most destructive use of violence in the last decade has been the war in Vietnam, in which the United States has heaped unprecedented suffering on the people and their land; more bombs have been dropped in Vietnam than in the entire World War II. Moreover, the robbery of the corporate world through tax breaks, fixed prices, low wages, pollution of the environment, shoddy goods, etc., is passed over in our fascination with 'dramatic and predatory' actions." Essentially, Liazos's article challenged the field of sociology to develop new theories on deviance (he seemed to loathe the Symbolic-Interactionist Labeling Theory) and to address his notion that deviants weren't necessarily bad (at least in comparison to other unnamed wealthier deviants) as much as just powerless. Based on the sociological work that followed, it seems that his fellow Social-Conflict theorists rose to the task.
Social-Conflict theorists claim there is a pattern in the use of the term "deviant" that allows them to predict which behaviors will be deemed deviant by society. It is as follows.
Social-Conflict Pattern of Deviance:
- All norms express the interests of the rich or the powerful; therefore, the term "deviant" will only be applied to that which opposes the rich and the powerful. For example, a person pushing for economic equality is a "thief"- a person raving against economic injustice is a "radical."
- The rich or powerful have the means to resist deviant labels that others do not. For example, "white-collar" criminals are not labeled in the same way that other criminals are; also, the powerful in society are able to afford the resources necessary to make labels, or criminal prosecution, go away.
- The belief that norms and laws are inherently good and right distracts society from the political undercurrent present in norms and laws. For example, society might not argue against a "three-strike" rule to send criminals away to prison for extremely long sentences because it assumes that there is a good and fair reason for this rule.
In his book, Law, Deviance, and Social Control, Steven Spitzer pinpointed how labels were applied to behaviors and people in relation to capitalism. He broke down his findings into positive and negative labels:
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Negative Labels: |
Positive Labels: |
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Spitzer identified that which Social-Conflict theorists since Liazos argue are inherent in the labeling of deviant behavior. Society blames the individual for deviant behavior rather than question the systemic causes of deviance. This blame, they claim, is evident in the negative terms used to describe the person: one who relies on the welfare system is a "freeloader," one who marches against injustice is a "rabble-rouser," one who questions the capitalist economy is a "commie" or a "radical," one who tries to achieve conventional goals through unconventional means is a "the criminal."
As with the other two major theoretical perspectives, there are critics of the Social-Conflict Approach to Deviance. The criticisms include:
- Claiming that laws are only created by the rich and powerful to protect their own interests, the Social-Conflict approach to Deviance is over-simplifying culture and norms.
- The Social-Conflict approach ignores Émile Durkheim's findings that criminal deviance existed in all societies, all of which were characterized by varying degrees of inequality- in saying that criminality stems only from inequality.
Deviance Sorting Review Activity
To prepare for your next quiz, work through the activity below.
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