Unit 7: Deviance and Social Control

Topic: Defining deviance in differentcultural/societal contexts

Do Now: Do any of these imagesoffend/shock you?

In a bizarre publicity stunt, Dr Wei Sheng pierced 2008 decorative needles in his head, face, hands and chest in the five colours of the Olympic rings. Dr Sheng's stunt was not the first time he had gained notoriety for sticking pins in his body. In 2004 he secured a Guinness World Record after piercing 1790 needles into his head.

Most pierced woman in the world

Deviance is…

•Any violation of group norms, however major or minor. •Deviant behavior differs from society to society•Sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and criminologists study how these norms are created, how they change over time and how they are enforced.

What are some examplesof deviance in different

social contexts?

Social Stigma:

Stigma (Goffman, 1963) describes the labels society uses to devalue members of certain social groups (overweight people, short people, redheads, etc.

How do social interactions online impact our ideasAbout what is/isn’t deviant social behavior?

Social Control:

Techniques & strategies for

preventing deviant human behavior in society. Occurs on

all levels of society

Can you think of some examples from:

1.School?2.Your Home?3.Society in general?

•In the United States, anti-miscegenation laws were state laws passed by individual states to prohibit interracial marriage and interracial sex.

•Typically defining miscegenation as a felony, these laws prohibited the solemnization of weddings between persons of different races and prohibited the officiating of such ceremonies.

•Sometimes, the individuals attempting to marry would not be held guilty of miscegenation itself, but felony charges of adultery or fornication would be brought against them instead. All anti-miscegenation laws banned the marriage of whites and non-white groups, primarily blacks, but often also Native Americans and Asians

The Social Context of Deviance

Describe when each of the following actions can be either deviant or completely

acceptable:1. Murder

2. Fighting (physically)

3. Being drunk in public

4. Doing drugs

5. Being sexually promiscuous6. Lying

• Conformity: Going along with peers who have no particular right to direct our behavior

• Obedience: compliance with higher authority in a hierarchical structure.

• Can you give examples of each?

The line on the left is equal in length to which line on the right

(A, B, or C?)

• In a control group, with no pressure to conform to an erroneous view, only 1 subject out of 35 ever gave an incorrect answer. However, when surrounded by individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, participants provided incorrect responses on a high proportion of the questions (36.8%). 75% of the participants gave an incorrect answer to at least one question.

The Milgram Experiment (1963)

Social Experiment that measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.

“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”---Stanley Milgram

The “Banality of Evil”• Phrase coined by Hannah Arendt and incorporated in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

• Thesis that the great evils in history were/are not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.

---Him Huy, head of guard detail at Tuol Sleng (S-21) death camp where he personally oversaw the deaths of 14,000 individuals.

Huy, now 50, lives in a small village in Cambodia where he lives alongside former victims.

“I’m not a bad person. I’m a good man. I never argue with anyone. I never fight with anyone. I have good intentions as

a human being…”

“We were all prisoners, those who killed and those who were killed. We were victims too. I had no choice. If I hadn’t killed them [Cambodian citizens], I would have been killed

myself.”

The Nuremberg Defense:• Coined during the Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg after World War II. 

• Nazi war criminals who were charged with genocide, mass murder, torture and other atrocities used the defense "I was only following orders" so frequently that the argument became known generically as "The Nuremberg Defense".

Sociological Perspectives on

Deviance

Functionalist: deviance has both

positive and negative purposes

(defines boundaries,

reinforces norms, etc.)

Merton: objectives of deviant people the same as non-deviant ones

(e.g. a their and a store clerk both ‘working’ for what they

want)Interactionists: deviance is a form

of cultural transmission (e.g. graffiti gangs in

L.A.) - same socialization process to both deviant and non-deviant behavior

Differential Association Theory:

•States that association with groups oriented towards deviance makes us more likely to engage in deviant acts ourselves

Control Theory:

• Everyone is propelled towards deviance• Have both inner (morality, fear of punishment, etc) & outer controls (family, friends, etc) that influence us to stay away from crime

Labeling Theory (societal-reaction approach):

• Does not focus on why some individuals commit devaint acts, but attempts to explain why certain people are viewed as deviants, delinquents, bad kids, losers, and criminals whereas others whose behavior is similar are not (e.g. famous sociological case study of the “Saints and the Roughnecks”) - READING

• What are some labels we apply to people we think of as deviant?

Social Constructionist Perspective

Related to labeling theory, this perspective states that deviance is a product of culture. Social constructivists believe that although ‘deadbeat dads’, ‘date rapists’, ‘child molesters’, and ‘spree killers’ have always been among us, but have been labeled at different times in history based on what society values.

Reads (from bottom to top) “Patronly, Prusish,Old-Fashioned, Proper,Flirty, Cheeky, Provacative, Asking forit, Slut, Whore”

What point is this making regarding our labels of people?

Crime

Aim: How do societies determine laws based on perceptions of deviance?

•Do Now: What is a ‘crime’ - offer some examples. How does a society determine what a crime is?

•Write down all of the terms you associate with the word “Criminal” – How does your label impact how you view someone who is a ‘criminal’

Crime & Deviance:

• Sociologically, crime is defined as legally regulated deviant behavior

• Deviance is a broad concept of which crime is only a small part

• Therefore, all crime is classified as deviant, but not all deviance is classified as crime!

3 Strikes Laws (these are all true!)

1. In Iowa, a man was sentenced to 10 years for stealing $30 worth of steaks from a grocery store

2. In California, a 21-year-old anthropology major was sentenced to 10 years for mailing sheets of LSD to her boyfriend.

3. In Los Angeles, a 27-year-old man was sentenced to 25 years for stealing a pizza.

4. In Alabama, a husband, father, Vietnam veteran, and owner to a roofing business bought a pound of marijuana. Thirteen years earlier, he had been arrested for several petty crimes- crimes that didn’t even carry a prison sentence. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

5. In Sacramento, a man who passed himself off as Tiger Woods to go on a $17,000 shopping spree was sentenced to 200 years in prison.

Victimless Crime (Schur, 1965, 1985): describes the willing exchange among adults of widely desired but illegal goods and services such as drugs and prostitution - concept is highly controversial.

Social Perceptions of Prostitution…

1. How are prostitutes viewed by our society? 2. Why isn’t prostitution looked at with the same

prestige as other work? Why isn’t it even perceived as work?

3. If promiscuity is legal, why is prostitution illegal?

4. Would prostitution be viewed differently if it were a male enterprise, predominantly?

5. Why do other nations such as Holland perceive prostitution differently?

6. How do you personally view it?7. Why does our legal system disproportionately use

negative legal sanctions on the women who engage in prostitution, and not on the men who frequent prostitutes? Do you agree with this?

Drugs, Alcohol, and Deviance…1. Why are certain types of

drugs legal and others not (so-called ‘street drugs’)

2. Do different standards exist for different drug users (crack vs. cocaine, for example, or nicotine vs. illegal drugs)

3. What threat do drugs pose to any given society?

4. Should governments regulate a citizen’s drug consumption?

Race, Deviance, & Crime Discussion:

1. What is your perception regarding which races/ethnic groups commit the most crimes?

2. Where does your perception come from? Do you think it’s accurate?

3. Is there a difference in the types of crimes committed by races/ethnicities? If so, why might this be so?

Social Control and Conflict Theory:

• Elites of society create the laws which govern everyone

• Law is instrument of repression designed for privileged to maintain their power/wealth

• Criminal justice system directs energies towards middle/lower classes (called “differential justice)

Social Disorganization Theory

Says that social relationships within a neighborhood impact people’s behaviors -theory states that increases in crime and deviance can occur when there is a breakdownof communal relationships such as family,church, schools, and local governments.

Social Class & Crime•Illegitimate Opportunity Structures: seemingly glamorous opportunities for cultural success for the poor- burglary, prostitution, drug dealing, gambling, and other common crimes

•Concentrated in urban slums

The ‘hustler’ is a role model for urban poor because he/she is one of the few who comes close to cultural goals of success (Cloward, Ohlin)

“White Collar” Crime

(Sutherland, 1983): • Refers to crimes that

people of respectable and high social status commit in the course of their occupation. Includes things like income tax evation, stock manipulation, embezzlement, misrepresentation in adverstising, etc.)

• Physicians never rob cabbies on the way to work, for example, but many do cheat Medicare in the course of their careers.

Difference in perceptions:

• There is a misperception that lower classes engage in more criminal activity

• This is due to visibility

• Street crimes are more covered in the media (newspapers, nightly news, etc) and more people fear being raped, killed, or mugged that they do being defrauded by a Wall Street company

Understanding Crime Statistics

Crime has dropped nationally in the last several decades (why do you think this is? Freakonomic?)

Feminist scholars note that non-violent crimes committed by women have actually increased in recent years (why?)

The FeministPerspective

Feminist criminologists (Adler, Chesney-Lind) noted that exiting approaches to deviance and crime were male-centered, and ingnored crimes against women (e.g. rape laws, which only defined rape as pertaining to sexual relations between people not married to each other)

Shaming/Degradation Ceremonies:

•Formal attempts to brand someone an outsider.

•Rituals that are designed to strip an individual of his or her identity as a group member.

•Creates in/out groups

Shaming/Degradation Ceremony:

• http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/SomsSUBDirectory/search_index.

jsp

In a scene that could have been lifted from the

Cultural Revolution, 17

Chinese villagers who petitioned

against government land-grabs were

recently subjected to a public humiliation session by district

officials, in Ankang City,

Shaanxi Province.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies:

•Once labeled, a group will take on characteristics of the label/stereotype

•In other words, the way we are treated actually shapes our behavior.

Deviance Activity:

•Read through the bulleted list of deviant acts (some of which are actual crimes, some of which are not)

•Next to each, write down the number of the sanction you would personally give that crime were you making the laws.

0 = No Punishment1 = Social disapproval2 = Small criminal fine3 = Large criminal fine

4 = Probation of suspended sentence5 = Short jail sentence (less than 6 months)6 = Lengthy jail sentence (6 months - 1 yr)

7 = Short prison sentence (1-3 years)8 = Moderate prison sentence (3-5 years)9 = Lengthy prison sentence (more than 5

years)10 = Life imprisonment

11 = Execution

Our America: Sex Offenders

Sex Offenders & Deviance Discussion:

1. Why do you think sex offenders are so looked down upon in our society - even compared to other violent criminals?

2. Do you agree with this perception? Why or why not?

3. Would you want a sex offender living in your neighborhood? Explain.

The West Memphis Three:

• We will be watching selected clips from the HBO documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.

• As you watch, consider the concepts discussed in class, including labeling theory, control theory, and shaming/degradation ceremonies.

As we watch the documentary “The World’s Most Dangerous Gang” with Lisa Ling, try to identify sociological examples of the roles of gangs