On the Sociology of Deviance

On the Sociology of Deviance Ch. 8, Kai T. Erikson

Deviant behavior in “communities” • communities: collectivities of people who share a common sphere of experience, which gives members a sense of belonging to a special “kind” and living in a special “place” • communities are “boundary-maintaining”: each community has a specific territory in the world, occupying a defined region of geographical and cultural space • both dimensions of group space – geographical & cultural – set the community apart and provide a point of reference for members

Boundary drawing • Q: How do people know about boundaries and how do they convey it to future generations? • A: By participating in the confrontations which occur when persons venture out to the edges of the group are met by policing agents whose job it is to guard the cultural integrity of the community • Confrontations - e.g., criminal trials, excommunication hearings, courts-martial, psychiatric case conferences – act as boundary-maintaining devices in that they demonstrate where the line is drawn between behavior that is acceptable in the community and behavior that is not. • are never a fixed property of any community

Confrontations between deviant offenders & social control agents • Confrontations - criminal trials, excommunication hearings, courts-martial, psychiatric case conferences - act as boundary-maintaining devices in that they demonstrate where the line is drawn b/w behavior that is acceptable in the community and behavior that is not • Each time the community moves to censure some act of deviation and convenes a formal ceremony to deal with the responsible offender, it sharpens the authority of the violated norm and restates group boundaries • Still, community boundaries are never fixed but are subject to change - as the nature & location of confrontations change

Deviance, in controlled quantities, may help preserve social stability • Deviant behavior, by marking the outer edges of group life, provides a framework within which members develop a sense of their own cultural identity • “…the agencies built by society for preventing deviance are often so poorly equipped for the task that we might well ask why this is regarded as their ‘real’ function in the first place” (98)

Commitment ceremonies: self-fulfilling prophecies? • The community’s decision to bring deviant sanctions against a member is a “rite of transition,” moving the person out of an ordinary place in society into a special deviant position • commitment ceremonies: highly public & dramatic events set up to judge whether or not someone is deviant, mark this change of status • the criminal trial is the most obvious example • importantly, in our culture, they are almost irreversible, and might be called “self-fulfilling prophecies”

Conclusion • Two separate yet often competing currents are found in any society: • forces which promote a high degree of conformity among people of community so they know what to expect from one another • forces which encourage a certain degree of diversity so that people can be deployed across the range of group space to survey its potential, measure its capacity, and patrol its boundaries fordeviants • Deviance is a natural product of group differentiation and contributes to the survival of the culture as a whole

The Production of Deviance in Capitalist Society Ch. 5, Steven Spitzer

Deviance within capitalist society • the capitalist mode of production has two key features: • it forms the foundation or infrastructure of society • it contains internal contradictions • Marxist theory illustrates the relationship between specific contradictions, the problems of capitalist development, and the production of a “deviant class”

Infrastructure & Superstructure • superstructure: the ideologies that dominate a particular era, all that "men say, imagine, conceive," including such things as "politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc." • emerges from and reflects the ongoing development of economic forces (infrastructure) • in class societies, the superstructure preserves the hegemony of the ruling class through a system of class controls, which are institutionalized in: • family, church, private associations, media, schools & the state • key function of the superstructure is the regulation and management of “problem populations”

Problem populations become eligible for management as deviant when they disturb, hinder, or call into question: • capitalist modes of appropriation • social conditions of production • patterns of distribution & consumption • capitalist socialization processes • ideology which supports capitalism

problem populations • tend to share social characteristics • most important is the fact that their behavior, personal qualities, and/or position threaten the social relations of production in capitalist societies • are not synonymous w/deviant populations • some members of problem populations are successfully transformed into supporters it capitalist order; the rest are “candidates for deviance processing” (68)

Problem populations are created in 2 ways • directly, as a product of the contradictions of capitalism • by creating a “relative surplus population,” i.e., people who are unemployed and disposable, whose labor is not required for the system • indirectly, through disturbances in the system of class rule • when institutions, e.g., mass education, fails to promote the values of bourgeois/capitalist society

Official social control creates two kinds of problem populations • social junk • social dynamite

social junk • a group that fails to participate in the roles supportive of capitalist society • they are viewed as costly yet relatively harmless by the dominant class • e.g., the officially administered aged, the handicapped, the mentally ill and mentally disabled • social control is managed by the therapeutic & welfare state, i.e., programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid

social dynamite • a group with the potential to call into question established relationships, esp. relations of production and domination • poses a more acute problem that requires rapid and focused expenditures • tends to be more youthful, alienated, and politically more volatile than social junk • Social control is handled by the legal/criminal justice system

Ch. 4: Blowing Smoke: Status Politics and the Shasta County Smoking Ban Ch. 4, Justin L. Tuggle and Malcom D. Holmes, pp. 53-66.

Is the association of tobacco with lower-status persons a factor in the crusade against smoking in public places? • Historically, attempts to control psychoactive substances have linked their use to categories of relatively powerless people: • marijuana & Mexican Americans • opiates & Asians • alcohol & immigrant Catholics • Recent evidence has shown that occupational status, education, and family income are related negatively to current smoking • Relationship of occupation & education to smoking have become stronger

Moral entrepreneurs vs status quo defenders • Moral entrepreneurs crusading for ban argued that secondhand smoke damages public health and that people have a right to a smoke-free environment • Status quo defenders countered that smokers have a constitutional right to indulge wherever and whenever they see fit

Differential Punishing of African Americans and Whites Who Possess Drugs: A Just Policy or a Continuation of the Past? Ch. 10, Rudolph Alexander, Jr. and Jacquelyn Gyamerah

The origins & course of differential punishing of African Americans • Under slavery in the US, controlling slaves required slave owners to subject slaves to sanctions for behaviors that were not offenses if committed by Whites, e.g., • leaving the plantation without a pass • being out of one’s quarters after curfew • being in a group of more than 5 slaves without a White man present • owning firearms or animals, buying alcohol, giving medicine to Whites, working in a drugstore, working in a print shop

Differential punishment, post-Slavery • Wanting to increase the #s of Africans in prisons in order to control them more effectively, Southern states enacted a series of laws, e.g., • several states increased penalties for stealing livestock, making it grand larceny • To counter this, Congress passed the 14th Amendment – the “equal protection clause” • But differential punishment continued

On the Sociology of Deviance