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Moral Boundaries

Moral Boundaries. The Functionalist Approach to Deviance. Deviance is Functional Emile Durkheim. Societies need deviance to survive Responding to deviance increases group cohesion Deviance enables social change Martin Luther King The “society of saints” (next).

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Moral Boundaries

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  1. Moral Boundaries The Functionalist Approach to Deviance

  2. Deviance is FunctionalEmile Durkheim • Societies need deviance to survive • Responding to deviance increases group cohesion • Deviance enables social change • Martin Luther King • The “society of saints” (next)

  3. Does society create deviance? • Do prisons produce criminals? • Do psychiatric hospitals produce crazy people? • Does welfare produce poverty?

  4. Boundary MaintenanceKai Erikson • How do we learn group rules or norms? • “Morality and immorality meet at the public scaffold” - punishment makes boundaries visible • Official responses to deviance mark moral boundaries • Criminal trials, court-martial, psychiatric commitment, school suspensions

  5. Rule Creation:Moral Entrepreneurs • People or interest groups who take initiative to create rules • Lobby to make or change laws • View the creation of rules as necessary to improve some aspect of life • Prohibition, anti-abortionists, environmentalists

  6. An Experimentby Pat Lauderdale (1976) • Do groups really engage in “boundary maintenance”? • Will they create “deviance” to maintain group cohesion?

  7. Study Design • Two small groups were recruited from the community to participate in a juvenile delinquency project • Each group was asked to recommend treatments for delinquent youth • Both were led to believe the activity was real

  8. Study Design (Cont’d) • A deviant was planted in both groups who adopted extreme positions • The deviant behaved the same in both groups

  9. The Threat • Group 1: Outside threat condition • The CJ expert listens for a while then criticized the group, states that it should be disbanded, then leaves • Group 2: Control condition • Expert listens, says nothing, then leaves

  10. The Focus of the Study • Subjects were asked to rank each member of the group in terms of how much they wanted that person to remain in the group

  11. Results • The deviant in the threat condition was more strongly rejected than the deviant in the non-threat condition, although the behavior was exactly the same in both groups • The non-deviant members of the threatened group became more cohesive after blaming the deviant for their group’s failure

  12. Implication

  13. Have we become tolerant of deviance? • Media Headlines • Nations Teacher’s Union Offers Homicide Insurance • Connecticut Mayor Arrested for Engaging in Sex With a Minor

  14. Defining Deviancy DownDaniel Patrick Moynihan • Has deviance been “defined down”?

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