Functions of Deviance
Most explanations of deviance focus on the motivation of individual
deviant actors. Sociological explanations of deviance typically provide a
social psychological account of how deviant individual behavior is shaped
by social conditions. It is possible, however, to look at the relationship
between deviance and organization apart from the ways individual acts are
influenced by social structure. One way of conceiving such relationships is
in terms of the functions deviance performs for the organization.
Perhaps the oldest and most familiar versions of this perspective are
theories of scapegoating (Mizruchi 1998). Communities unable to cope
directly with the source of their problems seek out suitable targets to expel.
While such collective exercises seldom resolve the underlying problem, the
collective act of expulsion strengthens the bonds of the community so that it
is better able to endure the real crisis. Frustration-aggression theory,
developed by motivational psychologists, is an individual-level variant of
this generalization: individuals facing blocked goals release tension through
acts of violence directed against a safe and suitable target. Such targets are
usually unrelated to the source of frustration, which is unrecognized or
unreachable. For example, frustration-aggression theory predicts that
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lynchings and hate crimes vary with the level of frustration induced by
economic recessions (Green, Glaser and Rich 1998).
The social organizational version of this perspective is due to
Durkheim (1893; 1895). Durkheim began with several observations: (1)
deviance is not abnormal, but an ordinary and routine aspect of social
organization (2) deviance is universal yet relative; all societies encounter
deviants, but are few common denominators can be found among all the acts
societies regard as deviant (3) while deviant may be socially destructive, so
may normative acts; the correlation between an act’s destructiveness and its
deviant status is curiously imperfect. These observations led Durkheim to
theorize that deviance performs functions for the larger society. One such
function is the galvanizing of the community. By expelling the deviant, the
ordinary people confirm and validate their commitment to the existing order.
Even a community of morally perfect individuals, Durkheim (1895, pp. 689) argued, will be driven by the logic of its social organization to single out
one member for expulsion through a communal ritual. The source of
deviance is, thus, social organization; the particular activity is incidental.
Durkheim left this idea logically unrefined and empirically unsupported (see
critiques from Trade [1895] to Jenkins [1988]). Unlike Suicide (Durkheim
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1895), which deployed massive empirical evidence to support the argument
that social integration influenced the individuals’ decisions to take their own
lives, his ideas about the symbiotic relationship between deviance and social
integration lacked the refinement that comes with sustained empirical
inquiry. While Durkheim’s argument entered the canon of sociological
theory for the next half century, serious effort to explore empirically the
functions of deviance began only in the 1960s.
Dentler and Erikson (1959) examined how small military and
religious task-oriented groups maintained deviants as focal points of group
integration. Deviant individuals were excluded from the circle of ordinary
members, but at the same time the groups resisted external efforts to remove
physically the deviants from the group. In the most sustained and influential
analysis of this process, Kai Erikson turned to three episodes in the history
of seventeenth century Puritan Massachusetts. At roughly thirty-year
intervals the prosecution of religious heresy preoccupied the colony.
Erikson uses historical evidence to build a case for interpreting these three
prosecutions as supporting Durkheim’s thesis. Because he lacked direct
indicators of social integration, Erikson explored variation in the disposition
of the colony engaged in ritual punishment (cf. Cohen 1982).
While Erikson’s formulation inspired several extensions (e.g.,
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Bergesen 1977; Inverarity 1976; Lauderdale 1976), current thinking has
followed a third rendition of the argument initiated by Stanley Cohen
(1972). In a case study analysis of media and political reactions to a
relatively minor episode of youth gang violence in Britain, Cohen coined the
terms “moral panic” and “folk devil.” The moral panic version gives greater
attention to the multiplicity of moral communities in society and the
independent that roles of institutional structures like the mass
communications media and electoral politics play in the social construction
of deviance (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994).
Functional explanation treats deviance and control as symbolic actions
driven by factors beyond the deviants’ or the controllers’ rational
understanding actions. The burden of proof falls on the investigator to
provide clear and convincing evidence of connections between the boundary
crises or panics and the societal preoccupation with witches, serial killers or
drug kingpins. Functional explanations of deviance risk degenerating into
post-hoc explanations: with a small investment in ingenuity one can always
point to a consequence for or a disposition in the social organization that will
seemingly explain the epidemic of deviance. Such explanations can,
however, be grounded in sound logic and persuasive evidence. For example
Tyler and Boeckmann (1997) show how support for three-strikes sentencing
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laws is related to broader moral anxieties rather than to immediate
instrumental calculations of victimization risk. As in any explanation,
validity of the functional analysis depends on the attention paid to the logical
hazards of the argument (Hempel 1965; Merton1968; Stinchcombe 1978)
and to weighing of the account against plausible alternative explanations (cf.
Waddington 1986).
REFERENCES
Bergesen, Albert J. 1977. "Political Witch Hunts: The Sacred and
Subversive in Cross-National Perspective." American Sociological
Review 42:220-233.
Cohen, Gerald A.. 1982. "Functional Explanation, Consequence
Explanation, and Marxism." Inquiry 25:27-56.
Cohen, Stanley. 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of
Mods and Rockers. London: McGibbon and Kee.
Dentler, Robert and Kai Erikson. 1959. "The Functions of Deviance in Small
Groups." Social Problems 7:98-107.
Durkheim, Emile.. 1893 [1984]. The Division of Labor in Society.
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IL: Free Press.
Durkheim, Emile _. 1897 [1951]. Suicide. New York: Free Press.
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Goode, Erich and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. 1994. Moral Panics: The Social
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Green, Donald P., Jack Glaser and Andrew Rich. 1998. "From Lynching to
Gay Bashing: The Elusive Connection between Economic Conditions
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Hempel, Carl. 1965. "The Logic of Functional Explanation." Pp. 297-330 in
Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York: Free Press.
Jenkins, Philip. 1994b. Using Murder: The Social Construction of Serial
Homicide. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Jensen, Gary F. 1988. "Functional Research on Deviance: A Critical
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Lauderdale, Pat. 1976. "Deviance and Moral Boundaries." American
Sociological Review 41:660-76.
Liska, Allen E. and Barbara D. Warner. 1991. "Functions of Crime: A
Paradoxical Process." American Journal of Sociology 96:1441-1463.
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Merton, Robert K.. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York:
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Mizruchi, Susan L. 1998. The Science of Sacrifice: American Literature and
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Schattenberg, Gus. 1988. "Social Control Functions of Mass Media
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Stinchcombe, Arthur. 1978. Theoretical Methods in Social History. New
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Tarde, Gabriel. 1895 [1983 ]. "Criminality and Social Health." Pp. 76-92 in
Durkheim and the Law, edited by Steve Lukes and Andrew Scull.
New York: St. Martins Press.
Tyler, Tom R. and Robert J. Boeckmann. 1997. “Three Strikes and You Are
Out, but Why?: The Psychology of Public Support for Punishing Rule
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JAMES INVERARITY
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