JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE
The City University of New York
SYLLABUS
Social Deviance
Sociology 240 Section 301
Fall 2010
Saturday 12:30 ­ 3:10 PM
Room N/2325
Instructor: Dr. Peter Marina
Email: pmarina@jjay.cuny.edu
Office Hours: Appointment Only
Course Description:
Analysis of the manner in which societies come to define certain behaviors as deviant. Particular attention will be paid to the social and cultural processes attendant in modern America upon such problems as social disorganization and conflict, civil disorder and violence, crime, mental illness, suicide, addiction, and sexual deviance. Selected theories of deviance will be critically examined. Deviance is a diverse and controversial concept of great importance to society and individuals. Using a sociological perspective this course will explore definitions of deviance, theoretical perspectives, which attempt to explain deviance, and how deviance is organized and managed. The course will take a social constructionist and interactionist perspective looking at the processes that create and control deviance. Contemporary forms of deviance will also be analyzed and discussed. Students will become exposed to various perspectives on how deviance is defined and constructed, to the major theoretical perspectives used to analyze and explain deviant behavior, explore contemporary forms of deviance, understand how society attempts to manage and control behavior, and finally to broaden the perspectives of students regarding deviance, social order, and social control. The class will cover the following topics, among others: Deviant Events and Social Control, Anomie and Conflict Theories, Labeling, Control, and Learning Theories, Interpersonal Violence, Nonviolent Crime, White­Collar and Corporate Crime, Drugs and Alcohol, Sexual Deviance, and Mental Illness.
Prerequisite: ENG 101 and SOC 101.
Course Requirements and Grading:
Mid­term Exam (25%)
Class Presentations and Three Field Reports (25%)
Final Exam (25%)
Final Paper (25%)
­Exams include multiple choice, fill in the blank, and short answer questions.
­Students will conduct three group or individual presentation in class on various readings.
­Students must present and turn in a final paper five to seven pages in length. Students are free to choose a paper with a topic of their choice. Papers must incorporate sociological perspectives, concepts, problems, and issues discussed in class and in required readings.
­Excess lateness and absence may result in grade reduction.
­All papers, presentations, and field reports must have a twelve size regular font and be typed, double spaced, stapled, and numbered.
Weekly Agenda:
You will receive a weekly agenda every class that will include the readings for the following week, class assignment and field reports, notes from the literature, lecture notes, and an extensive list of questions related to the literature. You are responsible for all the questions. They serve as your study guide for the mid­term and final exam. They will also help you think about possible paper topics. Take these questions seriously. Further, every student is expected to be prepared to answer these weekly questions during class lecture/discussion.
Field Reports: Pick Three
• Over a period of 3 days, break a folkway in front of different groups of family, friends, and strangers. Do not engage in any act which is immoral or illegal. Suggestions: ordering dessert first at a restaurant, bringing your own food to a restaurant, treating casual acquaintances like intimates (or vica versa), wearing inappropriate clothing, initiating conversations with strangers, sitting next to strangers when there are other seats available, standing backwards in an elevator. Discuss your reactions and bystanders’ attempts at social control. Discuss how they might have reacted to breaking a mos or a taboo. • For one week, participate in a minority religious group that you are not ordinarily part of. Suggestions: any world religion (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism), Latter­day Saints, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostals. Attend church services and religious instruction; follow any rules that you are comfortable with; read books and magazines; access web pages. Discuss strategies of differentiation and stigma management. • For one week, participate in a sexual minority subculture that you are not ordinarily part of. Suggestions: gay, lesbian, transvestite, leather, fetish. Visit bars, restaurants, retail establishments, social organizations, churches, private homes; read books and magazines; access web pages. Discuss how easy or difficult it was to locate resources; strategies of differentiation and stigma management.
• Interview two college students who refrain from using alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. Have they used these drugs in the past, or have they always been abstinent? Discuss the social and political factors that led to their abstinence, social controls that they face, and types of deviance that they present. • Survey 20 college students regarding their attitudes toward specific types of deviant behavior. Use only anonymous questionnaires. • Watch 3 episodes of a single television program that aired in the 1950’s, 1960’s, or 1970’s. They frequently appear on Nickelodeon, TV Land, TBS, and elsewhere, and many are available in video stores. Suggestions: I Love Lucy, Bewitched, The Jeffersons, Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, Three’s Company. Discuss how normative social structures were enforced, and deviance punished, in the context of the historical period. • Think of your own.
Required Textbooks:
Clarke, Edward. Deviant Behavior (7th edition, 2008) Worth Publishers
Description: These readings explore the implications of deviance for both the individual and society, examining the responses of society to deviant behavior and the reasons why certain people violate the social norm. The text probes the deviant categories; the motivations behind deviant behavior; and the efforts of those considered deviant to shake the label.
Goode, Erich. Social Deviance Pearson Publishers
Outside Readings: Various outside readings will be included each week to compliment and elaborate on critical concepts offered in the main textbook and discussed in class. These readings are taken from books and/or scholarly articles.
Classroom Procedures:
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Please arrive on time.
Pay attention to lectures and discussions. All ideas are welcome in the classroom and are open to debate.
Please keep cell phones on silence or vibrate to prevent interruption in the flow of ideas and topics discussed in class.
The academic classroom functions as an arena of thought where ideas are created, debated, and challenged. Topics may become heated and controversial, that is part of the fun of academic life. Please remember to keep composure and express ideas respectfully to others. Cheating and Plagiarism:
Cheating: The unauthorized use or attempted use of material, information, notes, study aids, devices or communication during an academic exercise.
The following are some examples of cheating:
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Copying from another student during an examination or allowing another to copy your work.
Unauthorized collaboration on a take home assignment or examination.
Taking an examination for another student, or asking or allowing another student to take an examination for you.
Allowing others to research and write assigned papers or do assigned projects including use of commercial term paper services.
Submitting someone else’s work as your own
Unauthorized us during an examination of any electronic devices such as cell phones, palm pilots, computers or other technologies to retrieve or send information.
Plagiarism: The act of presenting another person’s ideas, research or writings as your own.
The following are some examples of plagiarism:
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Copying another person’s actual words without the use of quotation marks and footnotes attributing -
the words to their source.
Presenting another person’s ideas or theories in your own words without acknowledging the source.
Using information that is not common knowledge without acknowledging the source.
Note: Internet plagiarism includes submitting downloaded term papers or parts of term papers, paraphrasing or copying information from the Internet without citing the source, and “cutting and pasting” from various sources without proper attribution. Cheating and Plagiarism will not be tolerated, and if it occurs you will not receive credit for the assignment.
Course Outline and Required Readings:
Week 1 (8.28): Class Assignment:
Subway Chronicles: Report norm violating behavior that occur this week in your subway experiences. Prepare to discuss your notes in class.
Introduction
Week 2 (9. 4)
Class Assignment:
Report on a deviant, or norm violating behavior witnessed or self­produced that occurred this week.
Week Two Readings:
Goode: Social Deviance: Part I Social Deviance: An Introduction
Wrongdoing as an Offense in the Eyes of God, Jerry Falwell
Deviance as Exploitation: Beyond Nuts and Sluts, Alexander Liazos
Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, Howard Becker: Deviance, Norms, and Social Reaction, Erich Goode: Clarke: Deviant Behavior: Conceptions, Entrepreneurs, and Power
Conceptions of Deviant Behavior: The Old and New, Jack P. Gibbs Moral Entrepreneurs: The Creation and Enforcement of Deviant Categories, Howard S. Becker
Outside Readings: Becoming a Marihuana User, Howard Becker
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 3 (9. 11):
Week Three Assignment:
Report on a deviant, or norm violating behavior witnessed or self­produced that occurred this week.
Week Three Readings:
Goode: Social Deviance: Chapter 3 Constructionist Perspectives of Deviance
Natural Areas of the City, Faris and Dunham
Deviant Places: A Theory of the Ecology of Crime, Stark
Social Structure and Anomie, Merton
Differential Association, Sutherland
Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency, Miller
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: The Production of Deviant Categories and Actors
Blowing Smoke: Status Politics and the Shasta County Smoking Ban, Justin L. Tuggle, Malcolm D. Holmes The Production of Deviance in Capitalist Society, Steven Spitzer
The Discovery of Hyperkinesis: Notes on the Medicalization of Deviant Behavior, Peter Conrad
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 4 (9. 18):
No Classes
Week 5 (9. 25):
Class Assignment:
We all play roles in everyday life (example, good/bad student, husband/wife, father/mother, son/daughter, boyfriend/girlfriend, worker/employer. friend/stranger. In a safe environment like the home, violate a role­norm. That is, refuse to play your expected role (we will, of course, discuss this in class) and, instead, play an alternative role that may cause unexpected results. Take field notes and observe how others react to your role refusal. Report on your findings.
Week Five Readings:
Goode: Social Deviance: Part III
The Production of Deviance in Capitalist Society, Steven Spitzer
The Functions of Social Deviance, Erikson
The European Witch craze, Ben­Yehunda
Delinquency: The Self­Fulfilling Prophesy and the Dramatization of Evil, Tannenbaum
Primary and Secondary Deviation, Lemert
Deviant Behavior: Howard Becker
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: The Functionalist Perspective
The Normal and the Pathological, Emile Durkheim
On the Sociology of Deviance, Kai T. Erickson
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 6 (10. 2):
Week Six Assignment:
Interview an agent of social control (teacher, police officer, federal agent, parole officer, councilor, psychiatrist, judge, etcetera) on a topic relating to deviance. The point is to understand their perspective on certain deviant behaviors. Think about how agent of control views certain behaviors as problematic, why they hold this view, and ways they try to deal with the behavior. You may, however, develop your own lens of inquiry. Write a page or two and prepare a presentation.
Week Six Readings:
Goode: Social Deviance: Conflict Theory and Marxist Criminology
A Conflict Theory of Criminal Law, Joseph Sheley
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: The Conflict Perspective
The Conflict of Conduct Norms, Thorsten Sellin
Differential Punishing of African Americans and Whites Who Possess Drugs: A Just Policy or a Continuation of the Past, Alexander and Gyamerah
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 7 (10. 9):
Week Seven Assignment: Enter into a place you deem unusual or outside of your prior experience. Record your findings and your interactions and/or observation with others.
Week Seven Readings:
Goode: Social Deviance: Feminism and the New Sociology of Social Control
Visions of Social Control, Stanley Cohen
She Did it All for Love: A Feminist View of the Sociology of Deviance, Millman
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: Cultural Transition/Social Learning Theory
Techniques on Neutralization; A Theory of Delinquency, Sykes and Matza
The Influence on Situational Ethnics on Cheating Among College Stuy Prisondents, McCabe
Managing Institutional Careers and Identities
The Moral Career of the Mental Patient, Goffman
Suspended Identity: Identity Transformation in a Maximum Security Prison, Schmid and Jones
Outside Readings Erving Goffman: Stigma
Cloward and Ohlin: Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 8 (10. 16):
Week Eight Assignment: Study for Exam
Goode: Social Deviance: Forms of Deviance
The Social Construction of Drug Scares, Craig Reinarman
The Cycle of Abstinence and Relapse Among heroin Addicts, Marsh Ray
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: Control Theory
A Control Theory of Delinquency, Travis Herschi
Heavy Episodic Drinking Among Adolescents: A Test Hypothesis Derived from Control Theory, Costello, Anderson, and Stein
The Interactionist, Societal Reactions, or Labeling Perspective
Career Deviance, Howard Becker
Definition and the Dramatization of Evil, Frank Tannenbaum
Outside Readings Donald Cressey: Criminal Violation of Financial Trust
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 9 (10. 23):
Mid­Term Exam
Goode: Social Deviance: Chapter 8: Illicit Drug Use
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: Control Theory
A Control Theory of Delinquency, Travis Hirschi
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 10 (10. 30):
Week Ten Assignment (Presentation: Field Report I)
You have an interesting assignment this week. Go out in public with a discrediting stigma and report how others respond to you. You decide how to “wear” your stigma. A plethora of examples exist but may include (making yourself appear obese with a pillow under your shirt, makeup that distorts your face or “over­the­top” makeup, crutches, appearing handicap, talking loudly to yourself, gospel preaching, appearing homeless, using constant distorted facial expressions like a huge unceasing grin, wearing alien antennas or foil to prevent aliens from intercepting your thoughts, etcetera). Do not do anything that threatens your safety. Do not do anything illegal or may result in arrest. Use common sense and bring this assignment and your student ID with you.
Week Ten Readings:
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: Part III Becoming Deviant: Private Domains, Information Control, and Accommodation
Information control and Personal Identity the Discredited and the Discreditable, Erving Goffman
Conceptualizing Stigma, Bruce G. Link, Jo C. Phelan
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: Organizational Structures, Ideologies, and Recruitment: The Noninstitutional Backdrop
The Social Organization of Deviants, Joel Best, David F. Luckenbill
Managing the Action: Sports Bookmakers as Entrepreneurs, Phyllis Coontz
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 11 (11. 6):
Class Assignment:
Second Field Report Due for Presentation
Goode: Social Deviance: Chapter 9: Sexual Deviance
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: The Interactionist, Societal Reactions, or Labeling Perspective
Stephan Pfohl: "The 'Discovery' of Child Abuse
Robert Scott: "The Making of Blind Men, Frank Tannenbaum
Drifting into Dealing: Becoming a Cocaine Seller, Sheigla Murphy, Dan Waldorf, Craig Reinarman
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________ Week 12 (11. 13): Class Assignment: Third Field Report Due for Presentation
Goode: Social Deviance: Chapter 10: Deviant Organizational Behavior
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: Private Domains, Information Control, and Accommodation
Information Control and Personal Identity: The Discredited and the Discreditable, Erving Goffman
Conceptualizing Stigma, Bruce G. Link, Jo C. Phelan
Examining the Informal Sanctioning of Deviance in a Chat Room Culture, Ronda D. Evans
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 13 (11. 20):
Class Assignment: Deviance Sitings in Everyday Life
Goode: Social Deviance: Chapter 11: Cognitive Deviance: Unconventional Beliefs
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: Managing Institutional Careers and Identities The Moral Career of the Mental Patient, Erving Goffman
Suspended Identity: Identity Transformation in a Maximum Security Prison, Thomas J. Schmid, Richard S. Jones
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 14 (11. 27):
No Class
Week 15 (12. 4):
Goode: Social Deviance: Chapter 12: Mental Disorder
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: Social­Control Agents and the Application of Diagnostic Stereotypes: The Beginning Destruction of Public Identity
The Organizational Career of Gang Statistics: The Politics of Policing Gangs, Albert J. Meehan
Trial by Fire: Media Constructions of Corporate Deviance, Gray Cavender, Aogan Mulcahy
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Week 16 (12. 11):
Exam Review
Goode: Social Deviance: Chapter 13: Physical Characteristics as Deviance
Clarke: Deviant Behavior: Social­Control Agents, Sanctioning, and the Production of Institutional Careers and Identities
Criminalizing Women's Behavior, Nora S. Gustavsson, Ann E. MacEachron
Medicalizing Homelessness: The Production of Self­Blame and Self­Governing within Homeless Shelters, Vincent Lyon­Callo
Outside Readings (1) ___________________________
(2) ___________________________
Final Papers: Due Saturday December 18