Prof. P. Marina
Week Two
Social Deviance
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
Class Assignment:
Report on a deviant, or norm violating behavior witnessed or self-produced that occurred this week.
Weekly Questions:
One: The essentialist definition of deviance holds that certain behaviors are objectively, absolutely,
and universally wrong or evil. On the other side of the spectrum, the constructionist perspective of
deviance holds that what is deviant cannot be found in the act but rather how people react to the
act. In this case, deviance is based solely on how actions are seen and evaluated by members of the
society in which the act took place. Explain you position in this argument and give examples to
support your debate.
Two: Explain Falwell's essentialist argument on abortion, pornography, and homosexuality as acts or
categories of deviance. To what extent, if at all, do you agree with his position. Explain.
Three: Prove that incest is inherently a deviant act. For that matter, prove that any act is
inherently deviant or evil act.
Four: In what ways do you consider yourself deviant? In other words, what's your deviance? Using a
method similar to Howard Becker's analytic induction in his “Becoming a Marihuana User” explain
the social processes that led you to become deviant.
Five: Liazos believes that certain acts are inherently deviant. Such acts include harmful wrongs such
as sexism, racism, imperialism, exploitation, and oppression because they are harmful to others,
especially, people with less power.
Six: Acting Scene:
Working with a group, act out a short play in class creating a scene in which norm violating behavior
takes place. In this scene the class must witness (a) norm violating behavior, (b) how one “knows”
they have violated a norm, (c) response from an audience, (d) formal of informal sanctions performed
on the norm violator.
Seven: Provide examples of moral panics, real or imagined, and explain how deviance is created,
along with moral entrepreneurs, media sensationalism, and the creation of an increased control
society.
Eight: Explain Jack Gibbs's discussion on the old and new conceptions of deviant behavior.
Nine: What are the informal of formal sanctions that are likely to occur for the following behaviors:
--Smacking your food at the dinner table
--Popping or snapping gum in classrooms
--Talking during a movie in a theater
--Mispronouncing words
--Grabbing a persons ass in a subway
--Eating with only your hands at a restaurant
--Constantly engaging in loud flatulence in enclosed areas
Ten: Explain the ways that you have accidentally engaged in norm violating behavior. When and how
did you become aware of the norm infraction. How did your audience respond? Explain.
Eleven: Explain a situation when you unintentionally violated norms due to a cultural
misunderstanding. When and how did you become aware of the norm infraction. How did your
audience respond? Explain.
Twelve: Answer the following:
What are the way to violate your role as a
What are the way to violate your role as a
What are the way to violate your role as a
What are the way to violate your role as a
What are the way to violate your role as a
What are the way to violate your role as a
student?
parent?
spouse or boy/girlfriend?
friend?
worker?
boss?
Thirteen: Quotes: Explain each Becker quote in your own way.
A: Deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the
application by others of rules and sanctions to an "offender". The deviant is one to whom that label
has been successfully applied; deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label.
B: Deviance must be understood as collective action… everyone involved is relevant, not just the
person being labeled deviant. Deviance is constructed by an interplay of actions committed by the
labeled deviant, those who collude, those to catch, try to label, those who define certain acts as
deviant.
C: Interactionist theories of deviance, like interactionist theories generally, pay attention to how
social actors define each other and their environments. They pay particular attention to differentials
in the power to define; in the way one group achieves and uses the power to define how other
groups will be regarded, understood, and treated. Elites, ruling classes, bosses, adults, men,
Caucasians – superordinate groups generally – maintain their power to define; in the way one group
achieves and uses their power as much by controlling how people define the world, its components,
and its possibilities, as by the use of more primitive forms of control. They may use more primitive
means to establish hegemony. But control based on the manipulation of definitions and labels works
more smoothly and costs less; superordinates prefer it. The attack on hierarchy begins with an
attack on definitions, labels, and conventional conceptions of who’s who and what’s what”
Fourteen: Marijuana Questions:
A: Explain the process of how a person becomes a deviant in the form of smoking marijuana.
B: Is becoming a marijuana user a social process without any necessary biological predispositions,
personality traits, or psychological conditions contributing to motivate the behavior? Explain
Week Three Readings (9.11)
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
Assignment: Conduct a small breeching experiment in which you violate a norm. Observe how others
react to your mischief. Write a paragraph or two explaining what happened.