Deviant Career

Sequential Models of Deviant Involvements

We can think of people's involvements in deviant behavior in a number of ways. At times, people's attention may be rather dramatically turned to asking causal questions of deviance. For example, we may ask why people would kill themselves, kill others, or rape and torture others. To answer questions posed in such terms, we can look outside the behaviors. Émile Durkheim famously asked us to think about how the causes of suicide may be associated with factors outside suicide—that is, what may be the social causes of suicide. Perhaps there is something about being Protestant, or married, or female, or French, or poor (or some combination of these) that causes someone to be more likely to commit suicide than someone else. Factors external to the person are understood to carry a certain weight in producing a specific outcome. The deviant is understood to be more acted on by social causes than acting.

Howard Becker encouraged students of deviant behavior to attend more fully to the emergent qualities of deviant behavior. He referred to models like Durkheim's as simultaneous models of deviant behavior, models where the factors that cause deviance act together, all at once, to produce a particular deviant outcome. By way of contrast, there are also sequential models of deviant behavior. For example, the motives and interests that encourage individuals to engage in a deviant behavior initially may be very different from those in play as one becomes more fully involved in deviant activities and comes to identify more fully with deviant identities and practices. Sequential models are particularly attentive to the career of involvement one may have in any deviant activity, and have facilitated the development of a career contingencies model of deviant behavior.

Initial Involvements

There is a rather important sociological difference, as Edwin Lemert emphasized, between forays into deviance and ongoing commitments to deviant action. But regardless of how intensely involved someone may become in any particularly deviant activity, there is a first time—and accompanying entry and continuance issues. How do people become heavy metal musicians, or prostitutes, or cocaine users? In all cases, one must move through the process of initial involvements.

At times, individuals have preexisting networks of contact with subculturally based deviance. Friends, family, coworkers, or romantic partners may all provide access to deviant lifeworlds that may otherwise be relatively unavailable. Our relationships with others may allow for rather targeted recruitment activities. Friends may encourage drug use, coworkers may support the development of a sense of larceny, extended relations may offer up opportunities for involvements in organized crime, and the classmate who is an exotic dancer may attempt to recruit new dancers for the club. All in all, people may find that their careers of involvement in deviant activity are in the first instance facilitated by the direct recruitment activities of others.

...