Sanctions

The Classification of Patterns

Many terms exist for a variety of behavior patterns that scholars have not clearly defined: usage, habit, custom, folkway, moral, convention, fashion, standard, rule, or law. In sociology, the notion of social norms is a prominent concept. A social norm is a behavioral pattern that becomes obligatory for the members of a group because sanctions protect it. Patterns of behavior without sanctions, alternatively, are just habit or routine. Only sanctions make behavioral patterns obligatory.

Regulation without Sanctions

Ordinarily, there are plenty of social patterns without a special control mechanism, usually known as usage, habit, or routine. Nevertheless, these patterns have a high degree of compliance because they are expedient or otherwise minimize the necessity to make a choice. In developed societies, patterns without sanctions occur in less important fields of social life. However, in premodern stateless societies, basic patterns of behavior exist that lack the character of binding social norms.

Sanctions for Social Norms

In all societies, social pressures bring about conformity in behavior. People who do not dress according to fashion appropriate for their age risk social ridicule. These kinds of social pressure are highly diffuse. It makes sense to draw a line where social pressure becomes specific enough to take on the character of a sanction. Sanctions involve negative consequences, not automatic, by which a social group or some of its members demonstrate that deviant behavior is not acceptable.

Theodor Geiger (1891–1952) elaborated on the difference between customary behavior and binding rules and on the conceptual relationship among sanctions, social norm effectiveness, and validity. People can apply sanctions after a social norm's infringement, and its meaning then is clarified prospectively. According to Geiger, a social norm's validity is related to the continuing expectation of sanctions in case of deviant behavior. Legal rules, particularly those in criminal law, serve as the main example of social norms in this narrow sense. Legal norms are only a subset of the much broader realm of social norms in sociology.

Positive and Negative Sanctions

Sanctions normally are negative. They inflict disadvantage or deprivation of privilege. Positive sanctions, [Page 1340]that is, rewards for compliance with social norms, are the exception, such as a payment to someone who finds another's lost property. The asymmetry of positive and negative sanctions is not restricted to law. Compliance with rules generally does not evoke explicit approval of the social group, except in educational settings, where teachers typically reward norm-abiding behavior.

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