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Deviance

Definition

Deviance is a broad term meant to signify behavior that violates social norms. The origins and functions of deviant behavior have long been of interest in the social sciences, with early sociological theories influencing the psychology theories that followed.

Sociological Theories

Structural Functionalism

One broad sociological approach to the study of deviance was structural functionalism. This viewpoint focused attention on social institutions in societies. Social institutions are organizations that fulfill vital roles in society and that promote the continued existence of society (e.g., the criminal justice system, the courts, the family). Institutions bind individuals together by promoting social norms that define right and wrong.

Émile Durkheim, an early structural functionalist, introduced the notion of anomie, a precursor to modern conceptions of deviance. Anomie was conceived of as a psychological state created when social norms fail to affect how an individual acts. Robert Merton expanded on the concept of anomie by showing two dimensions upon which individuals might deviate from social norms. First, they can reject the normative goals of society (e.g., wanting to support a drug habit rather than a family). Second, they can reject the normative means of achieving goals (e.g., stealing money rather than earning it from an employer). Alternatively, an individual can seek radical changes to society, changes that alter its normative goals and means. As an example, an American citizen might reject his or her society's embrace of capitalism in favor of community and might advocate for socialist policies as a way of promoting this new social agenda.

The strength of structural functionalism was that it drew attention to the role that society plays in defining right and wrong. Deviation from social norms was not viewed as a property inherent to certain actors. It instead was viewed as something social institutions create to preserve the society. The major weakness of this approach was that it did not elaborate on the individual-level mechanisms that cause people to deviate. In fact, structural functionalists tended to question whether one could understand the whole (society) by examining the parts (the individual).

Symbolic Interactionism

Some scholars were interested in the component parts, and this contributed to the rise of symbolic interactionism within sociology. Symbolic interactionists examine how individuals construct social meaning through their interactions with other people. A key concept is the looking-glass self, coined by Charles Horton Cooley. Accordingly, individuals cannot find a personal identity by looking inward but must instead adopt the viewpoints of other people. The tendency to incorporate the opinions of others into the self can lead to a self-fulfilling prophesy, such that individuals become the very people they are thought to be by others.

Because symbolic interactionists focus on the opinions of other people, many of these scholars have focused attention on the majority opinions found in societies. Howard S. Becker followed such an approach. He argued that social institutions create accepted labels that give meanings to actions. Over time, he argued, people come to accept the labels society gives them. For instance, a society might create the negative term thief as a way of deterring crime, but people who are labeled in this way (e.g., by the criminal justice system) might come to identify with their label and then commit more crimes.

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