Deviance

The Origins of Deviance

The term deviance emerged in the United States after the Second World War. The new concept reflected that period's interest in macrosociological, functionalist Grand Theory. Talcott Parsons was one of the first to use the word in an article in a major journal. Deviance was a sociological abstraction; it referred to rule breaking or violations of important social norms that might lead to social control sanctions. Its proponents anticipated the concept of deviance would help analysts recognize similarities among different sorts of rule breaking within the social system.

Although Durkheim discussed the functions of “crime” in The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), he was referring to a broad range of forbidden behaviors, to what would later be called “deviance.” Durkheim's emphasis on social consensus made him a forefather of the structural functionalism that guided sociological theory in the postwar years, when the concept of deviance emerged. In this view, applying sanctions to rule breaking offered society a means of both maintaining social order and reaffirming its moral consensus.

The term deviance had its roots in statistics, where deviation refers to variation from the mean. This usage conveyed implications of scientific authority and objectivity, and these connotations carried over as “deviation” and “deviate” became metaphors for describing people or behavior that differed from the normal. This was consistent with the functionalists' posture of dispassionate objectivity and their preference for deductive reasoning. Deviance offered a way of talking about moral issues in seemingly scientific terms.

The initial post–World War II studies of deviance focused on another Durkheimian concept: anomie. Robert K. Merton's essay “Social Structure and Anomie” (1938) became a leading reference for theorists of deviance. (Merton had not used the word deviance, but he had spoken of “deviate behavior and aberrant conduct.”) Merton argued that any culture articulates goals for society's members, while social structure provides an approved set of institutionalized means for achieving those goals. Individuals who accept both the approved goals and the approved means are conformists, but there are other possible, anomic adaptations: Innovators accept the approved goals but reject the means; ritualists reject the goals but embrace the means; retreatists reject both the goals and means; and rebels simultaneously both accept and reject both goals and means. This typology suggested that different forms of rule breaking involved different responses to anomie: Thieves might be innovators, whereas drug addicts were retreatists. Merton's formulation and the idea of anomie influenced many of the early analysts of deviance. In particular, concern about gangs and juvenile delinquents flourished during the 1950s, and sociological interpretations of delinquency made frequent reference to both anomie and Merton's typology.

The Labeling Approach

The functionalists' formulation came under attack with the rise of the labeling perspective. This approach challenged the conceptual viability of the standard definition of deviance as rule breaking. In Outsiders (1963), Howard S. Becker argued that deviance could be defined only in terms of societal reaction. That is, individuals became deviant not because they broke important norms, but because they were labeled as rule breakers and treated as outsiders. What made an act deviant was the reaction to it, how others defined it. Although similar arguments appeared in the work of earlier sociologists, particularly Edwin M. Lemert, it was not until the early 1960s that labeling emerged as a major approach to the study of deviance.

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