SOC115 Deviance and Social Control

1. SOC115 Deviance and Social Control Lecture Materials Updated: May 2, 2007 Dr. Leora Lawton Spring 2007 MW 4-5:30 PM 22 Warren

2. Frequencies 73.4% agree or strongly agree With no ‘neutral’ position or midpoint, everyone takes a stand

3. Bivariate tests - crosstabs Make the ‘row’ your DV and the ‘column’ the IV. Then select column cell statistics Note that cell counts get very small in some subgroups Chi-Square option in statistics shows that the distribution is not random.

4. The IRC Community Game Model • It’s leisure: relaxation, social, intellectual, fun, challenging. • It’s accessible to anyone with a computer and internet access (and software) • Sub-culture forms from dominant culture.

5. IRC Community A sample of a game being played through RobBot's is shown below: • <RobBot> Current category: Footwear. Question Value: 800. • <RobBot> Question 5 of 30: Low cut woman's shoe or a device to pass gasoline • <BrandEx> rob pump • <Texmex> rob pump • <RobBot> brandex: That is CORRECT! You win 800. Your total is -300. • <RobBot> Please wait while preparing the next Gullivers Travels question... • <jennew> brand rocks! • <RobBot> Current category: Gullivers Travels. Question Value: 400. • <RobBot> Category Comment: Trivia about Gullivers Travels • <RobBot> Question 6 of 30: The only thing the Laputian king wanted to learn about the outside world • <Texmex> oh this one sux • <Mach> what food do you like rob • <RobBot> Pass the ho-ho's! • * MastrLion passes out (much to the relief of the channel no doubt) • <Mach> rob mathematics • <MastrLion> rob flug • <RobBot> mastrlion: Bzzt! That is incorrect. You lose 400. Your total is -500. • <RobBot> mach: That is CORRECT! You win 400. Your total is 400.

6. Lessons of IRC • Deviance: The Internet is just like physical space only different. • Deviance forms: • Traditional: swearing, profanity, bullying. • Technological: flooding (vandalism), bots (cheating), spoofing (fraud).

7. Differential Association • Becoming deviant: learning, neutralizations, opportunities. Sort of a perversion on the adage “success is being ready for opportunity”. • Role: Become acquainted with behavior • Ascribed: Learn its parameters of behavior • Playing: Try it out • Taking: Adopt it • Set: Perhaps buy into the entire package • Master: Let it dominate your self-concept • In what ways is this process similar/different from entering any other social role? • Is this model appropriate for non-illegal deviance? What’s the assumption in the writings about who this model fits?

8. Sutherland’s Differential Association • Criminality is learned • “ … through social interaction • “ … with intimates • “ … including techniques, norms, codes • “ … and must be rationalized • “ … benefits to be deviant > benefits of not • “ … and varies in intensity, duration, priority, frequency (between individuals and over time for same individual) • “ … and learned like any other trade • “ Motivations for deviance are part and parcel of society, hence “deviants are hypocrites”. What’s right here? What’s missing?

9. Cressey’s Other People’s Money When trust is violated • Trust violations occur in existing social contracts and relationships • Rationalizations are required to violate trust • But these rationalizations are not an ‘avoidance of legal liability’ (p. 247) But key reason for violating law is thinking you won’t get caught. How would Cressey explain this? What other examples besides embezzlement are trust violations?

10. Sykes & Matza’s Neutralizations They expand on Sutherland: • Denial of responsibility • Denial of Injury • Denial of Victim • Condemnation of condemners • Appeal to higher loyalties (e.g., family instead of gov’t). In other words: • You learn your society’s norms and values • You learn differential behavior • You rationalize your behavior by neutralizing the moral objections. (remember Hilary Duff in Lizzie McGuire)

11. Howard Becker’s Outsiders Marijuana users go through process of becoming a marijuana user, which is a differential association process. 1. Be around it. 2. Try it 3. Recognize effect 4. Enjoy effect 5. Rationalize behavior 6. Adopt 7. Get into subculture

12. For Anomie Is there a class bias in this theory? Or, how can Anomie explain deviance by the wealthy? If there’s an imbalance between norms, how can policy try to restore/create balance?

13. Very Brief Summary Functionalism. Deviance is so common, it’s normal. Serves a purpose. Whose purpose, that’s the question, though. Social disorganization: I live in a neighborhood where we don’t know how to behave yet. Differential Association: Who you know, therefore how you learn. Need to rationalize. Anomie. The means is necessary to achieve the society’s exalted ends. Also need to rationalize.

14. Durkheim’s Anomie Moral and social constraints exist on person’s drives “moral discipline” If these constraints lose their power, then people end up unhappy, or out of control. Because access to achievement is not equal, some will not follow prescribed paths of behavior to achieve goals. Or they get hopeless and commit suicide. Social upheaval causes disequilibrium and hence leads to an increase in deviance. Over time, some luxuries become necessities.

15. Merton’s Anomie I. Social structure exerts pressure to non-conform (p.142), because given the situation, a normal person would deviate. Goals are exalted, even if they are generally unreachable. “Money has been consecrated as value in itself” Merton’s myths: Anyone can succeed Lower class therefore deserves it Only those who act like the dominant class have full membership.

16. Merton’s Anomie II. Types of Deviance • Conformity: Being just like you were told. • Innovation: Thieves and cheats. • Ritualism: Scaling down. Ascetics, fatalists, blamers. (Or just practical??) • Retreatism: Drug addicts, alcoholics, bums, hoboes. • Rebellion. Genuine ‘transvaluation’. Rejects old status quo and seeks to bring about new one

17. For Jan 31 • What are Cloward’s and Cohen’s contributions to Anomic theory? • Be prepared to discuss Passas’ article and the application of Anomic theory (and Merton) on corporate deviance.

18. Writing Assignment #1 • Take no more than 5 paragraphs and 2 pages to write this paper. Double-spaced, typed, with your name, date, writing assignment number on it. • Explain drunk driving – its existence and laws about it – using theoretical frameworks from functionalism, social disorganization and differential association. You should briefly define each perspective, and then demonstrate how it relates to drunk driving. For the conclusion, explain why how a social movement – MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving – www.madd.org) – was effective in bringing about a change in laws and attitudes about drunk driving. • Suggested structure: • Thesis sentence – leading up to your point. Introduce the problem (drunk driving) and the movement (MADD). • Define functionalism. Demonstrate its explanatory power and weakness for drunk driving. • Define social disorganization. Same as above. • Define differential association. Same as above. • Explain how MADD is the logical path to alter values and norms given at least one of the theories.

19. Cloward • Thesis: • There’s also differential access to illegitimate means • The patterns of access and barriers follows that of legitimate means • Begins by summarizing Durkheim • People need to fulfill their social needs • Moral constraints keep them on the straight & narrow (a foreshadowing of control theory) • In times of rapid social change, values shift, become unattainable, leading to anomie, control institutions lose power, allowed unbridled greed to cause deviance (rebellion or crime), or despair to ensue (suicide). • Then summarizes Merton • Goals and norms may vary independently, When norms can’t lead to goals, goals gain in importance, and because social structure closes off access, deviance results.

20. Cloward continued • So Durkheim explains how the ends justifies the means through social change. • Merton adds that social structure attenuates access to normative paths toward goals. • So then Cloward asks, But what about access to illegitimate means, is that universally accessible? • Applies it to forms of deviance • Innovation (crime) • Retreatism (failure at ‘failing’) • Rebellion??? • Ritualism?? • And the answer is…no, it’s not. • It has to be part of the cultural script • There’s a meritocracy to it…you have to have the skills. • Need to be in the social network. • Social class structures opportunities • It’s subject to discrimination in ‘hiring’ practices • Ethnicity, race, gender, social class

21. Cohen • Summary • Cultural and structural conditions permeate society and • Support corporate/high status deviance • Using the same mechanisms as in lower class deviance • But with different set of ‘resources’ and hence outcomes. • Cohen points out you can draw from a number of theories to explain deviance AND that theories for explaining other social forms also can be applied to deviance (e.g., mechanical and organic solidarity; or functionalism). • So Cohen sets the stage for a complex set of theories to explain deviance at different levels and in different contexts. • He concludes that, just as deviant responses take several forms to strain, so can controlling responses: • Open up legitimate opportunities (there weren’t enough) • Open up illegitimate (legalize or cease to prosecute) • Close up illegitimate (better control, longer imprisonment)

22. Passas • Show shows unnoticed upper class deviance has been • Values: bottom line, corporate success… • Society and economy structure goals into “capitalist race”. • Culture is differential association, too. • Strain should increase deviance in struggling companies • But it can become part of the fabric of corporate life if it’s very common. • Corporate deviance is rationalized, assigned to subordinates, and legitimated through political pressure. • In other words, it takes money to make money, it also takes big money to steal big money.

23. Questions for Social Control Social Control • What do control theorists see as a major difference between those who commit crimes and those who do not? What do they see as the main cause of conformity? • How well does control theory explain upper class deviance? • How does it complement anomie?

24. Social Control Theory • Without a controlling force (or set of forces) people behave selfishly. • In some sense, it’s a flip side of the other theories (not why people deviate, but why they don’t). Is delinquency caused or prevented? • These theories emerged to explain lower class boys and young men. • Note the beginning of divergence from a singular theory for deviance. • Social control is ‘correctionalist’ (to be discussed) • Containment Theory • Inner containment (internalized commitment) • External containment (social order) • Begins with family, continued by community and society.

25. Social Control Theory • Hirschi: (Tip: Look for what he says it is not what it’s not) • It’s ‘correctionalist’ in nature. • Explains how social control is internalized. • Attachment. Begins with family, instills trust and empathy. • Commitment. Varies with attachment, there is a routine and a structure to support conformity, that is, there’s social cost to deviating. • Involvement. “Time and energy are inherently limited.” • Belief. A moral structure of right and wrong. Is conforming part of the belief system? • Process. Internal controls; external controls; availability of opportunities; beliefs, actions. • Alternatively • Direct control: Restrictions, punishments – parents, police • Internalized: conscience – “I’m a good person” • Indirect control: shaming, exclusions - “Pleases Mom” • Other indirect means (need satisficing): aspirations - “This good behavior gets me…”

26. Social Control Theory • Gottfredson and Hirschi (not assigned) • Societal control structure is balanced toward conformity, because society needs social trust. • So even if external control lacks, internal control can still function. • Deviance lumping – if you do one, you do lots. • Empey • A major contribution of control is the idea that external forces are part of the equation • Social delinquency threatens social order (conservative) • Children need to learn social bond • It has policy implications • See limits of theory pg 347.

27. Social Control Theory • Post-Katrina New Orleans • Things to fix • Infrastructure • Jobs • Housing • Security • Crime

28. Individuals in Society - Stigma • Stigma (relevant points. See Goffman, Stigma) • Stigma is the discrediting of someone, that is, the defining someone’s non-conforming behavior or condition as ‘negative’ and making this quality negate any ‘positive’. • It highlights the negative over the positive. • Stigma is a social definition with social consequences • Leads to a stigmatizing person to adapt to the role, with • Consequences for not conforming to stigmatized role • May require social movement to change definition • Takes a lot of work for the stigmatized person to be recognized fully as a human being • Once stigmatized, may seek out other discredited people • Assigning stigma is a way to remove a group from the mainstream. • For both achieved and ascribed characteristics.

29. Feb 5,7 • Feb 5: • First writing assignment (see slide 18) • Read in Traub & Little, Ch V Control Theory, sections 21, 22 and 24. • Feb 7 • Read in Traub & Little, Ch VI, sections 26, 27, 28, 29

30. Labeling Theory • A structurally caused process, not individually-driven • Put people in categories, stigmatized them. • Can create self-fulfilling prophecy, but ‘the less said the better’. • Labels force one down a deviant career path • Labels are social roles. • Deviance-defining events are ‘dramas’, or rather, power plays. Hence labeling is an extension of social control theory. • Why do people say ‘women doctors’ and ‘male nurses’?

31. Labeling Theory • Some labels are ‘big’. They stick and don’t wash off. Some are ‘small’ and can be redeemed. • Ascribed deviance (like self-concepts) – label foisted on by dominant society • vs Achieved deviance – label acquired through actions. • Who labels? (these are social control agents) • How big are these institutions’ labels. In all places/times?

32. Labeling Theory • Howard Becker (same Becker from Differential Assoc) • In order to build deviance career, depends on “whether they enforce the rule he has violated’ • Individual might apply label herself based on specific and GO info • Individual subconsciously wants to get caught. • Master traits – certain status with connoted descriptors known as ‘auxiliary traits’. • Subordinate: overridden by master when inconsistent. • See pg 394 “It’s not about the deviant act per se”

33. Labeling Theory Scheff: The mentally ill and labeling • Mental illness starts with residual deviance – uncategorized by not ‘normal’ behaviors. • Properties of residual deviance • Crisis from diverse sources • Not usually treated • Usually transitory • Consequences of recognition is societal reaction • Typecasted and expected to behave a certain way • Further behaviors interpreted in this light. • Others will look back to support current label • Labeled deviants get rewarded for ‘conforming’ to their deviance and punished for trying to reject it. • When a crisis ‘outs’ a deviant he will seek a ‘stable deviance role’ explanation. • All these lead up to …Single most important cause of ‘careers’ of residual deviance.

34. Labeling Theory Critique by Mankoff • Is it necessary and/or sufficient? • Labeling not randomly applied • Not all labeled go on to careers • Not all careerists were labeled. • Mankoff feels it works better for ascribed rather than achieved deviance. (when you looked at property crime and violent crime criminals). • Labeling theorists focused on underdog.

35. Questions for Labeling Labeling • Labeling theory is sometimes criticized for having a monolithic view of social control institutions. Comment on this criticism, using examples from the course reading and from your own experience. • Labeling theorists lent a sympathetic ear to deviant groups. To what extent did they selectively choose deviant groups who were not very dangerous or not universally condemnable. Is it acceptable to be so selective in choosing a study population?

36. Recap of Theory • Study question: Can you *really* explain/understand the first paragraph on pg 449? • Sometimes society benefits from defining deviance and sometimes the net benefits are outnumbered by net detriments. • Functionalism • Who benefits from deviance defining (not just who benefits from having the deviance)? • How does the definition of deviance reinforce boundaries? • Social disorganization: • Why is it that many people are ignorant of dominant society’s norms/values? • How did these subcultures get disorganized? • Differential Association • What’s the importance of learning a behavior counter to prevailing social norms? And what are their neutralizations? • Social control • Importance of family and community and other social structures • Importance of external social control • Labeling • A method of external social control to stigmatize and de-legitimize challenges to the macro-social power hierarchies.

37. Labeling Limitations • Deviants are just like us…only they aren’t always. • They ignored violent, less empathetic deviants at a time when crime rates were beginning to increase. • They ignored white collar and elite deviants • And once there’s a falsehood/weakness, the whole thing can be tossed with an effective marketing campaign. • And yet it’s odd that only after the labeling theory period did these criticisms get so much attention, since C. Wright Mills raised them earlier (see Chapter 2.9).

38. A macro-view of deviance • We will need to examine: • Political landscape • Economy • Cultural values • Changes in • SES, • Labor force, • Technology • Demographic Processes (Population structure): • Migration, • Fertility, • Mortality, • Morbidity

39. Liazos’ Nuts, Sluts and ‘Preverts’ • If you don’t label, it doesn’t seem to be studied. • Focus on the macro-picture, not just the ‘small’ deviance. • Elite deviants/actors are not discredited people. They may even be following legal means. You can’t ‘deviance lump’ them, so they tend to get ‘conformist lumped’. • Agents of social control are not just the individual police, courts, etc., but the system that encourages and facilitates an exploitative system. • Therefore: Talk about ‘oppression, conflict, persecution, suffering’ (p. 490).

40. Politics of Deviance • There’s a relationship between personal and political deviance • Deviance-defining is politically charged, and so is ‘un-defining’ • Deviance-defining is a process: identify, apply stigma, contain, justify. Can result in exacerbating inequality. • Power is a process, not just an object and so can have cause and effect. • Who defines the situation controls the situation, and same thing for deviance, so you need to dissect who are the political actors and what do they gain/lose from the definition?

41. Politics and Deviance (cont) • Labeling is a political act • Containment is a goal (extant), a method/technique (extant), an outcome/consequence (latent) and sometimes all three. • Maintains social order or restructures it. • Can manage social discontents (containing the disquieted or containing the disquieteds’ scapegoat). • Protects state from serious threat.

42. Modes of Containments • Social psychological – interpersonal • Economic • Geographical • Visual • Pharmacological • Electronic • Physical

43. Economic Structure & Deviance • Review of Marxism: The problematic consequences of capitalism Propertied class in control of production and social capital. Proletariat – working class – without capital, does not share in full benefits of its production. Industrialists try to minimize labor costs with technology, leads to surplus labor, aka, unemployment, and the unemployed surplus labor needs to be controlled. Marxist solution: A. Overthrow capitalism (or, B, C) Democratic solution: A. What’s good for business is good for America. Corporation > labor. Control surplus labor B. Regulate business so it doesn’t cause harmful exploitation. C. Unionize. Individual > corporation.

44. Economic Structure & Deviance 2 • Labor needs to be controlled • New labor force entries trigger control responses • Unskilled labor is useful temporarily • When that utility ends, high unemployment occurs (social junk) • Labor that wants to change system is social dynamite • Shifts in economy introduce disequilibria • Farming to industrialism • Manufacturing to service • Globalization • Low tech to high tech • Oil economy to ??? • Control means creating deviant forms to be regulated • Drug laws are one of the ‘best’ • Blame the unemployed • Incarceration and asylums • Define those who reject ‘progress’ as immoral, then ‘contain’ (see slide 42) • Put in military • Educate/indoctrinate • Investing in workers mitigates need for control • Educate, retrain, develop • OR, convert problem members into agents of state • Form uneasy partnership with criminal (alternate criminal economy) enterprises.

45. Economic Structure & Deviance 3 • Economic changes in US and growth of populations to control. • Rise of industrialism and middle class (Dollars & Dreams) • People owned homes with GI Bills. • Productivity increased, like ‘walking up an up escalator’ • Union jobs in mfg lifted many. • Blacks also benefited, especially following civil rights movement. • Experienced of crime was relatively low. • Then…things changed. • Boon in consumer electronics increased consumerism • Yet at the same time, mfg took advantage of automation, outsourcing and offshoring. • And then more offshoring. • Low-skilled jobs for those with HS education seemed to evaporate. • Hit white males growing up on ‘wife stay at home’ model. • Then women entered labor force. • And Blacks saw loss of employment centers and opportunities. • See WJW: Declining Significance of Race • Black inner city issues not as much about race (he said) but more about economic structure changes and the loss of opportunity. • So while Marxism says conflict is about class, in the US it was about race, and then, began to be about competition for wage-earning jobs, that is, among the working class.

46. Economic Structure & Deviance • So what does this have to do with deviance? • When jobs disappear, people seek blame, and blaming large economic processes is not satisfactory or easy to understand, so they • Scapegoat • Do symbolic crusades and moral panics • Punish the victims and further remove opportunities.

47. Cultural Wars: Symbolic Crusades • Conflict Theory – Status Conflicts • Class = socioeconomic • Prestige – value, having more cultural worth and being able to define what is valuable • Often has economic power, but not necessarily. • So when threats to status occur, there are reactions • Status politics – hostility to others, ultra-dogmatism, extremist attacks on democratic process. (more common in growth) • Class politics – arguing about allocation and access to resources (more common in recession) • When values become challenged, then the dominant class may lash out by deviantizing the challengers, and do so by symbolizing their fears in something the challengers does, says, or professes.

48. Symbolic Crusades • Gusfield’s argument is useful in many contexts. • Immigration in late 1800s and early 1900s introduced many eastern european and mediterranean peoples, who tended to be Catholic (or Jewish) and were more liberal with drinking. • This influx of labor occurred also during the emancipation, and also during a solidification of the ‘old middle class’ around temperance, which was seen as a symbol of prestige. Eventually, because these movements go extreme, became Prohibition. (see the note on status politics previous slide). However, Prohibition, Abolition and Nativism were all part of the Republican Party ideas in the earlier 1800s. • And Alcohol is a socially controlled substance, with problematic properties (addictive, drunkenness) and thus an ideal symbol for deviance. • With Temperance movement, US sought to redefine itself as a moral Christian climate. (even though both teetotalling and heavy drinking behavior is more common in Protestant groups than in Catholics). • Lyman Beecher ‘activist preacher’ stated that upper classes needed to impose moral restraint on themselves, and on the lower classes as well.

49. Symbolic Crusades • But values have economic links…(Rumbarger’s Power, Politics and Prohibition) • Remember we also have the movement from farming to industrialization (and from beer to coffee). • Industrialists wanted to control Labor. • Disgruntled labor sat in saloons and schemed unionization, hence the anti-saloon movement espoused by industrialists. (“misery is caused by strong drink, strikes and communism.”) Henry Ford wanted workers to dream the American dream as he dreamed it. • Industry had few safeguards for workers, so focusing on the drinking problem was a way to avoid focusing on the high rate of death and injury in the workplace.

50. Wayward Puritans: A study in the sociology of deviance • Deviance isn’t a property inherent in any behavior, it’s conferred upon a behavior. • Why does a community assign this behavior to the deviance category? • Deviance exists to define boundaries. • Deviants ‘patrol’ these borders, and policing agents monitor the deviants. • Statutes are often informal, if ever articulated. • “Morality and immorality meet at the public scaffold…” • Expectations constrain and also shape behavior. • Both variety and similarity are products of the same society: it’s a division of labor. • “The deviant and the conformist, then, are creatures of the same culture, inventions of the same imagination” (p. 21) • Boundaries are never fixed, and as borders ‘expand’ new forms of deviance and conformity need to be defined. • These definitions occur in public formal ceremonies. • There are few rites of passage that denote leaving a deviant status, and some of those are equally suspect.