Dec 11, · Deviant behavior in terms of broad social conditions is constantly changing. Deviance is not just a matter of numbers nor is what is less common. Deviant acts are not necessarily against the law but are considered abnormal and may be regarded as immoral rather than illegal. An act is deviant because most would consider it immoral rather than criminal Deviance Essay Generally speaking, deviance is behavior that a group or society considers inappropriate. Approaches to deviance are primarily biological, psychological, or sociological. Typically, biological and psychological approaches view deviance as a result of a defect or character flaw within the blogger.comted Reading Time: 7 mins Nov 21, · Deviance is the violation of social norms. Norms are codes of ethics that act as guidance to people on how to live their lives. According to William Somner, there are three types of norms; Folkways are what a society considers being right with regard to culture and tradition. Issues like dressing, mannerisms are in this category
Deviance Essays: Examples, Topics, Titles, & Outlines
Generally speaking, deviance is behavior that a group or society considers deviance essay. Approaches to deviance are primarily biological, psychological, or sociological, deviance essay.
Typically, biological and psychological approaches view deviance as a result of a defect or character flaw deviance essay the individual. Such general norms, often classified as folkways or mores, with the latter deemed more important and carrying strict penalties for violators, find enforcement through both deviance essay and negative sanctions.
Positive sanctions are rewards for acceptable behavior, while negative sanctions are punishments for undesirable behavior. Because of the highly relative nature of societal norms from society to society and through time, deviance is a highly relative concept, deviance essay. For example, deviance essay, U. society today does not view premarital intercourse by a female as a violation of significant norms and thus cares little for any punishment. More traditional cultures, such as in the Middle East, consider this as highly deviant behavior punishable by death, even if government criminal laws may prohibit such punishment.
Deviance exists at all socioeconomic levels. Typically, property crimes correlate more often with the lower class, and white-collar and corporate crime is more characteristic of the middle and upper classes.
White-collar crime refers to the violation of law by individuals of high social position as part of their day-to-day professional activities. Typical types of white-collar crime include insider trading and financial fraud and also can include an attorney who deliberately over-bills clients or doctors ordering unnecessary tests for fees.
The most popular examples in the media focus on the illegal activities of corporate executives who defraud their own companies, the public, and often the government. Corporate crime differs from white-collar crime in that the corporation as an institution engages in deliberate violations of law.
Victims of such crime include consumers, deviance essay, government, and employees. Common examples of corporate crime include environmental pollution through inappropriate disposal of waste, the sale of products known to be unsafe, and deviance essay forms of financial fraud.
In extreme cases corporations have even violated international laws governing national sovereignty to protect their financial interests when threatened. Both white-collar and corporate crime is committed primarily for financial gain.
What distinguishes these types of deviance from others is that the perpetrators often do not see themselves as committing crimes. Rather, deviance essay, they see themselves as industry innovators persecuted for their business success. Deviance essay chief executive officer Jeffrey Skilling, convicted of fraud and insider trading, consistently characterized his activities as innovative rather than illegal.
Another major area concerning deviance relates to drug abuse and efforts by law enforcement to curb distribution. Drug abuse is not limited to illegal substances such as heroin and cocaine. It also includes abuse of over-the-counter and prescription drugs, most commonly pain medications.
Reasons for drug abuse are varied, ranging from escapism to recreational use. Drug abuse occurs throughout all socioeconomic levels, deviance essay, but social class is a factor in the type of drug used. For example, professional and middle- to upper-class abusers typically use cocaine, whereas lower-class abusers more commonly use crack, a cocaine derivative. A major issue related to drug abuse is how society determines which drugs are legal. This question is often not answered based on the actual effects of the drug but rather the perceived harm.
For example, tobacco and alcohol are legally available in the United States, but marijuana is not. Compared with other illegal substances, marijuana use is not addictive, and its negative health impacts are more comparable to legalized tobacco than to other illegal drugs.
Moreover, marijuana has been found to have various positive effects especially for medicinal use, such as treating loss of appetite associated with cancer therapies, and as an effective painkiller without the severe side effects of prescription drugs.
Although tobacco and alcohol kill many times more people deviance essay all illegal drugs combined, they are nonetheless legally sold, deviance essay. Not all deviance is necessarily negative. For example, one can be a deviant but for a noble cause, such as those who engaged in civil disobedience to promote racial deviance essay in the s.
Emile Durkheim was one of the first social scientists to recognize that deviance could also have functional benefits for society at large. First, identifying deviance sets the moral boundaries between right and wrong.
Second, by defining deviance we also define acceptable norms and values, deviance essay. For example, art is often shocking in that it challenges our way of thinking about various issues, deviance essay. Historically, people viewed deviance as a result of demonic possession, biological defects, and psychological problems. Seventeenth-century Deviance essay, Massachusetts, residents saw lesbians and assertive women as deviants, attributing their behavior to witchcraft or demonic position, and deviance essay burned deviance essay to death, deviance essay.
In late 19th-century Italy, Cesare Lombroso, deviance essay, a physician, deviance essay, hypothesized that deviance had biological origins. As such, deviance essay, he believed that deviants could be identified by common physical characteristics, such as low foreheads. Lombroso reached these conclusions by examining the body types of prison populations without realizing that such traits were common in the general population. By the midth century, William Sheldon believed criminality could be predicted by body structure.
In contrast, psychologists identify internal psychological problems as the cause of deviance, but in the second half of the 20th century, sociological explanations of deviant behavior became more widely accepted. The positivist perspective, generally associated with the natural sciences and law enforcement, defines deviance as intrinsically real and makes three assumptions about it.
Second is objectivism, the reality that deviance can be objectively studied and quantified, such as with statistical police reports.
This positivist theory exemplifies the sociological deviance essay called structural-functionalism. Merton had argued that every society encourages its citizens to pursue certain legitimate goals, such as wealth, with corresponding legitimate means, such as obtaining an education and a career.
However, some people may experience a disconnect between the legitimate means and goals and thus experience strain, prompting five modes of adaptation responses. First is conformity, when the goals and means are accepted e. Third is ritualism, by which a person accepts the means but cares little about the goal e. Fourth is retreatism, deviance essay, deviance essay the individual rejects all legitimate means and goals, e.
Fifth is rebellion, when a person deviance essay both means and goals and replaces them with his or her own alternative set e. Differential association is an interactionist sociological perspective which treats deviance as a socially learned behavior through interaction with deviants, deviance essay.
Edwin Sutherland argued that individuals associating more with people who have deviant ideas than with conformists are more likely to become deviant themselves. This is more likely to occur within small primary groups. Associating with deviants is only a first step, however. Deviance essay person must also identify with the deviants and act accordingly before becoming one of them.
Control theory argues that conformity results from social controls placed on the individual by society, deviance essay. Travis Hirschi argued that everyone has an innate tendency to deviate from social norms.
However, if our bond to society is strong, we will choose to conform. Accordingly, people bond to society in four ways, deviance essay, namely 1 attachment to conventional people; 2 commitment to conformity by investing in conventional activities such as an education; 3 involvement in conventional activities, which reduces deviance essay time available for other activities; and 4 a belief in the validity of the existing social rules, deviance essay.
This more deviance essay perspective, which emerged in the s, sees deviant behavior as a social construct, determined by how society reacts to certain behaviors, which in and of deviance essay are not intrinsically bad or good, such as getting a tattoo. Constructionists also make three assumptions regarding the nature of deviance. First is relativism, the belief that deviance is not intrinsically real but rather a socially imposed label upon that behavior. Second is subjectivism, the idea that there is nothing objective regarding deviant behavior, thereby requiring its study from the subjective perspective of the deviants themselves.
Third is voluntarism, a view of deviant behavior as a result of free will without external causes. Examples of constructionist theories include labeling, relativist, phenomenological, and power theory. Labeling deviance essay fits within the sociological perspective of symbolic interactionism. This theory argues that what is important is neither the cause nor the deviant act in itself but the meaning that people attach to it, who applies the label, deviance essay, and the resultant consequences on the labeled and labelers.
According to this theory, those with power define and impose the label of deviant or conformist on others who may or may not actually deserve it.
The labeled, deviance essay, in turn, may eventually come to accept the deviant label in a self-fulfilling prophecy, deviance essay. A person who commits an initial deviant act primary deviation will face societal sanctions even though the person may not see himself or herself as a deviant at the time, deviance essay. If the person repeats the behavior secondary deviationsociety will impose harsher penalties and eventually stigmatize the violator as a deviant.
The violator may eventually come to accept the label and continue the expected deviant behavior. Conflict theorists argue that deviance results from differences in either social class or culture. Marxists believe that capitalism, as an economic system and in its coercive control over the working class, induces deviant behavior caused by alienation from production, society, and oneself.
Conflict theorists maintain that the wealthy and powerful elite of a society define as deviant any behavior that poses a threat to their wealth or privileged social position. For example, deviance essay, laws protecting private property benefit the rich and their extensive wealth more than they do the working class, who may not have any property.
For example, the powerful— encountering weaker social controls—have a greater deviant opportunity because of their skills and position in society. Combined deviance essay higher expectations of success, this may cause feelings deviance essay relative deprivation and a stronger deviant motivation.
Thus the powerful are more likely to engage in more profitable white-collar and corporate crime. The powerless, who face greater social controls and who have fewer skills and lower positions, are more likely to engage in less deviance essay blue-collar crime like robbery. Deviance is difficult to define because of the relative nature of societal norms governing behavior.
In general, a high social consensus exists regarding some forms of deviance, such as murder and rape. In these cases, deviance essay, the focus tends to be placed on prevention, deterrence, and containment of the deviant. In other instances, a lower degree of social consensus exists as to what is deviant. These cases generally involve behaviors regulated by informal codes of everyday behavior, such as cell phone use in public places. This example Deviance Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only.
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Nov 21, · Deviance is the violation of social norms. Norms are codes of ethics that act as guidance to people on how to live their lives. According to William Somner, there are three types of norms; Folkways are what a society considers being right with regard to culture and tradition. Issues like dressing, mannerisms are in this category This essay will start by making a distinction between the concepts of crime and deviance, followed by an examination how such concepts have been acquired and accepted by society. Further reference will be made to the current crime statistics, and analyse some of the possible explanations for the high proportion of crime that is being committed by young males Essay. Words7 Pages. Deviance can be defined as an absence of conformity to the social norm. Not all deviant behavior is necessarily illegal or harmful to individuals, these behaviors can range from standing in another’s personal space to murdering another individual. In some cases, it can be looked upon as a positive change or a unique and favorable act
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