Deviance - Conceptualizations Of Deviance, The Relativity And Importance Of Deviance, Relationship Between Deviance And Crime, Summary
social term statuses conditions
The term "deviance" usually refers to some behavior that is inconsistent with standards of acceptable conduct prevailing in a given social group, although the term has also been used to designate personal conditions, ideas, or statuses that are stigmatized or disreputable. Social scientists disagree, about a precise definition of deviance because they use different approaches in trying to determine exactly what the standards of conduct or the acceptable statuses and conditions are in a given group (Gibbs, 1981). At least five ways of conceptualizing deviance are used.
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The statistical approach. One way of defining standards of conduct and deviance from them is to observe how people in a particular group actually behave (Wilkins, 1964). Accordingly, if a large proportion of people in a group smoke cigarettes, smoking is "normal" while failure to smoke would be atypical, or deviant. With a "statistical" perspective, sky diving, eating s…
Most students of deviance regard it as a socially constructed phenomenon; that is, things regarded as deviant have no inherent pejorative qualities but instead are the objects of social processes in a given context that result in negative attributions. With the exception of those who employ an "absolutist" definition, scholars note that what is deviant behavior varies from group to g…
To a large extent, criminology and studies of deviance have developed along separate tracks although they show much overlap. Criminologists have typically limited themselves to issues about legality, crime, or crime-related phenomena. Students of deviance, on the other hand, have studied crime as well as a wider range of behaviors or conditions that are deviant by one or another of the definitions…
——. "The Elasticity of Evil: Changes in the Social Definition of Deviance." Occasional paper #7, Oxford University Penal Research Unit. Oxford, U.K.: Basil Blackwell, 1974. ——. Norms, Deviance, and Social Control: Conceptual Matters. New York: Elsevier, 1981. ——. "A Power-Control Theory of Gender and Delinquency." In Structural …
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