Deviance and Social ControlDeviance refers to behavior that departs from societal or group norms, but it is difficult to define because not everyone agrees on what should be considered deviant behavior. Deviance may be either positive—involving behavior that overconforms to expectations, or negative—involving behavior that underconforms to accepted norms. All societies employ various means of social control to promote conformity to norms.
Functionalism and Deviance According to functionalists, deviance has both negative and positive consequences for society. A negative effect of deviance is that it erodes trust; benefits of deviance to society can be that it acts as a temporary safety valve and increases unity within a society or group. The strain theory and control theory of deviance are based on the functionalist perspective.
Symbolic Interactionism and Deviance Symbolic interactionists support the differential association theory of deviance—that deviance is transmitted through socialization. This perspective also yields the labeling theory, which states that an act is deviant only if other people identify it so. Symbolic interactionists also distinguish degrees of deviance—primary deviance describes isolated acts of deviance by a person, while secondary deviance refers to deviance as a lifestyle and a personal identity.
Conflict Theory and Deviance The conflict perspective looks at deviance in terms of social inequality and power. The rich and powerful use their positions to determine which acts are deviant and how deviants should be punished. Supporters of this theory believe that minorities receive unequal treatment in the American criminal justice system.
Crime and Punishment Crime statistics in the United States are gathered by the FBI and the Census Bureau. Juvenile crime—legal violations committed by those under 18 years of age—are the third largest category of crime in the United States. Various methods are employed to try to discourage crime, including deterrence, retribution, incarceration, and rehabilitation.
Article #1
Smoking Becomes 'Deviant Behavior'By LAURA MANSNERUS
Published: April 24, 1988
It was cause for a libel award when a Chicago television commentator said in 1981 that the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation was trying to snare teen-agers with advertisements relating smoking to drugs, alcohol and sex. The idea, the commentator had said, was to present cigarettes as ''an illicit pleasure.''
Whether the industry meant to send the message or not, illicit is what cigarettes have become.
''Smoking is quickly becoming a deviant behavior,'' said Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at Hunter College and Syracuse University. ''It's not just seen as something that's unhealthy or irrational.''
The recent pace of regulation has surprised even the antismoking organizations.
According to Action on Smoking and Health, an advocacy group, 23 states restrict smoking in restaurants, up from 14 a year ago, and 15 have regulations for private workplaces, up from 10 a year ago. More than half of American companies restrict smoking on the job. There are hundreds of municipal ordinances. New York's, which took effect April 6, is fairly typical of the new ones; it bans smoking in most enclosed public places and segregates smokers in restaurants and workplaces. As of yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits smoking on flights of two hours or less, and Northwest Airlines forbids smoking on all its North American flights.
There are less official signs of disapproval, too. Corporate annual reports never picture the executives with cigarettes anymore, one consultant noted. The cover of this month's Reader's Digest asks, ''Is Smoking Ruining Your Sex Life?''
''In the last two years we've made more progress than in the previous 30,'' said Robert A. Rosner, executive director of the Smoking Policy Institute in Seattle, a nonprofit group that advises employers. The reason given most frequently for the change is new data on passive smoking, described in a 1986 Surgeon General's report and in another 1986 report by the National Research Council, which estimated that ambient smoke might cause 2,400 lung cancer deaths annually among nonsmokers.
''The one humongous issue is that the average person can justify harming themselves, but can't justify harming somebody else,'' Mr. Rosner said.
Some sociologists see something more complicated at work. Professor Glassner, the author of a forthcoming book on attitudes about fitness and health, finds a ''craving for control'' reflected in all kinds of worries about the body.
''There are so many dangers that are large scale and that we feel we have no control over, particularly in the environment, that this is a way to gain control,'' he said.
Peter L. Berger, a Boston University sociologist, calls the New York ordinance a ''viable democratic compromise'' but casts the controversy in terms of class. ''It's not surprising that the upper-middle-class agenda has been successful,'' he said, adding that the wave of regulation is a ''delightfully close rerun of Prohibition.''
While hesitating to judge the evidence on passive smoking, he said it appeared to be ''much, much weaker'' than that on active smoking. ''The reason it's become so important,'' he said, ''is not because of the weight of the evidence but because of the ideological usefulness of the idea.''
''Most people are not in a position to evaluate this evidence. What people believe comes from placing faith in a certain authority. People say, 'The Surgeon General said so.' Well, who's the Surgeon General?''
Professor Glassner, who noted that he ''hates'' smoke, said, ''There is a cost involved in smoking bans. You're taking away a group's prerogatives. This is a country in which we value individual freedoms, and we ought to be extremely careful about which ones we take away.''
A libertarian strain persists even among nonsmokers. Dave Brenton, president of the Smoker's Rights Alliance of Mesa, Ariz., said about 20 percent of the group's 700 to 800 members are nonsmokers. ''They understand that it's an individual rights issue,'' he said. ''Who knows what they'll take away tomorrow?''
But Mr. Rosner said most restrictions do not keep smokers from maintaining their habit. ''My term for this is '80's-style temperance,'' he said. ''Smoke all you want - just don't do it in public places.''
Indeed, anti-tobacco forces have known fiercer days. In early New England, blue laws penalized public smoking. Prohibition revived the sentiment; between 1920 and 1930, even as per capita consumption doubled, several states prohibited the sale of tobacco.
Respectability came with World War II, when cigarettes were included with K-rations, and it was not until the mid-1960's - the first Surgeon General's report on smoking was issued in 1964 - that the decline began. In 1966, according to the Federal Centers for Disease Control, 42.2 percent of the American population smoked; in 1986, 26.5 percent did.
After the 1964 report, popular images of smoking changed, too. Cigarette ads were purged from the airwaves, ''Thank You for Not Smoking'' signs appeared, and Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne died of lung cancer. Smoking, Education and Income
Clearly, the message has had the greatest effect among the upper-middle class. There is a strong negative correlation between smoking and income and education, though not much difference by race: According to the Centers for Disease Control, 28.4 percent of blacks and 26.4 percent of whites are smokers.
In the current climate, smokers have been generally compliant. John M. Pinney, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Smoking Behavior and Policy at Harvard University, said its surveys of attitudes about the Cambridge, Mass., ordinance showed very little desire for confrontation.
''We're a very individual-minded nation in many ways,'' he said, ''but we also tend to seek permission for the things we want to do.''
Most experts do not predict the eradication of smoking, not even in public places, but expect it to become less and less acceptable. ''If this pattern continues,'' said Professor Glassner, ''we'll have a homogenized population in which everybody will be within the recommended weight ranges, and nobody will smoke anymore, and nobody will drink, and everybody will work out.''
''As I say this,'' he added, ''I realize some people think this would be an ideal society.'' AMERICA's SMOKERS By education and income (1987) (percentage who say they smoke) Education Not high school graduates 32% High school graduates 33 Some college 29 Four-year college graduates 18 Household income $7,500 or less 32% $7,501-$15,000 38 $15,001-$25,000 31 $25,001-$35,000 27 $35,001-$50,000 23 $50,001 and over 23 (Source: Louis Harris survey for Prevention Magazine) BY AGE, SEX AND RACE (1986) (percentage who say they smoke) *4*MEN Age White Black Total 17-24 26.0% 14.3% 24.4% 25-34 32.4 45.9 33.6 35-44 37.4 36.4 37.1 45-64 30.0 35.6 30.5 65 and over 16.0 26.6 16.7 Total 29.3 32.5 29.5 *4*WOMEN Age White Black Total 17-24 22.7 16.0 21.5 25-34 29.1 30.9 29.2 35-44 27.6 36.4 28.7 45-64 25.2 26.7 25.1 65 and over 12.4 8.3 12.0 Total 23.7 25.1 23.8 (Source: Centers for Disease Control)
Photo of 1936 magazine advertisement for cigarettes (pg. 1); grspha of number of people who say they smoke, broken down by education and income (Source: Louis Harris survey for Prevention Magazine); alos by sex, race, and total (Source: Centers for Disease Control); cartoons
Article #2
Miley Cyrus and the ever-increasing acceptance of devianceWhen we promote sleaze, we get more sleaze. When we talk ourselves into believing that impropriety is respectable, we corrupt ourselves.
October 12, 2013|By Cal ThomasIt's the 40th anniversary of Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying," which some have described as a breakthrough book for women and for modern feminism.
Reduced to its common (and I do mean common) denominator, the book, which was written in the appropriately named "Me" Decade of the '70s, encourages women to behave like promiscuous men, having meaningless sex without fear of consequences. "Fear of Flying" gleefully encourages women to engage in the so-called "ZF." Don't know what that means? Look it up.
Henry Higgins' question, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" has been asked and answered. She can. She is. And it's not a good thing. Some ask, "If the Playboy philosophy was good enough for some men, freeing them from a marital commitment in order to have sex, why not the same for some women?" No reason, says "Fear of Flying." What's good for the goose, right? Everybody into the pool!
Except that it wasn't "good" for men or for women. The fallout from the culture bombs dropped on America, beginning in the freewheeling '60s, continues to infect the younger generation today. Their role models are not parents, or even sports figures, but rather young twits like Miley Cyrus. Even she is nothing new. Ms. Cyrus is just the latest desperate exhibitionist in a long list of desperate exhibitionists who'll do anything and everything, usually while nearly naked, to get noticed and talked about.
What was once considered deviant behavior is now accepted and appears to go unchallenged for fear of a lawsuit or public condemnation. Out-of-wedlock births, the glorification of thug life, the cloying, sycophantic fascination with pseudo celebrity, the tacit acceptance of recreational drug use, it's all there on the downward slope to depravity. Cole Porter wrote, "In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. Now, heaven knows, anything goes!" He was ahead of his time.
The main character in "Fear of Flying" is 29-year-old Isadora Wing, who says, "The (ZF) is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not 'taking' and the woman is not 'giving.' ... The (ZF) is the purest thing there is."
She's talking about "quickies," a fast sexual encounter for pleasure with no expectation of a call in the morning. No commitment. No conversation. The ZF.
In a worshipful Washington Post article on Ms. Jong's book, writer Neely Tucker quotes Shelley Fisher Fishkin, professor of English and director of the American studies program at Stanford University: "It wasn't unusual to have sex talk in a book. It was unusual to have it in a woman's head, in a woman's point of view." Is this the equality women fought so hard for, for the right to degrade oneself on an equal level with unrestrained cads?
Such celebrations of promiscuity rarely examine the consequences of the behavior they promote. One can view the repercussions of doing what pleases nearly every day on "Dr. Phil" where women, especially, are seen suffering from abandonment, abuse and the drugs and alcohol they often turn to, in the false hope it will ease their pain. Many of their children are also addicted to one substance or another and hate one or both of their parents for damaging their lives. Is this who we want to be as a society?
While Washington is consumed about the debt ceiling, America should be concerned about its smelly "sewer ceiling," which is constantly raised with very little resistance.
TV writers put words in the mouths of female characters that would have shocked my grandmother. Modesty is a museum piece. There seem to be fewer men of honor everywhere. When we promote sleaze, we get more sleaze. When we talk ourselves into believing that impropriety is respectable, we corrupt ourselves.
Ancient wisdom from the Prophet Isaiah serves as a warning about the consequences of ignoring what once was called objective truth: "What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter." (Isaiah 5:20 New Living Translation)
Sorrow indeed.
Cal Thomas is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
Chapter 7 Resources
Chapter 7 PowerPoint PDF
Functionalism and Deviance According to functionalists, deviance has both negative and positive consequences for society. A negative effect of deviance is that it erodes trust; benefits of deviance to society can be that it acts as a temporary safety valve and increases unity within a society or group. The strain theory and control theory of deviance are based on the functionalist perspective.
Symbolic Interactionism and Deviance Symbolic interactionists support the differential association theory of deviance—that deviance is transmitted through socialization. This perspective also yields the labeling theory, which states that an act is deviant only if other people identify it so. Symbolic interactionists also distinguish degrees of deviance—primary deviance describes isolated acts of deviance by a person, while secondary deviance refers to deviance as a lifestyle and a personal identity.
Conflict Theory and Deviance The conflict perspective looks at deviance in terms of social inequality and power. The rich and powerful use their positions to determine which acts are deviant and how deviants should be punished. Supporters of this theory believe that minorities receive unequal treatment in the American criminal justice system.
Crime and Punishment Crime statistics in the United States are gathered by the FBI and the Census Bureau. Juvenile crime—legal violations committed by those under 18 years of age—are the third largest category of crime in the United States. Various methods are employed to try to discourage crime, including deterrence, retribution, incarceration, and rehabilitation.
Article #1
Smoking Becomes 'Deviant Behavior'By LAURA MANSNERUS
Published: April 24, 1988
It was cause for a libel award when a Chicago television commentator said in 1981 that the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation was trying to snare teen-agers with advertisements relating smoking to drugs, alcohol and sex. The idea, the commentator had said, was to present cigarettes as ''an illicit pleasure.''
Whether the industry meant to send the message or not, illicit is what cigarettes have become.
''Smoking is quickly becoming a deviant behavior,'' said Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at Hunter College and Syracuse University. ''It's not just seen as something that's unhealthy or irrational.''
The recent pace of regulation has surprised even the antismoking organizations.
According to Action on Smoking and Health, an advocacy group, 23 states restrict smoking in restaurants, up from 14 a year ago, and 15 have regulations for private workplaces, up from 10 a year ago. More than half of American companies restrict smoking on the job. There are hundreds of municipal ordinances. New York's, which took effect April 6, is fairly typical of the new ones; it bans smoking in most enclosed public places and segregates smokers in restaurants and workplaces. As of yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits smoking on flights of two hours or less, and Northwest Airlines forbids smoking on all its North American flights.
There are less official signs of disapproval, too. Corporate annual reports never picture the executives with cigarettes anymore, one consultant noted. The cover of this month's Reader's Digest asks, ''Is Smoking Ruining Your Sex Life?''
''In the last two years we've made more progress than in the previous 30,'' said Robert A. Rosner, executive director of the Smoking Policy Institute in Seattle, a nonprofit group that advises employers. The reason given most frequently for the change is new data on passive smoking, described in a 1986 Surgeon General's report and in another 1986 report by the National Research Council, which estimated that ambient smoke might cause 2,400 lung cancer deaths annually among nonsmokers.
''The one humongous issue is that the average person can justify harming themselves, but can't justify harming somebody else,'' Mr. Rosner said.
Some sociologists see something more complicated at work. Professor Glassner, the author of a forthcoming book on attitudes about fitness and health, finds a ''craving for control'' reflected in all kinds of worries about the body.
''There are so many dangers that are large scale and that we feel we have no control over, particularly in the environment, that this is a way to gain control,'' he said.
Peter L. Berger, a Boston University sociologist, calls the New York ordinance a ''viable democratic compromise'' but casts the controversy in terms of class. ''It's not surprising that the upper-middle-class agenda has been successful,'' he said, adding that the wave of regulation is a ''delightfully close rerun of Prohibition.''
While hesitating to judge the evidence on passive smoking, he said it appeared to be ''much, much weaker'' than that on active smoking. ''The reason it's become so important,'' he said, ''is not because of the weight of the evidence but because of the ideological usefulness of the idea.''
''Most people are not in a position to evaluate this evidence. What people believe comes from placing faith in a certain authority. People say, 'The Surgeon General said so.' Well, who's the Surgeon General?''
Professor Glassner, who noted that he ''hates'' smoke, said, ''There is a cost involved in smoking bans. You're taking away a group's prerogatives. This is a country in which we value individual freedoms, and we ought to be extremely careful about which ones we take away.''
A libertarian strain persists even among nonsmokers. Dave Brenton, president of the Smoker's Rights Alliance of Mesa, Ariz., said about 20 percent of the group's 700 to 800 members are nonsmokers. ''They understand that it's an individual rights issue,'' he said. ''Who knows what they'll take away tomorrow?''
But Mr. Rosner said most restrictions do not keep smokers from maintaining their habit. ''My term for this is '80's-style temperance,'' he said. ''Smoke all you want - just don't do it in public places.''
Indeed, anti-tobacco forces have known fiercer days. In early New England, blue laws penalized public smoking. Prohibition revived the sentiment; between 1920 and 1930, even as per capita consumption doubled, several states prohibited the sale of tobacco.
Respectability came with World War II, when cigarettes were included with K-rations, and it was not until the mid-1960's - the first Surgeon General's report on smoking was issued in 1964 - that the decline began. In 1966, according to the Federal Centers for Disease Control, 42.2 percent of the American population smoked; in 1986, 26.5 percent did.
After the 1964 report, popular images of smoking changed, too. Cigarette ads were purged from the airwaves, ''Thank You for Not Smoking'' signs appeared, and Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne died of lung cancer. Smoking, Education and Income
Clearly, the message has had the greatest effect among the upper-middle class. There is a strong negative correlation between smoking and income and education, though not much difference by race: According to the Centers for Disease Control, 28.4 percent of blacks and 26.4 percent of whites are smokers.
In the current climate, smokers have been generally compliant. John M. Pinney, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Smoking Behavior and Policy at Harvard University, said its surveys of attitudes about the Cambridge, Mass., ordinance showed very little desire for confrontation.
''We're a very individual-minded nation in many ways,'' he said, ''but we also tend to seek permission for the things we want to do.''
Most experts do not predict the eradication of smoking, not even in public places, but expect it to become less and less acceptable. ''If this pattern continues,'' said Professor Glassner, ''we'll have a homogenized population in which everybody will be within the recommended weight ranges, and nobody will smoke anymore, and nobody will drink, and everybody will work out.''
''As I say this,'' he added, ''I realize some people think this would be an ideal society.'' AMERICA's SMOKERS By education and income (1987) (percentage who say they smoke) Education Not high school graduates 32% High school graduates 33 Some college 29 Four-year college graduates 18 Household income $7,500 or less 32% $7,501-$15,000 38 $15,001-$25,000 31 $25,001-$35,000 27 $35,001-$50,000 23 $50,001 and over 23 (Source: Louis Harris survey for Prevention Magazine) BY AGE, SEX AND RACE (1986) (percentage who say they smoke) *4*MEN Age White Black Total 17-24 26.0% 14.3% 24.4% 25-34 32.4 45.9 33.6 35-44 37.4 36.4 37.1 45-64 30.0 35.6 30.5 65 and over 16.0 26.6 16.7 Total 29.3 32.5 29.5 *4*WOMEN Age White Black Total 17-24 22.7 16.0 21.5 25-34 29.1 30.9 29.2 35-44 27.6 36.4 28.7 45-64 25.2 26.7 25.1 65 and over 12.4 8.3 12.0 Total 23.7 25.1 23.8 (Source: Centers for Disease Control)
Photo of 1936 magazine advertisement for cigarettes (pg. 1); grspha of number of people who say they smoke, broken down by education and income (Source: Louis Harris survey for Prevention Magazine); alos by sex, race, and total (Source: Centers for Disease Control); cartoons
Article #2
Miley Cyrus and the ever-increasing acceptance of devianceWhen we promote sleaze, we get more sleaze. When we talk ourselves into believing that impropriety is respectable, we corrupt ourselves.
October 12, 2013|By Cal ThomasIt's the 40th anniversary of Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying," which some have described as a breakthrough book for women and for modern feminism.
Reduced to its common (and I do mean common) denominator, the book, which was written in the appropriately named "Me" Decade of the '70s, encourages women to behave like promiscuous men, having meaningless sex without fear of consequences. "Fear of Flying" gleefully encourages women to engage in the so-called "ZF." Don't know what that means? Look it up.
Henry Higgins' question, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" has been asked and answered. She can. She is. And it's not a good thing. Some ask, "If the Playboy philosophy was good enough for some men, freeing them from a marital commitment in order to have sex, why not the same for some women?" No reason, says "Fear of Flying." What's good for the goose, right? Everybody into the pool!
Except that it wasn't "good" for men or for women. The fallout from the culture bombs dropped on America, beginning in the freewheeling '60s, continues to infect the younger generation today. Their role models are not parents, or even sports figures, but rather young twits like Miley Cyrus. Even she is nothing new. Ms. Cyrus is just the latest desperate exhibitionist in a long list of desperate exhibitionists who'll do anything and everything, usually while nearly naked, to get noticed and talked about.
What was once considered deviant behavior is now accepted and appears to go unchallenged for fear of a lawsuit or public condemnation. Out-of-wedlock births, the glorification of thug life, the cloying, sycophantic fascination with pseudo celebrity, the tacit acceptance of recreational drug use, it's all there on the downward slope to depravity. Cole Porter wrote, "In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. Now, heaven knows, anything goes!" He was ahead of his time.
The main character in "Fear of Flying" is 29-year-old Isadora Wing, who says, "The (ZF) is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not 'taking' and the woman is not 'giving.' ... The (ZF) is the purest thing there is."
She's talking about "quickies," a fast sexual encounter for pleasure with no expectation of a call in the morning. No commitment. No conversation. The ZF.
In a worshipful Washington Post article on Ms. Jong's book, writer Neely Tucker quotes Shelley Fisher Fishkin, professor of English and director of the American studies program at Stanford University: "It wasn't unusual to have sex talk in a book. It was unusual to have it in a woman's head, in a woman's point of view." Is this the equality women fought so hard for, for the right to degrade oneself on an equal level with unrestrained cads?
Such celebrations of promiscuity rarely examine the consequences of the behavior they promote. One can view the repercussions of doing what pleases nearly every day on "Dr. Phil" where women, especially, are seen suffering from abandonment, abuse and the drugs and alcohol they often turn to, in the false hope it will ease their pain. Many of their children are also addicted to one substance or another and hate one or both of their parents for damaging their lives. Is this who we want to be as a society?
While Washington is consumed about the debt ceiling, America should be concerned about its smelly "sewer ceiling," which is constantly raised with very little resistance.
TV writers put words in the mouths of female characters that would have shocked my grandmother. Modesty is a museum piece. There seem to be fewer men of honor everywhere. When we promote sleaze, we get more sleaze. When we talk ourselves into believing that impropriety is respectable, we corrupt ourselves.
Ancient wisdom from the Prophet Isaiah serves as a warning about the consequences of ignoring what once was called objective truth: "What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter." (Isaiah 5:20 New Living Translation)
Sorrow indeed.
Cal Thomas is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
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