Social Deviance

Steve Hall

Social deviance is a concept used in the social sci- classification and understanding of deviance were ences to represent all social actions—or in some brought under the control of rationalized systems cases words and images—that transgress socially of knowledge and law (see “social control”). accepted behavioral norms and ethical standards. However, despite the emergence of rational- Social deviance is a far broader term than crime. ized institutions of science and law, in late eigh- The latter is restricted to actions or signs that exist teenth and 19th century Europe all individuals beyond boundaries set by law, whilst the former lived during a time of great socioeconomic dis- incorporates crime but also includes any legal ruption. In Britain, the first fully-blown industrial action, word or image deemed unacceptable. The capitalist nation, the countryside was emptying disciplines of sociology and criminology share a and the new industrial urban areas were rapidly long history of dealing with the concept of social expanding. Since Rousseau, deviance and crime deviance, a history that, roughly speaking, moved had been associated with the pathologies of an through the layered phases of classicism, ­positivism/ urban life that for him was inevitably decadent, integrationism, pluralism and radicalism. corrupt and unnatural. In some urban locales the Before these disciplines became established, disruption of traditional sociocultural institutions the concept was the preserve of theologians, phi- such as the family and the community was at its losophers and legal theorists. The classical phase height and poverty was endemic. Between 1780 came into being when Protestant and Enlight- and 1830 London experienced a 540 percent rise enment thinking distinguished crime from the in recorded crime. Other major cities in Europe broader religious concept of sin. As it developed were also beginning to experience rapid expan- from these historical watersheds, classical liberal sion and increasing crime rates. The first sociolo- thought, with its growing faith in the rationalized gists of crime and deviance were positivists, such legal system as the product of the new “like minds” as Adolphe Quetelet (1984), an astronomer and of universal reason, tended to conflate deviance mathematician interested in using his expertise to with the legal category of crime. The social context analyze the social world. At the time a new ortho- in which deviance takes place was largely absent dox way of thinking about deviance developed, from these early debates and policies on law and and it became the norm to regard it as a social punishment. Deviance was seen as the product of pathology, a metaphor derived from comparisons the individual’s failure to exercise innate ­powers made between the social and physical bodies. This of will, reason and morality. For Kant’s (1998) important development drove social science away intrinsicalist philosophy the deviant individual from classical liberal individualism to the search had failed to to abide by the injunction of the for social, temporal and spatial patterns of crime. categorical imperative. This refusal to become Where patterns could be discerned it became acquainted with and conform to the demands of acceptable to hypothesize social causes, such as universal reason as institutionalized in law was inadequate parenting and socialization, anomie, a wilful and punishable rejection of God’s gift of social disorganization, egoism, demoralization, reason. For the British utilitarians and their con- lack of social bonding and so on. These hypotheses sequentialist philosophy, the act of deviance was and their endless testing and elaboration formed a product of the innately hedonistic individual’s the backbone of positivist research programs in failure to act according to rational calculations of the social sciences, and indeed still survive today the harmful consequences of intended actions. in many of the West’s government departments Punishment was necessary as a deterrent to the and prestigious policy-oriented research universi- self and third-party observers alike. Although the ties. Deviant actions were judged by the categories volume of punishment in Europe and the USA of law and harm, and they were the products of proliferated during the 19th century, the physi- deeper tensions and strains that disrupt the har- cal brutality that characterized the worst pre- monious workings of society and culture. At the modern punishments was gradually replaced by same time, however, some thinkers, such as Her- more humane techniques. Punishment and the bert Spencer (1851), made connections between social deviance 403 social determinism and biological determinism, Dilthey’s (2002) notion of Verstehen and the prag- fueling the subsequent eugenics movement, which matist social psychology of Cooley (1902), Mead supplied scientific justification to the “breeding (1934) and others. This marked a shift from social out” of sections of the population whose deviance pathologization to cultural appreciation. Deviance was attributed to their genetic inferiority. It could was not the observable indicator of an underlying certainly be argued that determinism’s progres- pathology created by social disruption but a cul- sive dimension was often overshadowed by its turally creative and innovative way of coping with dark side. extremely difficult circumstances. Deviance was Most of the sociology of deviance’s development the product of the human ability to constantly took place in the USA and Europe. Perhaps the renegotiate meaning in the construction of iden- most prominent positivist school was Emile Dur- tity and moral norms. kheim’s functionalism. He conceptualized society In his theory of differential association, the as an organism, with each institution functioning Chicago School sociologist Edwin Sutherland to reproduce the social order. Following his work (1937) further challenged the Durkheimian the- on the sacred and the profane in The Elementary ory of social disorganization by arguing that all Forms of Religious Life (2001), he argued that the societies were differentially organized, a view reproduction of societies depends on the main- that began to shift the balance from integration- tenance of a consensual morality. He was one of ism to pluralism. The tendency to deviate from the first sociologists to follow the anthropological the mainstream norm and indulge in crime was a model and place the public ritual of naming and matter of the complex machinations of meaning- punishing deviance at the heart of social cohesion generation, power and influence within different and reproduction. A low level of deviance is nor- cultural and sub-cultural groups; thus deviance mal, he argued, as is the ritualized punishment of was not a universal category, and neither was it deviance that functions to signify what lies beyond a defining feature or permanent fixture of any the limits of the moral norm in a spectacular way social group. that impresses itself on the minds of the popula- In the 1950s attempts were made to synthesize tion. Thus a “normal” level of deviance maintains strain and sub-cultural theories of deviance, based society’s boundaries, but a surfeit indicates that on the idea of deviant sub-cultures as “splinters” the pathologies of excessive individualism, egoism created as alienated young people rejected the and anomie are being thrown up in times of rapid mainstream norms of an unequal society that economic disruption. Durkheim’s theory was excluded them. This attempt to marry integration- taken up by Robert Merton. In his “strain theory” ism with pluralism was only partially successful, Merton (1938) argued that the inability of individ- and in the 1960s the sociology of deviance took a uals to fulfil ambitions and desires incited by the strong pluralist and social constructionist turn, in American Dream would create social strain and a which the main cause of crime was identified as subsequent sense of anomie, or “normlessness”. social reaction. Symbolic interactionist theorists In a society where the structure of opportunities argued that we are all deviant, and initial minor is unequal, frustration and the abandonment of acts of social deviance provoke the reactions of norms, and a subsequent increase in crime and disapproval, ostracism and criminalization. “Devi- deviance, are more likely. ant” was a label stuck on individuals from plu- In the USA the early Chicago School of sociol- ral backgrounds by a reactionary power elite. As ogy followed the positivist and Durkheimian lines, already-alienated individuals identified with the arguing that in chaotic zones of transition in rap- label, minor deviance was amplified and intensi- idly industrialising American cities with a large fied in a spiral of social rejection and increasing influx of immigrants, traditional cultural systems crime. tend to break down. The pathological and anomic British variants of symbolic interactionism result of this disruption is social disorganization, combined with conflict theory and structural indicated by a multitude of observable indicators Marxism to produce the New Criminology (Tay- of various deviant acts such as prostitution, theft, lor et al. 1973), which was more sensitive to the violence and so on. However, the later Chicago unequal structure of power in capitalist societ- School shifted its position and began to use sym- ies and the corresponding structural imbalance bolic interactionist theories, drawn from Wilhelm in the ability to define, criminalize and punish