SOCCUL

AC1522-A

Deviance is defined as the recognized violation of cultural or society’s norms. It means departing from the
norm, and to a sociologist, that can be biased toward the positive or negative. Crimes such as murder or rape for
example, are certainly deviant because they are outside the norm, but there are also crimes that are not deviant.
One example is lying. Lying is not a crime but it is an act which is socially being condemned.

No society can exist without deviance. It is significant in social stability because doing so creates norms
that inform members as to what behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable. While it’s easy to think whether we
either fall on one side of the line or the other, a closer look at rituals and the release of deviant desire in various
societies shows that at some point or another, the vast majority of people go for a walk on the deviant side of that
line. Landing on the deviant side is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, one of the primary roles of deviance,
according to the structural functionalist view by Emile Durkheim, is that deviance offers an understanding of the
disruption and re-calibration of societal norms over time. In other words, what may be initially stigmatized by
society may over time become socially acceptable. A good example of this can be seen in the treatment of the
LGBT community over the last 30 years. Once, society saw deviants behaving in ways that triggered disgust, but
now, we can view equal rights for the LGBT community as a societal norm.

However, the symbolic-interaction approach explains how people define deviance in their everyday social
situations. Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach that can be used to explain how societies or social
groups come to view behaviors as deviant or conventional. The key component of this approach is to emphasize
the social processes through which deviant activities and identities are socially defined and then “lived” as deviant.
Social groups and authorities create deviance by first making the rules and then applying them to people who are
thereby labelled as outsiders. Deviance is not an intrinsic quality of individuals but is created through the social
interactions of individuals and various authorities. Deviance is something that, in essence, is learned.

Another theory is the social-conflict approach which links deviance to social inequality: who or what is
labeled 'deviant' depends on which categories of people hold power in a society. A social conflict theorist would
argue that many actions are considered deviant because people in power have the resources to make those
actions deviant. Furthermore, the norms of any society generally reflect the interests of the rich and powerful, and
the powerful people have the resources to resist deviant labeling.

Theories like these prove that the most deviant actions can help bring people together and can clarify
cultural norms and values.

References:

http://study.com/academy/lesson/deviance-in-sociology-definition-theories-examples.html

https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology/chapter/chapter7-deviance-crime-and-social-control/