Learning about social control and deviance was my favorite section of class this semester!
First I want to go over some helpful key terms:
Social deviance = is anything outside social norms. These are rules we know we should abide by and generally do as part of normal behavior. Items like not committing murder or sneezing and making sure to cover your nose and mouth.
Informal deviance: Fractions committed that aren’t punishable by law but they are “just wrong”. These are actions that will warrant stares, glares, maybe comments or rude gestures if someone would see you commit the offense. A great example is leaving a bathroom without washing your hands or sampling grapes at the grocery store while shopping for produce.
Formal Deviance: Crimes that are punishable by societal standards and often written in the law.
Deviance is a broad term and consist of a wide range of beliefs that as a society we may see differently from each other on an individual level. Or we may see broader on a macro level in an event like geography. But overall there are common connections.
Most of these deviances will offer you a different reaction that’s “punishable” and can be seen differently based on an area your located. Rules can change and will vary. Normally murder is a bad thing but what if it’s committed in the act of self defense or saving a group of other people? Is the person who committed the murderer still seen as badly if he did it to save many others? What if he committed the crime after an argument with the person he killed and simply had one too many drinks beforehand? As you can see in my example the situation changed affecting the outcome. Society has placed stipulations and these views on us and even if it’s a disapproving glance we will often modify our behaviors to conform and not be seen a certain way that's associated as “negative” or wrong.
Let’s think of society as a human body:
The Functionalist theory tells us each organism will serve its own unique purpose. Example: The state you live would be the brain and decision-making center. It would dictate to other areas the laws and what needs to be done and the other areas would then implement them. These “organs” work together much like a society where we’ve come to depend on each other to regulate and keep things working smoothly as a country. Even when there are hiccups there are sanctions to keep “everyone in place”. These vary based on laws, written guidelines or even those looks of disapproval I mentioned previously. This helps guide us based on what’s expected where we live and become part of our societal norms.
What happens when you don’t abide by these rules and rebel against the system? Of course, that will vary based on what you did. Let me share some of my experiences with you from our social norm breaching assignment. For this assignment, we were given a topic list of offenses that are generally seen as less than “normal” by society and our job was to do some field research and document how we were responded too. While I won’t be sharing all of my experiences I’ll be sharing some pictures and once again saying how this personally was very relatable to me. At the time we were doing this assignment it was close to Halloween which made this perfect for an idea I had! I recruited my husband and off to Target we went. Our mission was not to run just one experiment but a few! Before we even started I was stared at by a woman. My only guess is because I do my makeup differently and at that time my hair was a teal color. You get mixed reactions with that and even stopped and treated differently by people for something as simple as different colored hair. But, I digress.
I hoped in the shopping cart and planned on doing most my shopping from inside it with a unicorn helmet on my head, feet dangling over the cart and my poor husband pushing me around. I wish I could say this isn’t “normal” for us. But, alas I was in my element and have a habit of being the deviant oddball people glare at. See, what you don’t know about me is I’ve finally learned to be myself in this crazy world and for me, that means testing my boundaries and occasionally those around me. After a while, I even got out and started dancing with my lovely unicorn head on. The reactions were diverse amongst those there.
How did people react during my one hour and 15-minute shopping trip:
It began with an elderly couple looking at me oddly, but the elderly lady smiled. I looked at her husband and said, “safety first” and I can’t see with this on! Then I got a smile out of him too.
Teenagers…. well they are mean! In fairness, it could’ve been worse, but I was scowled at by one, complete with eye rolls not once but 3 times as she passed by! I even tried saying hi to her and waving. She wasn’t a friendly one.
Children are great. They are honest, bold, and not fully corrupted by all the societal influences yet. Though you can see that even at young ages they begin knowing what is or isn’t socially appropriate behavior based on their influences. One child spent a few minutes talking to me about his costume and introducing me to his little sister. His mom glanced over with an approving nod knowing her kids were ok and continued her shopping in that aisle. Another child wasn’t sure what to think. Here’s this grown woman in a cart wearing a unicorn head. He’d look away, look back, I’d catch him and eventually I smiled and waved, and he smiled back with a half wave almost as if he was confused by what’s going on. After he waved he didn’t turn back and look at me. I think I may have startled him a bit.
I ended up getting a British man in trouble. I said hello to him as he passed the aisle and his wife scolded him loud enough in the next aisle that we heard it just for saying hi back.
There were a few more glares, several people who didn’t notice at all and a few smiles and chuckles.
Without going further into my norm breaching experiments that day I will say I enjoyed seeing the reactions from others. I also enjoyed the acceptance of people or confusion. It was a reminder to me this class that we often become conditioned to act a certain way or allow others to dictate small matters and then we drive ourselves crazy based on stigma’s and labels that we give each other and sometimes those labels drive the behavior it’s intended to stop. While having some formal guidelines are great for a society as a whole deviance can also be needed at times to provoke change and fight against social injustice and inequality. Much like our “body scenario” we need to make changes at times to keep it healthy. The same goes for society and the people in it.
Source:
Conley, D. (2017). You may ask yourself: an introduction to thinking like a sociologist. New York: W.W. Norton.
