- 23/02/2013
- Posted by: essay
- Category: Free essays
Generally any behavior that violates social norms and is disapproved by the majority of society may be called deviance. It is necessary to mention that deviance may be criminal or non-criminal. Criminal deviance is behavior that violates law; so, it is studied by the discipline called criminology.
Such kinds of activities as alcoholism, gambling, stealing, lying, purchasing the services of prostitutes and so on are basically considered as deviant. People whose behavior can be defined as deviant are called “deviants”.
Deviance has complex and intricate concept due to the difference of norms within different groups, times and places. It frequently happens that actions appropriate and normal for one group may be viewed as deviant for another. For example, nowadays nobody is surprised watching sportsmen crying after winning a championship or even men – politician crying when announcing defeat in response to extreme emotional situations, although a half a century ago such kind of behavior would have been considered as definitely deviant for a man. In Japan there is a special ritual of receiving business card: when you’re giving such you should look at it (several seconds would be enough) and then ask some questions about it unless that can mean to a Japanese citizen that his or her business and him/herself are not acknowledged. This kind of behavior is deviant in Japan.
As far as we can judge deviance is very relative, therefore there is a number of factors it is based on: location( speaking loudly n church, for instance, is deviant by all means, while doing it at a party is not); age (norms for a 1-year old child and a teenager are quite different); social status(famous actors always skip long line of people in front of the famous club, while such behavior of an ordinary person could be regarded as deviant); different societies(explained in the previous paragraph).
It happens that person may be considered as deviant without acting in a deviant way: there are such traits of character which are deviant themselves. For example people with IQs over 140 may be recognized as deviant simply because they do not represent ordinary behavior as most people do.
Deviance is any behavior that violates social norms. The issue of deviance is complex due to the difference of the standards of appropriate and deviant actions in different social groups. Classification of the main factors the deviance is based on clearly shows that location, age, social status and difference between societies influence the differentiation of deviant or appropriate behavior very much.
References
Clinard, Marshall B. & Meier, Robert F. “Sociology of Deviant Behavior” Wadsworth Publishing, 2003.
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