Blog# 7 Deviance

                  

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the words deviance or deviant? How would you define deviant behaviors?  Deviance is defined as behaviors that do not conform to basic cultural norms and expectations, norms that are man-made which means that it can change. Power shape what it is considered deviance created by those in power. Six deviance examples are:

      1.  From my own experience few days ago someone stole my phone; it is a deviance act because it is a crime to go against the basic social norms; that person broke the law in taking something that it wasn't his.

      2. From the media: doesn't matter how much ones is getting used to see people from the same sex together, there is always exists the rejection part, People from the same sex getting married it is a deviant act because it is  likely to face negative consequences and limited options in life.

      3.  Young girls and boys using drugs and drinking alcohol; it is a deviant act because it label those kids as drugs addictive and alcoholism.

 4.  Young girls and boys dropping out from school and colleges, it is a deviant act because the society labels them as failures, unable to fight for what they want.

  5.  Driving while texting- it is deviant because who ever do it is breaking the law. 

  6.  Code dressing- it is abnormal to go to formal dance in yours swimwear clothes, it is deviant because that person is not fallowing the rules.

Labeling people as deviant may have some effects such as Stigma and secondary deviance. Stigma- refers to the shame attached to a behavior that it is considerable unacceptable, secondary deviance- behavior that is a response to the negative consequences of labeling.

 

An Article that it is related to the chapter 8 deviance and social control is: “The Positive Functions of the Undeserving Poor “by Herbert Gans.  He discusses the strange alliance between the poor and the wealthy in American society. he argues that applying the label of "undeserving" to the poor should not persist. Society judges the poor by a stereotype, and feels the poor can be a threat to those in mainstream society. Gans notes that because of all the functions of the poor, whether they are positive or negative, society need the poorer class in society. Some functions he speaks of the micro social functions, economic functions, normative functions, political functions and macro social functions. I belief that no matter how hard one tried to become higher in the rank of classes it is like impossible because day by day the rich becomes richer and the poor poorer.  Gans applies the logic to the existence of poverty in a society that had so much material wealth and concluded that poverty had 13functions in society that was beneficial to non-poor members.

1. Risk reduction

2. Scapegoating and displacement

3. Economic banishment and the reserve army of labor

4. Supplying illegal goods

5. Job creation

6. Moral legitimation

7. Norm reinforcement

8. Supplying popular culture villains

9. Institutional Scapegoating

10. Conservative power shift

11. Spatial purification

12. Reproduction of stigma and the stigmatized

13. Extermination of the surplus

 These points include “the creation of jobs that provide aid for the poor, and the existence of the poor keep the aristocracy busy with charitable works, demonstrating charity to the less fortunate and superiority over the elites who chose to spend their free time making more money. He also gives several alternatives to poverty such as redistribution of the wealth in society, but ultimately concluded that poverty will continue to exist because disturbing the unequal balance between the poor and the wealthy in society would prove to be dysfunctional for the affluent and that will not happen.”