Deviance and Culture

Deviance and Culture

1. Subculture: sub-group that does not challenge mainstream society.

   • Counter culture: a sub-group that does challenge mainstream society.
     • Deviant: label applied when mainstream society perceives behaviour as a threat and exerts "social control".
       • Deviance: ways of thinking/acting which are subject to social control.
         • Social control: ways of social groups to express their disapproval of people and behaviour.

2. Strain Theory

   • "Social structure and Anomie" (Robert Merton, 1938)
     • Anomie: lack of ideas, lack of purpose.
   • deviance emerges when there is a lack of fit between cultural goals and the means to achieve these goals.
     • deviance could emerge when:
       • 1. Social structure encourages people to seek objectives that are not actually available to them.
         • 2. People seek escape from a negative condition.
           • 3. People have lost something of social value.
       • 5 ways of adjusting to the 3 situation.
         • 1. Conformity: most common. Accept culturally approved goals and means of achieving these goals.
           • 2. Innovation: accepting culturally legitimate form of success but reject the conventional way of achieving success.
             • 3. Ritualism: going through the motions, accepting the means to achieve goals. Not motivated by the goals themselves.
               • 4. Retreatism: adjusting to strain by dropping out of the system. E.g. alcoholism, drug addition, unemployment lethargy.
                 • 5. Rebellion: preform acts intended to replace the current cultural goals and means with new ones. E.g. Political activist or domestic terrorist.

3. Culture Support Theory

   • people learn mainstream norms through communication.
     • people learn deviant behaviour from others as well.
   • more successful than "strain theory" in explaining white collar crime.

4. Control Theory

   • assumption that all humans are greedy, hurtful and deceitful.
     • engage in deviant behaviour whenever they can get away with it.
   • network of "conventional others"
     • tighter network one has, the more social control is exerted.

5. Cult

   • a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.
   • How they seduce people
     • 1. Boundaries: closed boundary. You're either in or out. Creating passionate solidarity.
       • 2. Initiation: focus on who is ready, rather than who we can get.
         • 85% of people who join do so through a friend or acquaintance.
           • 3. Customs: act as an emotional pyramid, self-sustaining and administering through many levels.
             • promotion through hierarchies as reward for loyalty and achievement.
               • 4. Ideology: cults tend to be personality cults. leaders' story is the story of the cult, their word is law.
                 • access to the leader is an exclusive reward to the higher ups.
                   • own way of speaking/vocabulary.
   • Beyond cults.
     • Alex Wipperfürth (head of New York marketing firm) outlined these rules for cults.
       • popular brands use elements of cults for marketing.