What Is Deviance?
Breaking a social rule, or refusing to follow one, is called deviance.Deviant acts are
not just illegal; they can also violate a moral or a social rule that may or may not have
legal consequences. This week, many of you will do something that could be consid-
ered deviant—from the illegal behaviors we just mentioned to arriving at a party too
soon or leaving too early.
More involving acts of deviance, like being a nudist or organizing a hate group,
are another matter. I know full well that walking around naked or pronouncing irra-
tional prejudices in public may get me shunned, screamed at, or beat
up, so I don’t bring it up in casual conversation or on the train ride
to work in the morning. I might reveal this only within a group of
other nudists or bigots, or very close friends or family, or not at all.
We can also be considered deviant without doing, saying, or
believing anything bad or wrong but just by belonging to a stigma-
tized minority group (Hispanic, gay, Jewish, for example) or by
having some status that goes against what’s considered “normal”
(mentally ill, disabled, atheist). There is even deviance by associa-
tion: If you have a friend who belongs to the stigmatized minority
group, or a family member with a deviant status, you may be labeled
as deviant just for being seen with him or her.
Most deviance is not illegal, and many illegal acts are only
mildly deviant or not deviant at all. But when lawmakers consider
a deviant act bad enough to warrant formal sanctions, it becomes
acrime,and the full force of the government goes into regulating
it. Some common sexual practices—like oral sex or masturbation—
are illegal in a number of states because lawmakers at one time
found them sufficiently deviant to be criminal and wanted anyone
who committed them to “pay his or her debt to society” with fines
or prison terms.
Some sociologists study minor forms of deviance, like appear-
ing in public without your corset, but most are interested in the168 CHAPTER 6DEVIANCE AND CRIMEmost prisoners are paroled before they serve their full terms. In other respects, America is
hard on crime: It is the number one jailer in the world and the only industrialized nation
that still has the death penalty. It seems to be a matter of working very hard to achieve
very limited results. In fact, we are both soft andhard on crime; to the sociologist what is
most interesting is the how and why of that “softness” and “hardness” and measuring the
effectiveness of the institutions that are designed to handle deviance and crime.
“Lizardman” is deviant
because he breaks or refuses
to follow social norms about
appearance. Most deviance in
society is not illegal. n