Conformity and Social Control
Each culture develops different types of rules that prescribe what is considered
appropriate behavior in that culture. They vary by how formalized they are, how cen-
tral to social life, and the types of sanctions that are threatened should you break them:- Folkwaysare routine, usually unspoken conventions of behavior; our culture
prescribes that we do some things in a certain way, although other ways might
work just as well. For example, we face forward instead of backward in an
elevator, and answer the question “How are you?” with “Fine.” Breaking a folk-
way may make others in the group uncomfortable (although they sometimes don’t
understand why they’re uncomfortable), and violators may be laughed at,
frowned on, or scolded. Folkways are rarely made into laws. - Moresare norms with a strong moral significance, viewed as essential to the
proper functioning of the group: We absolutely should or should not behave this
way. You might break a mos(the singular form of mores) by assaulting some-
one or speaking abusively to someone. Breaking mores makes others in the group
upset, angry, or afraid, and they are likely to consider violators bad or immoral.
Mores are often made into laws. - Taboosare prohibitions viewed as essential to the well-being of humanity. To break
a taboo is unthinkable, beyond comprehension. For example, Sigmund Freud con-
sidered the incest taboo—one should not have sex with one’s own children—to be
a foundation of all societies. If parents and children had sex, then lines of
inheritance, family name, and orderly intergenerational property transfer
would be completely impossible. Taboos are so important that most cultures
have only a few. In the United States, for instance, murder and assault break
mores, not taboos. Breaking taboos causes others to feel disgusted. The vio-
lators are considered sick, evil, and monstrous. Taboos are always made into
laws, unless they are so unthinkable that lawmakers cannot believe that any-
one would break them.
Stigma
If some part of you—your race or sexuality, for example—is considered
deviant, without your actually having to do anything, you would be con-
sidered “stigmatized.” The sociologist Erving Goffman (1963) used the
termstigmato mean an attribute that changes you “from a whole and
usual person to a tainted and discounted one.” Deviant behavior or a
deviant master status creates stigma, although not in every case. Other peo-
ple might ignore our deviance, or “forgive” it as an anomaly. Goffman
believed that people with stigmatized attributes are constantly practicing
various strategies to ensure minimal damage. Because being stigmatized
will “spoil” your identity, you are likely to adopt one of three strategies
to alleviate it.
Goffman identified three strategies to neutralize stigma and save yourself from
having a spoiled identity. He listed them in order of increased social power—the more
power you have, the more you can try and redefine the situation. (These terms reflect
the era in which he was writing, since he obviously uses the Civil Rights movement
as the reference.)170 CHAPTER 6DEVIANCE AND CRIME
Taboos vary from culture to culture and
from time period to time period. For a
hundred years, scholars believed that
Charles Dodgson, or Lewis Carroll
(1832–1898), had a romantic and probably
a sexual interest in 7-year-old Alice Liddell,
and that he wrote Alice in Wonderlandand
Through the Looking-Glassas a means of
courting her. But in her 1999 book, Karoline
Leach examines all of the old documents
and concludes that Dodgson was really
having an affair with Alice’s mother. After
his death, his sister was so worried about a
scandal that she manipulated his papers to
make it appear that he was interested in
Alice instead. In 1898, pedophilia was much
less taboo than an extramarital fling!Didyouknow