Confirming Pages

11
DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

D eviance is one of the more intriguing topics studied by

sociologists. The sociological study of deviance covers the
gamut of fascinating (if occasionally despicable) behaviors: alco-
holism, mental illness, gambling, murders, adultery, crime, drug
use, stripping, pimping, prostitution, bulimia, suicide, pedophilia,
necromancy, pornography, panhandling—to name just a few.1
At first glance, gamblers, murderers, prostitutes, and the rest may
seem like strangers among us. They aren’t (as I will discuss in this
chapter, the deviants are us). Moreover, because deviance is the
flip side of conformity, understanding deviance contributes to our
understanding of conformity. Besides, although curiosity about
“perversion” may seem morbid, it’s hard not to be fascinated by
deviant behavior.

The Relativity of Deviance

(What We Already Know)
Because of the close connection between norms and deviance,
it is fair to say that we already have a great deal of sociological
knowledge about deviance.
For one thing, we know that norms vary across societies. So, we
also know that what is considered to be deviant varies across societies.
Different societies have different expectations about how people
ought to behave. A particular act may be regarded as normative

1
When I was a college student, people referred to deviance courses as “the sociology
of nuts, sluts, and perverts.”

169

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 169 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

170 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

in society A but deviant in society B. In some countries (e.g., Bel-

gium, France, Germany, Japan, Spain), it is expected that you
will stop to help a stranger in trouble; fail to help and you might
end up being arrested. In most places in the United States, how-
ever, the law can’t touch you—even if you stand by and watch
a murder.
Travelers to Singapore are warned that anyone
Important: To define an act as deviant
caught spitting in public can be subject to a fine
is to say nothing about whether that
act is inherently good or bad, or moral of more than $500 and that failing to flush a pub-
or immoral. Remember, good, bad, lic toilet could cost you almost $100. However, a
moral, and immoral are not sociological recent law does allow one to purchase chewing
concepts. (If you need to, review chapter gum in Singapore, as long as one has a prescrip-
4 on that point.) To say that an act is tion. Traveling in the Netherlands, on the other
deviant is to say only that it violates the hand, might be a little more relaxing—if you are
norms of a particular group of people at at least eighteen years of age, you can stop in at a
a particular point in time. coffee shop and order marijuana with that mocha
latté (one gram for about five or six dollars).
It’s a shocking fact that it is impossible to find any specific act
that is regarded as deviant in every culture.2
For another thing, we know that norms change over time—even
within a particular culture. So, we also know that what is considered
to be deviant at one time may be considered normative at another time.
For example, in the 1950s college women were expected to wear
skirts or dresses to class and men were expected to wear jackets
and ties; these days things are much more casual (I occasionally
see students wearing pajamas to class). One hundred years ago,
it was a crime to join a labor union. Two hundred years ago, one
person could own another person; today, slavery is considered
very deviant.
Finally, we know that norms vary within a particular society—
that different subgroups have different norms. So, we also know that
what is considered deviant will vary from subgroup to subgroup within
a particular society. For example, according to the norms of many
groups, dancing and playing cards are respectable, normative
behaviors. But in some religious subcultures, dancing and card
playing are regarded as deviant. Generally, drinking alcohol is
normative, as long as the drinker does not drive or become drunk.
But in some adolescent subcultures, on the other hand, “drinking
until you pass out” is normative. (You may recall from chapter 7

2
Wait! You might be thinking, what about murder? Isn’t murder regarded as deviant
in all cultures? The trick here is that murder is not an act, but a category of acts that a
society has elected to say are deviant. To put it another way, some form of killing is tol-
erated in nearly every society. But what sorts of killing are called murder and what sorts
are not varies according to society. Similarly, what constitutes killing in self-defense
varies across societies.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 170 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

Nonsociological Theories of Deviance 171

that one of the things that defines a subculture is that its norms
vary from those of the larger society.) We also have different
expectations for different kinds of people. Thus, it is considered
deviant for women to chew tobacco but not for men.

11.1 Which of the following statements about deviance are true, and STOP
which are false? Explain your answers briefly.
a. Society can be divided into people who conform and people
R
who do not conform to social norms. EVIEW

b. People generally agree on which behaviors are deviant and

which are not deviant.
c. Most people have violated one or more important mores at
some time in their lives.
d. Most deviant behaviors are regarded as deviant in all societies
and at all times.
e. Only acts that are harmful to people are judged deviant.

Nonsociological Theories of Deviance

Deviance has long intrigued social observers. For centuries
many theorized that deviance was simply a product of sin and
was caused by such factors as demonic possession. By the mid-
nineteenth century, however, skeptical social observers began
to look for different causes. The first attempts at scientifically
explaining deviance focused on biological factors. For example,
Cesare Lombroso, a physician who worked in Italian prisons,
argued in 1876 that deviants were, in effect, biological failures.
Claimed Lombroso, “Criminals are evolutionary throwbacks,” or
atavists.3
But Lombroso’s study overlooked a couple of important fac-
tors. First, owing to heightened scrutiny on the part of police,
Italian prisoners were most likely to be Sicilian—a group of people
who tended to have lower foreheads, more prominent cheek-
bones and protruding ears, and more body hair than the average
Italian. Had Lombroso journeyed to Sicily, he would have found
the same physical characteristics to be present among the general
nonimprisoned population. British psychiatrist Charles Goring and
others later probed the matter more carefully. Comparing thou-
sands of convicts and nonconvicts, they found no evidence of

3
The term atavism refers to a biological state with a variety of physical manifesta-
tions, including low foreheads, prominent cheekbones, protruding ears, and lots of
body hair.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 171 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

172 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

Deviance is
relative—acts
considered deviant
today (smoking and
other forms of air
pollution) were
not necessarily
regarded as deviant
in times past.

“Judge, my client is willing to plead guilty to bank robbery if you’ll drop the
charge of smoking in public.”

any physical differences that would distinguish members of one

group from the other.
Other researchers have attempted to identify physical charac-
teristics typical of criminals. In the late 1940s, William Sheldon
contended that a person’s body shape plays a role in criminality.
He distinguished three general body types: (1) ectomorphs (tall,
thin, fragile), (2) endomorphs (short and fat), and (3) mesomorphs
(muscular and athletic). After analyzing the body structures and
criminal histories of hundreds of young men, Sheldon reported
that criminality was linked to mesomorphy. Later researchers
found merit in Sheldon’s findings but argued that he had mis-
understood the cause-effect relationship between body type and
crime. According to these researchers, mesomorphy itself was not
the cause of criminality. Rather, the way mesomorphs tended to
be socialized (to be tougher and to have less sensitivity toward
others) created a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that encouraged
criminality.
Another category of nonsociological theories treats deviance
as a result of personality factors—especially those arising from
“unsuccessful socialization.” Such researchers hypothesize, for
example, that people with a strong conscience (or superego, to
use Freud’s term) tend to be good, whereas people with a weak
conscience tend to be bad. Psychological theorists may also posit
that some forms of deviance, such as violence, are a manifesta-
tion of an “aggressive personality,” whereas other forms, such
as homosexuality, may be seen as an expression of “psychologi-
cal dependency.” These theories do not explain, however, why

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 172 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

Sociological Theories of Deviance: Émile Durkheim and Suicide 173

such a small percentage of people with aggressive personalities

commit homicide or why such a small proportion of people with
dependent personalities become homosexual.

Sociological Theories of Deviance:

Émile Durkheim and Suicide
Sociologists tend to be much more impressed by the fact that
deviance is tied to social norms. Because social norms exist out-
side the individual, sociologists look for causes of deviance in the
same place: outside the individual.

THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIENCE

AND STRUCTURAL STRAIN

Émile Durkheim was one of the first researchers to look for the
causes of deviance in terms of social rather than individual fac-
tors. In his early research during the 1880s, Durkheim focused on
the act of suicide. Suicide was an interesting choice in that hardly
anything seems more personal than the decision to kill oneself.
Surely the causes of suicide must be within the individual! (In
point of fact, Durkheim was not really interested in individual
acts of suicide. He was concerned with suicide rates and what
changes in suicide rates indicated about the health of a particular
society.)
As we discussed briefly in chapter 1, Durkheim’s primary
concern was the nature of society and social order. What sorts of
factors hold a society together? What sorts of factors can destroy
a society? Durkheim envisioned society as a system made up of
interrelated parts. Like a well-oiled machine, a well-functioning
society depends on each of its parts working together. Each part
of the social system—the institutions of family, religion, and edu-
cation, for example—work together to make the entire system of
society run well. Because of the close connection among all the
social parts, when one part of this social machine is not working
properly, the entire system ceases to work well.
According to Durkheim, in some societies the social machine
was maintained in smooth working order because of the strength
of what he called the collective conscience—“the totality of beliefs
and sentiments common to the average members of the same
society.” The collective conscience, in other words, was made up
of the values, beliefs, norms, and goals shared by people in a par-
ticular society. The collective conscience was a kind of social oil
that made things work smoothly.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 173 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

174 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

As we also discussed in chapter 1, in the late nineteenth cen-

tury, many people believed that society was in chaos and about
to fall apart. For centuries society had seemed to be in a hold-
ing pattern, and social change, when it did occur, came slowly—
almost unnoticed. But in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
social change became a fact of life. That sounds reasonable to us,
because we live in a society in which change is a part of life. But a
couple of hundred years ago, change was new and seemed to be
undermining the very nature of what held society together. There
were many prophets of doom.
To Durkheim, one of the symptoms of this “society falling
apart” syndrome was the high rate of suicide. In many Western
countries, the rate of suicide seemed to be increasing. Whereas
many of his contemporaries were asking what was wrong with
the people who were killing themselves, Durkheim started ask-
ing what it was about society that caused increases in the rate of
suicide. Durkheim argued that changes in suicide rates could be
explained not by focusing on individuals but only by focusing on
different social factors.
Durkheim’s study, titled Suicide (published in 1897), was one
of the first to use statistical analysis. One finding was that the
rate of suicide was higher in industrializing societies than in non-
industrializing societies. This led Durkheim to suspect that sui-
cide rates were manifestations of the amount of structural strain
in a social system.
More specifically, as a result of his analysis, Durkheim argued
that as societies grew larger, more complex, and more special-
ized, the things that traditionally had held people together would
begin to fail. As the division of labor became specialized, people
began to do different kinds of work; these differences meant that
some people achieved a financial success that took them far from
their original lifestyles. However, although people could techni-
cally improve their social class standing, they did not know any
of the norms that accompanied their new stations in life. No lon-
ger was there a great deal of agreement on what values were most
important and on which norms applied to whom.

EGOISM AND ANOMIE

Durkheim identified several sources of suicide, including egoism

and anomie. Each is a manifestation of a different kind of struc-
tural strain. Egoism occurs when people are not well integrated into
society. In a state of egoism, people lack ties to their social groups.
For example, Durkheim found that unmarried people were less
integrated into society than married people, who had ties to
spouses, children, their children’s friends’ parents, and so on.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 174 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

Sociological Theories of Deviance: Émile Durkheim and Suicide 175

Durkheim also argued that Protestants (whose religion encour-

aged independent thinking) were less integrated into their social
groups than Catholics (who were encouraged to look to their
priests for leadership). Integration is tied to suicide rates because
people who lack ties to their social groups simply have less to live
for (that is, less reason not to kill themselves).
For example, while both married and unmarried individuals may
occasionally entertain suicidal thoughts, the married have more
social responsibilities, which deters them from committing sui-
cide, than do the unmarried, who have no one to worry about . . . ;
Catholics are socially integrated, they experience social support
(comfort, understanding, and sympathy), which deters them from
committing suicide in times of despair. (Liska 1987, 30)

Increases in suicide rates, according to Durkheim, also were

linked to rapid social change, which resulted in a state of social
confusion he called anomie. The word is taken from the Greek
term for “lawlessness” or “normlessness.” So, anomie (or anomy,
as it is sometimes spelled) is a situation in which people do not
experience the constraint of social norms—either because there
are no norms or because they don’t know the norms. More tech-
nically, anomie is a state wherein society fails to exercise adequate
regulation of the goals and desires of individual members. To put it
yet another way, anomie exists when things like the collective
conscience are not powerful enough to affect the behavior of
individuals. The lack of social constraint from social norms, like
the lack of integration present in egoistic states, creates a situa-
tion in which behavior is not properly regulated and suicide is
thus easier.
Durkheim hypothesized that anomie and egoism were both
major influences on the rate of suicide in modern society. When
people lived in a state of anomie (that is, when the collective con-
science was not powerful enough to regulate their behavior) or
egoism (as when people were not well enough integrated), they
were more likely to kill themselves.4 In short, Durkheim came up
with structural explanations of suicide rather than individualistic
ones. Durkheim never argued that the decision to kill oneself was
anything other than a private one for the individual. Durkheim
was concerned only with the rate of suicide within a particular
social group. Or, in Mills’s language, Durkheim treated what
many had regarded a private trouble as a public issue and thereby
broadened our understanding of the phenomenon of suicide.

4
Durkheim also identified other causes of changes in suicide rates. For example,
he found that just as not enough moral regulation and integration would lead to an
increased suicide rate, so would too much moral regulation. The lowest suicide rates
require a balance between social freedom and social control.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 175 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

176 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

More Structural Strain:

Robert Merton and Anomie
The American sociologist Robert Merton rediscovered Durkheim’s
ideas about anomie in the late 1930s. Merton was not particu-
larly interested in the problem of suicide, but he suspected that
Durkheim’s conception of anomie might help us to understand
other forms of deviance.

ANOMIE AND MODERN SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Merton continued in Durkheim’s footsteps by focusing on struc-

tural strain as a cause of deviance. But Merton applied the con-
cept of anomie more broadly than Durkheim had. Durkheim
had implicitly assumed that once society completed its transition
from preindustrial to industrial, anomie would go away. From
his twentieth-century perspective, however, Merton realized that
anomie was not about to go away; indeed, as far as Merton was
concerned, anomie is built into the structure of modern society.
Merton refocused the meaning of anomie to make it speak
more directly to twentieth-century society. Instead of seeing ano-
mie as a situation in which there was a lack of norms (as Dur-
kheim had), Merton said that anomie occurs when the norms of a
society do not match its social structure. (This might sound compli-
cated, but don’t give up. Keep reading.)
Merton (1938) began his analysis by noticing that all social
systems have two characteristics. First, they have commonly
accepted goals for their members. These goals are simply socially
valued things worth striving for. As we discovered in chapter 7,
at the top of the list of things that people in the United States tend
to value are achievement and success.
Second, each society establishes what it considers to be legiti-
mate ways, or means, to reach these valued goals. In this society,
for example, education and hard work are the legitimate and
approved routes to achievement and success.
According to Merton, everything is fine in a society in which
there is a good match between the culturally approved goals and
the availability of legitimate means to reach those goals. In a well-
structured society, everyone will understand what the goals are,
and people will be able to reach those goals by following socially
acceptable means.
In modern Western society, however, there tends to be a signif-
icant gap, or disjunction, between goals and legitimate means. Or,
as Merton put it, anomie exists “when a system of cultural val-
ues extols, virtually above all else, certain common success-goals
for the population at large while the social structure rigorously

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 176 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

More Structural Strain: Robert Merton and Anomie 177

Table 11.1 Adaptations to Anomie

Culture Social Structure

Culturally Institutionally Available,

Emphasized Legitimate Means
Goals to Goal Attainment

I. Conformity 1 accept 1 accept

II. Innovation 1 accept 2 reject
III. Ritualism 2 reject 1 accept
IV. Retreatism 2 reject 2 reject
V. Rebellion 6 reject old and substitute 6
new ones

SOURCE: Adapted from Robert K. Merton, “Social Structure and Anomie,” American
Sociological Review (1938): 672–682.

restricts or completely closes access to approved modes of reach-

ing goals for a considerable part of the same population” (1938,
211). Under such circumstances, Merton argued, “deviant behav-
ior ensues on a large scale.”
Merton understood that the American Dream (the idea that
hard work will lead to success) is frequently a myth.5 As he looked
around, he saw whole segments of society whose access to legiti-
mate means to success was highly restricted. One must have a col-
lege education to achieve the best jobs, for example, and Merton
realized that a college education was out of the reach of many—no
matter how smart they were or how hard they worked. This was
just the sort of situation in which, Merton said, there was a disjunc-
ture between socially approved goals (success) and means (educa-
tion). This disjuncture, for Merton, represented a form of structural
strain—which he called anomie. But Merton did not stop there. He
noted that when there is anomie, or a disjuncture between goals
and means, people may respond (or adapt) in different ways.
These modes of adaptation are summarized in table 11.1.

RESPONSES TO ANOMIE

Some people in society may not experience any disjuncture

between goals and means. For example, for some people hard

5
Merton surely had a well-developed sociological imagination. Had it not been so
well developed, he might never have come to this insight, because everything in his
personal history seemed to be proof of the truth of the American Dream. Merton was
born in 1910 on the “wrong side of the tracks” in north Philadelphia. He worked his
way out of the slums by winning a scholarship to Temple University, where in 1931 he
earned his BA Merton then won a fellowship to Harvard to pursue graduate studies,
and in 1936 he was awarded the PhD in sociology.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 177 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

178 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

work may indeed lead to success.6 In other cases, even when they
keep running into obstacles (as when, for example, someone can’t
afford to pay the costs of a college education), people may ignore
the disjuncture and keep on trying. In other words, they may
continue to accept the goals of success and achievement and the
means of hard work even when it isn’t getting them anywhere.
Merton calls this adaptation conformity.
Other people respond to anomie in a variety of ways. Merton
called the first mode of adaptation that is obviously deviant inno-
vation. Innovators accept and pursue the accepted goals of soci-
ety but, when confronted with a lack of legitimate means, devise
new ones. For example, if in the pursuit of the accepted goal of
wealth, Mary finds she has no legitimate access to wealth, she
might innovate by embezzling from her employer. The innovator,
then, accepts the cultural goals but rejects the legitimate means
for achieving these.
Some people reject culturally approved goals but continue to pur-
sue the means. Merton calls this apparently odd form of behavior
ritualism. Ritualists follow legitimate means without caring about
the goals. Ritualists, then, simply go through the motions. Ritual-
ism is the deviant response sometimes chosen by petty bureaucrats
who, frustrated at not being able to achieve their goals, continue to
stamp papers and file them even when there is no point to doing
so. To the ritualist, following the rules becomes more important
than achieving the goals. The professor who shows up in class but
does not put any effort into teaching is another example of a ritual-
ist who is only going through the motions. Notice that ritualism is
an invisible form of deviance. Because the ritualist goes through the
motions of conforming, he or she may be viewed as a conformist.
Retreatists are noticeably different in that they reject both the
goals and the legitimate means to them. For example, like ritual-
ists, retreatists do not care about the goal of success; but unlike
ritualists, neither do they care about going through the motions.
Some retreatists literally drop out of society by moving, say, to
the mountains of Idaho and living in huts. (A generation ago,
the hippies who “turned on, tuned out, and dropped out” were
splendid examples of retreatists.)
The fifth mode of adapting to anomie that Merton identified was
rebellion. Rebels are deviant in that they reject both cultural goals and
means and then substitute new ones. It is the substitution of new
goals and means that distinguishes the rebel from the retreatist. And
it is the substitution of new goals and means that makes the rebel

6
As we will discuss more fully in chapters 13 and 14, such people tend to occupy
specific places in the social structure. Upper- and middle-class people, for example,
are less likely to experience the anomie of blocked opportunities (because they are less
likely to experience blocked opportunities).

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 178 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

Learning to Be Deviant: Howard Becker’s Study of Marijuana Use 179

seem to be the greatest threat to society. The rebels’ response to strain

in the social structure is to tear it down and to build up a new one.
But Merton overlooked an important question: In a society in
which there is a disjuncture between legitimate means and cul-
turally approved goals, which mode of adaptation will people
choose? How come some people choose to conform or to inno-
vate? Why is it that still others choose to retreat or rebel?

LEGITIMATE VERSUS ILLEGITIMATE MEANS

Two students of Merton, Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin

(1960; see also Cloward and Ohlin 1959), extended Merton’s analy-
sis by suggesting that just as legitimate means to success are unequally
distributed in society, so are illegitimate means. For example, to inno-
vate successfully, one needs to learn certain skills. Suppose you
want to be a bank robber. If your career is going to last longer
than a few minutes, you need to learn how to select your targets
(for example, banks located near freeway exits are much preferred
to ones located on busy downtown streets). How do professional
bank robbers signal to bank customers and employees that they
are about to participate in a robbery and had best cooperate? How
big a cut should the getaway driver be promised so that he or she
won’t fink to the cops?
Just as legitimate opportunity structures are unequally distrib-
uted in society, so, too, are illegitimate opportunity structures. If
you are poor and illiterate, you probably will not have much of a
future as a computer hacker or bank embezzler. If you are poor
and want to steal, you are pretty much limited to taking on a sin-
gle victim (or possibly two or three) at a time. But as an executive
officer in a savings and loan, you have the unusual opportunity
of swindling hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

STOP
11.2
a. Merton wrote about deviance as an adaptation to “structural
strain.” What was the source or nature of this strain? R
EVIEW
b. What did Cloward and Ohlin add to Merton’s theory of anomie?

Learning to Be Deviant:
Howard Becker’s Study of Marijuana Use
Merton’s conception of structural strain gives us some insight
into why people might act in deviant ways, but it really does not
tell us how people actually become deviant. Sociologists have
noticed that one generally learns to be deviant through a kind of
socialization—just as one learns to conform through socialization.
In other words, deviance is frequently a learned social behavior.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 179 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

180 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

One sociologist who made this point was Howard Becker. In

addition to being a sociologist, Becker was a professional jazz
musician in the 1950s, and one of the things he noticed was that
jazz musicians tended to smoke marijuana—a practice that was
not only deviant but illegal.
Why did people smoke marijuana? At the time, it was widely
thought that there was something wrong with the personality of
marijuana smokers, that people who smoked marijuana suffered
from some sort of psychological maladjustment. It was believed,
for instance, that people who smoked marijuana did so out of a
felt need for escape or because they were insecure, lacking in self-
control, immature, or simply mentally ill. Conventional wisdom,
then, regarded marijuana smokers as people with distinct
psychological and/or emotional problems.
As a sociologist, however, Becker suspected that to truly
understand the nature of this behavior, we would have to place it
in its social context. And so it was that Becker began a sociological
study of marijuana use. He conducted interviews with dozens
of pot-smoking musicians. From his interviews, Becker found
that marijuana use did indeed have important social qualities.
For example, Becker found that becoming a marijuana smoker
involved three separate social processes: (1) learning to smoke
(gaining proper technique), (2) learning to perceive the effects,
and (3) learning to enjoy the effects.

LEARNING TO SMOKE

According to Becker (1963), the novice smoker does not ordinar-

ily get high the first time he (Becker’s subjects were primarily
male) smokes marijuana. Generally, it is necessary to smoke the
drug several times to achieve a high. One explanation of this is
that the novice does not know how to smoke “properly”—that
is, in a way that ensures a large enough dosage of the drug. Most
of Becker’s interview subjects agreed that the drug cannot be
smoked like tobacco if the user is to get high:
“Take in a lot of air, you know, and . . . I don’t know how to describe
it, you don’t smoke it like a cigarette, you draw in a lot of air and get
it deep down in your system and then keep it there. Keep it there as
long as you can.”
Unless one uses the proper technique, the effects of the drug will
be minimal:
“The trouble with people [who are unable to get high] is that they’re
just not smoking it right, that’s all there is to it. Either they’re not
holding it down long enough, or they’re getting too much air and not
enough smoke, or the other way around, or something like that. A lot of
people just don’t smoke it right, so naturally nothing’s gonna happen.”

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 180 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

Learning to Be Deviant: Howard Becker’s Study of Marijuana Use 181

Becker’s interview subjects also reported that learning to

smoke marijuana was a social thing:
“I was smoking it like I did an ordinary cigarette. He said, ‘no, don’t
do it like that.’ He said, ‘suck it, you know, draw in and hold it in
your lungs till you . . . for a period of time.’ I said, ‘is there any limit
of time to hold it?’ He said, ‘no, just till you feel that you want to let
it out, let it out.’ So, I did that for three or four times.”

Many reported that as first-time users they had been ashamed

to admit their ignorance and so had pretended to already know
how to inhale:
“I came on like I had turned on [smoked marijuana] many times
before, you know. I didn’t want to seem like a punk to this cat. See,
like I didn’t know the first thing about it. I just watched him like a
hawk—I didn’t take my eyes off of him for a second, because I
wanted to do everything just as he did it. I watched how he held
it, how he smoked it, and everything. Then, when he gave it to me,
I just came on cool, as though I knew exactly what the score was. I
held it like he did and took a toke just the way he did.”

No one Becker interviewed had become a marijuana user with-

out first learning the technique for smoking that allowed one to
inhale a sufficient dosage—one that allowed the effects of the
drug to be evident.

LEARNING TO PERCEIVE THE EFFECTS

Even after the novice learns the proper smoking technique, he or

she may not evaluate the results as “being high.” A remark made
by one smoker pointed to the next step on the road to becoming
a marijuana user:
“As a matter of fact, I’ve seen a guy who was high out of his mind
and didn’t know it.” [Becker asks, “How can that be, man?”] “Well,
it’s pretty strange, I’ll grant you that, but I’ve seen it. This guy got on
[high] with me, claiming that he’d never got high, one of those guys,
and he got completely stoned. And he kept insisting that he wasn’t
high. So, I had to prove to him that he was.”

Becker’s research suggested that getting high involves two

things: (1) achieving the physiological effects of the drug and
(2) recognizing and identifying these effects. Without the sec-
ond element, one is not really high because one does not know
one is high! Becker found that people who believed the whole
thing was an illusion did not continue to use marijuana because
there was no point to doing so. Thus, without social support,
most people would not get beyond their first attempt. Gener-
ally, however, novice users said they had faith that eventually

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 181 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

182 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

they would feel some real effects. Recognizing the effects of the
drug frequently came as a result of interaction with more expe-
rienced users:
“I didn’t get high the first time. . . . I don’t think I held it in long
enough. . . . Probably let it out, you know, you’re a little afraid. The
second time I wasn’t sure, and he [the more experienced smoker]
told me, like I asked him for some of the symptoms or something,
how would I know, you know. . . . He told me to sit on a stool. I sat
on—I think I sat on a stool—and he said, ‘Let your feet hang.’ And
then when I got down my feet were real cold, you know? And I
started feeling it, you know. That was the first time. And then about a
week after that, sometime pretty close to it, I really got on. That was
the first time I got on a big laughing kick, you know? Then I really
knew I was on.”

One frequently reported effect of marijuana is intense hunger.

One novice smoker remembers the first time he felt this:
“They were just laughing the hell out of me because like I was eating
so much. I just scoffed [ate] so much food, and they were just laugh-
ing at me, you know? Sometimes I’d be looking at them, you know,
wondering why they’re laughing, you know, like I’d ask, ‘What’s
happening?’ and all of the sudden, I feel weird, you know. ‘Man,
you’re on, you know. You’re on pot [high on marijuana].’ I said, ‘No,
am I?’ Like I don’t know what’s happening.”

In essence, then, the novice smoker learns from more experi-

enced users to experience the effects of marijuana use as a high.
The ability to perceive the drug’s effects must be achieved if use
of the drug is to continue.

LEARNING TO ENJOY THE EFFECTS

Suppose the user has learned the proper smoking technique and
has learned to identify the effects as a high. A final step is nec-
essary before the user will continue to use the drug: He or she
must learn to enjoy the effects. The sensations of a marijuana high
are not necessarily pleasurable ones. The typical novice smoker
feels dizzy, thirsty, hungry, paranoid, confused about time and
space, and more. Are these responses enjoyable? As you might
guess, the effects of the drug might be downright unpleasant. At
best, the effects of the drug are ambiguous.7

7
In some important respects, Becker’s portrayal of becoming a marijuana user may
no longer reflect the reality of this process. The active ingredient in marijuana is THC
(tetrahydrocannabinol). Fifty years ago, the level of THC in marijuana was quite low,
and the effects of the drug were relatively subtle. But today, the level of THC in mari-
juana is very high (no pun intended), and the effects of the drug are much more notice-
able. This probably means that it is much easier for novices to perceive the effects of the
drug but more difficult for them to perceive its effects as enjoyable.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 182 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

The Societal Reaction Perspective: Labeling Theory 183

The “taste” for sensations is in large part a socially acquired

one. Remember your first sip of coffee? Yuck! What about oysters,
green olives, and dry martinis? Double yuck! Yet many people
begin to enjoy these. The same is true for the sensations produced
by marijuana use. But it’s not necessarily easy:
“It started taking effect, and I didn’t know what was happening, you
know, what it was, and I was very sick. I walked around the room
trying to get off, you know; it just scared me at first, you know. I
wasn’t used to that kind of feeling.”

Another user reported:

“I felt I was insane, you know. Everything people done to me just
wigged me. I just couldn’t hold a conversation, and my mind would
be wandering, and I was always thinking, oh, I don’t know, weird
things, like hearing must be different . . . I get the feeling that I can’t
talk to anyone. I’ll goof completely.”

Over time, however, many people come to regard these sensa-

tions as desirable. As an experienced user explained:
“Well, they get pretty high sometimes. The average person isn’t
ready for that, and it is a little frightening to them sometimes. I
mean, they’ve been high on lush [alcohol], and they get higher that
way than they’ve ever been before, and they don’t know what’s
happening to them. Because they think they’re going to keep going
up, up, up till they lose their minds or begin doing weird things
or something. You have to like reassure them, explain to them that
they’re not really flipping or anything, that they’re gonna be all right.
You have to just talk them out of being afraid. Keep talking to them,
reassuring, telling them it’s all right.”

As you can see, what starts as an unpleasant experience

becomes a desirable and sought-after one. In the end, with some
help from one’s peers, the user begins to regard being high as
“fun.” In simple terms, the individual not only has learned a devi-
ant act but has learned to enjoy it as well.
The idea that deviance, like conformity, is learned behavior
has added a great deal to our understanding of human behavior.

The Societal Reaction Perspective:

Labeling Theory
The traditional view of deviance focuses on why and how indi-
viduals commit deviant acts. These theories tend to take for
granted that some acts are deviant and others are not. One impli-
cation of this is that regardless of who commits the deviant act,
they will be responded to in the same way as anyone else who
commits that particular sort of deviance.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 183 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

184 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

“With all that I’ve learned about sociology recently, establishing who’s naughty
and who’s nice is not as simple as it used to be.”

But sociologists know that this is not true. As William Chambliss

(1973) found in his comparison of different youth gangs, in some
cases it is not what you do but who you are. More specifically,
Chambliss found that lower-class youths were more likely to be
sanctioned than middle-class youths—even though the lower-
class kids committed fewer deviant acts! The societal reaction-
ist perspective in general, and labeling theory more particularly,
focuses not on the one who commits the deviant act but on the
response of the audience.
Labeling theorists take note of the fact that being judged
and labeled deviant has significant consequences for people’s
behavior. The label of deviant is powerful!
Let’s take the hypothetical case of Bob, who has just gradu-
ated from high school. One night Bob and three of his friends
(including Melissa, his girlfriend) decide to steal a car and take
it for a joyride. Actually Bob has chugged so much beer that he
can barely walk, let alone go for a ride. But after listening to his
friends cluck and call him a chicken, he goes along. As soon as
he gets into the car, however, he throws up and passes out.
Meanwhile, John, the guy who’s driving, has had a few too
many beers himself and wanders all over the road. This catches
the attention of the police in a patrol car, which comes up
behind the stolen car with lights flashing. This strikes John as
rude, and so he decides to speed up and outrun the cops. Inevi-
tably, John’s poor coordination lands them all in a ditch. The
other three (who are relatively sober) take off and manage to
outrun the cops. But Bob is still unconscious in the back seat—
and the police are happy enough to arrest him as a reward for
their crime-fighting efforts.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 184 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

The Societal Reaction Perspective: Labeling Theory 185

Bob is taken to jail, fingerprinted, and photographed. A few

days later, Bob is brought to court to be arraigned. Being the up-
standing fellow that he is, Bob refuses to fink on his friends, and
so the court throws the book at him. He’s found guilty of grand-
theft-auto (a felony) and sentenced to ninety days in jail, with
another nine months suspended.
Bob serves his summer in jail, but his real sentence is much
longer. First, he loses his college scholarship. However, that
hardly matters because Bob’s only interest in college was so that
he could go on to law school and become an attorney. Bob knows
that convicted felons can’t become lawyers, so what’s the point?
Bob’s girlfriend, Melissa, still loves him, but her parents forbid
her to date him. After all, Bob is a convicted criminal, and they don’t
want their daughter hanging out with an ex-con. His other friends
are sympathetic, but they go off to college and lose touch. Bob tries
to find a job, but every time he fills out an application, he has to deal
with the question “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”
Bob is the same guy he was before he went along on the
joyride—but this Bob has an entirely different life than the old Bob.
So what if he drinks too much now and gambles away what little
money he has. It’s not like he has any hope of leading a normal life.
Bob is a truly pathetic case, and I’ve exaggerated his circum-
stances to make a point: The label of deviant can trigger a self-
fulfilling prophecy. If you treat people as deviant and cut off their
opportunities to be anything other than deviant, you increase the
chances that they actually will become deviant.
Sociologists would refer to Bob’s initial foray into crime (his
joyriding) as an instance of primary deviance. Primary deviance
may be committed for all sorts of reasons, including, as in Bob’s
case, a desire to fit in with the group. Social labeling theorists
seek to explain the acts of deviance that take place after the indi-
vidual has been labeled as a deviant. These subsequent acts of
deviance are called secondary deviance. Edwin Lemert explained
the difference this way:
Primary deviance is assumed to arise in a wide variety of social,
cultural and psychological contexts and at best has only marginal
implications for the psychic structure of the individual; it does not
lead to symbolic reorganization at the level of self-regarding atti-
tudes and social roles. . . . Primary deviation, as contrasted with
secondary, is polygenetic, arising out of a variety of social, cultural,
psychological and physiological factors. . . .
Secondary deviation is deviant behavior [that results] as a means of
social defense . . . or adaptation to the . . . problems created by the
societal reaction to primary deviance. . . . Secondary deviation refers
to a special class of socially defined responses which people make to
problems created by the societal reaction to their deviance. (Lemert
1967, 17, 40)

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 185 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

186 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

Erving Goffman’s work on social identity helps us to make

sense of the power of labels. Goffman argued that the stigma8 of
negative social labels can work to spoil a person’s identity. Accord-
ing to Goffman, a stigma is “any attribute that discredits a person
or disqualifies him or her from ‘full social acceptance’” (1963, 3).
Goffman identified three types of stigma. First, there are abomi-
nations of the body—clearly visible physical marks (deformities,
scars, disfiguring injuries). Second, there are blemishes of individual
character—labels of mental disorder, dishonesty, alcoholism, or
bankruptcy. Finally, there are tribal stigmas—or being discredited
for membership in a particular racial, religious, or ethnic group or
subcultural group. In other words, a stigma can be either ascribed
or achieved.
Goffman argued that a stigma can affect one’s social inter-
actions in two ways. When a stigma is visible or known, it can
result in a discredited identity. Like Bob, who because he lived in
a small town was publicly labeled as a criminal and treated as
such people with discredited identities have a tough time being
nondeviant even if they want to be.
Frequently, however, individuals are able to hide attributes
that, if visible, would stigmatize them. In other words, stigmatized
individuals may try “to pass”—that is, to camouflage the attri-
bute that would get them labeled as deviant. Successfully pass-
ing means that the individual is not discredited. But because the
person is vulnerable to being found out, he or she is discreditable—
that is, in danger of feeling the full force of the stigma.
Goffman observed that the results are the same regardless of
whether the person achieves a stigma or has it ascribed to him or
her: “In all of these various instances of stigma the same socio-
logical features are found: an individual who might have been
received easily in ordinary social intercourse possesses a trait that
can intrude itself upon the attention and turn those of us whom
he meets away from him, breaking the claim that his other attri-
butes have on us” (1963, 18).
Others have found that a negative label, or a social stigma, can
easily become a person’s master status (the concept of master
status was introduced in chapter 8). Criminologist Edwin Schur
noted, for example, that such negative social labels as drug addict,
homosexual, prostitute, or juvenile delinquent “will dominate all
other characteristics of the individual. Good athlete, good con-
versationalist, good dancer, and the like are subordinated to or

8
The term stigma comes from ancient Greece and Rome, where runaway slaves and
criminals were branded with a hot iron or needle as a sign of their disgrace. These
brands were called stigma, from the Greek verb stizein, meaning “to tattoo.” When the
word became part of the English language in the late sixteenth century, it was used as it
had been by the ancients—to refer to visible signs of disgrace.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 186 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

The Functions of Deviance: Maintenance of the Status Quo and Social Change 187

negated by this trait, which is immediately felt to be more central

to the ‘actual’ identity of the individual” (1971, 9).
11.3 Explain the difference between primary and secondary deviance. STOP
Why do some sociologists think it is important to distinguish between
the two types?
R
EVIEW

The Functions of Deviance: Maintenance

of the Status Quo and Social Change
According to conventional wisdom, society would be much bet-
ter off if it could get rid of crime and deviance. Durkheim started
changing at least sociologists’ minds about this. His reasoning
was this: If people continue to violate norms, their behavior must
offer some benefit to society. What benefit do crime and deviance
confer on society? Well, for one thing, criminals and deviants rep-
resent social enemies, and hating these social enemies can help
unite society. Thus, Durkheim argued,
crime brings together upright consciences and concentrates them. We
have only to notice what happens, particularly in a small town, when
some moral scandal has just been committed. They stop each other
on the street, they visit each other, they seek to come together to talk
about the event and to wax indignant in common. (1893/1933, 102)

Sociologist Kai T. Erikson extended Durkheim’s idea that

crime could be functional by noting that deviance clarifies soci-
ety’s norms and moral boundaries. Typically a group’s norms are
pretty vague, but societal reaction to rule breakers helps to clarify
the limits of normative (appropriate) behavior:
The reaction to some people as rule violators functions to clarify the
meaning of the norm. Others learn “how far they can go.” Consider
the rule, “do not cheat on examinations.” What does it mean for
specific examination situations? In the case of a take-home exami-
nation, it clearly means that a student should not copy another
student’s answer. Does it also mean that students should not work
together or talk over the assignment at all? How does the rule apply
to term papers? Does it mean that students should not seek assis-
tance from other students or other professors? Does it mean that
one term paper should not be submitted in two classes? When some

Ponder
Generally speaking, the stigma that results from conviction for
a white-collar crime is less than the stigma that results from
conviction for a street crime. Why do you think this is so?

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 187 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

188 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

students “go too far” and exceed the academic community’s bound-
aries or tolerance limits, the community reacts, and that reaction
defines specific situational meanings of the rule. (Quoted in Liska
1987, 40)

Finally, deviance encourages social change. Durkheim noted

that deviant people are sources of social change of the sort that
can benefit society. As proved by the American revolutionaries
of the eighteenth century, today’s deviance may become tomor-
row’s morality, today’s deviant may become tomorrow’s hero.

A CAUTION ABOUT CRIME DATA

Sociologists who study crime and deviance use data from a vari-
ety of sources. It’s important to be careful when interpreting
these data. Suppose, for example, you came across table 11.2. This
table shows, among other things, that in the year 2000 more than
half (57.9 percent) of all people in state prisons for drug offenses
were black. This statistic is made all the more startling given that
blacks make up only about 12 percent of the U.S. population.
A sociologically naive person might conclude that blacks are
more likely to use drugs than whites or Hispanics.
A close inspection of table 11.3, however, would show how
wrong-headed that conclusion would be. The data in table 11.3
look at the people who are regular drug users. It shows that if
we look at all regular drug users, we find that the percentage of
each group is fairly close to their percentage in the United States.
In other words, whites make up about three-quarters of the U.S.
population and close to three-quarters of those who regularly use
illegal drugs.

Table 11.2 Racial Composition of those Incarcerated for Drug Offenses

in U.S. State Prisons, 2000–2005.
Year

Race/Ethnicity
of Prisoner 2000 2003 2005

White 23.2% 25.9% 28.5%

Black 57.9 53.0 44.8
Hispanic 17.2 20.0 20.2
Other 1.7 1.1 6.5

Total 100% 100% 100%

(N) 251,100 259,900 253,300

SOURCE: Adapted from Marc Mauer, 2009. The Changing Racial Dynamics of the War on Drugs.
Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 188 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

Deviance Is Not Immutable 189

Table 11.3 Racial Composition of the United States and of Regular

Illegal Drug Users in the U.S., 2000–2005.
Percent
Race/Ethnicity of Total
of Drug User Population Year

2000 2003 2005

White 76% 74.8% 71.0% 69.2%

Black 12 11.5 12.3 14.0
Hispanic 9 9.1 12.2 12.4

SOURCE: Adapted from Marc Mauer (2009), and Drug Use Among Racial/Ethnic Minorities,
Revised Edition, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Department of Health and Human
Services, National Institutes of Health. 2003.

The question is, why are regular drug users who are black or
Hispanic more likely to go to prison? One might be tempted to say
that perhaps black or Hispanic drug offenders commit more seri-
ous drug offenses (i.e., selling as opposed to possession of drugs).
Unfortunately, there are no reliable data on this point; however,
“Persons who use drugs . . . generally report that they purchased
their drugs from someone of their own race” (Mauer 2009, 8).
The differences in incarceration rates is probably explained
by a number of factors. In recent decades, the criminal justice
system has specifically targeted the use of “crack” cocaine9
with enhanced sentences. Because crack is relatively cheap, it is
attractive to low-income users. Blacks are more likely than whites
to have low incomes and live in communities with “limited access
to treatment and alternative sentencing options” like diversion
programs (Mauer and King 2007, 18).

11.4 In 1955 Rosa Parks, an African American woman, disobeyed an STOP

Alabama state law by not giving up her seat to a white person (as the
law insisted). Parks was arrested, convicted, and fined $10 plus $4
R
court costs. What function did her deviance play? EVIEW

Deviance Is Not Immutable10

Deviance is an inevitable part of social life. According to Emile
Durkheim, it is impossible for a society to exist without deviance:
Societies create norms and, inevitably, some people will violate them.

9
Crack cocaine is a kind of cocaine that is produced by dissolving cocaine in water,
mixing it with common household chemicals, and boiling the mixture until “rocks”
appear.
10
Immutable means unchanging and unchangeable.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 189 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

190 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

Figure 11.1 80%

Percentage of Always wrong
American Adults Not wrong at all
Who Say that Sex 70%
between Two Adults
Is “Always Wrong,”
or “Not Wrong at 60%
All” (1973–2010).
SOURCE: Smith, 2011.
50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
1973 1980 1987 1994 2002 2010

No act, however, is inherently deviant. Any particular behav-

ior is deviant only if people in a society have rules against that
behavior. Moreover, as people change, rules may change and dif-
ferent behaviors may be defined as deviant (or not).
Traditionally, if a student enrolled in a social problems or a
sociology of deviance class, one of the topics listed on the syllabus
would be homosexuality. There was little question that homosex-
ual behavior was deviant.
Indeed, until the early 1960s, homosexual acts, called sodomy
or crimes against nature, were felonies in all state jurisdictions in
the United States. Things began to change in the 1960s and 1970s,
but—as late as 1986, half of the states still had laws prohibiting
sodomy.11 As shown in figure 11.1, in the 1980s, most Americans
believed that homosexual behavior was “always wrong” and
most court decisions reflected that belief. For example, in 1982,
Michael Hardwick was arrested in his bedroom with another
man and charged with violating Georgia’s law against sodomy.
Over the course of the next four years, the case found its way to

11
Technically, sodomy includes any sexual intercourse that does not involve a penis
and a vagina—whether it involves same sex or different sex partners. However, I can’t
find any record of different sex partners being prosecuted.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 190 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

Gays in the Military 191

the U.S. Supreme Court, where five of its nine members found
that people who wished to engage in same sex sexual acts have
no constitutionally protected right to do so.
However, in the new century, people’s attitudes began to
change. Then, in 2003, the Court was presented with another
sodomy case. In Lawrence v Texas (2003) a six-to-three majority
ruled that sodomy statutes were unconstitutional violations of
American’s right to privacy.
Did this mean that sodomy laws were taken off the books? No.
At this writing, some fourteen states’ laws criminalize sodomy,
and in many of these states there continue to be prosecutions or,
at least, legal harassment of gays.12
A year after the Lawrence case was decided, in 2004, the Mas-
sachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the state’s constitution equal
protection clause required that same-sex couples be allowed to
marry. At this writing, same sex marriage is legal in Connecticut,
Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New
York, Vermont, and Washington State (and Washington D.C.).
Same sex marriage is allowed in several other countries:
Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Por-
tugal, Spain, South Africa, and Sweden.

Gays in the Military

The 1916 Articles of War prohibited homosexuals from serving in
the military. In World War II, “the military developed procedures
for spotting and excluding homosexual draftees from service:
recruits were screened for feminine body characteristics, effemi-
nacy in dress and manner and a patulous (expanded) rectum.”13
During the Vietnam War, some draftees claimed homosexual ten-
dencies in order to avoid service. “It didn’t always work: in 1968
Perry Watkins, a 19-year-old man, “was drafted despite checking
the ‘yes’ box in the category ‘homosexual tendencies’ during his
pre-induction physical examination. After 16 years of service, the

12
In the following states, sodomy is outlawed for both gays and straight people:
Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia,
South Carolina, and Utah. In Kansas, Montana, Oklahoma, and Texas, sodomy is only a
criminal act if involves same-sex couples.
13
Unlike their male counterparts, lesbians had little difficulty serving in the mili-
tary in WWII. For one thing, those seeking to serve were not asked about their sex-
ual orientation—partly because it was contrary to social norms to ask women such
questions and partly because women service members who displayed male tenden-
cies were considered to probably “be perfectly normal sexually and excellent military
material”(Berube, 1990, 29). After the war, however, women were placed under greater
scrutiny, requiring lesbians, like gay men, to work harder to hide their sexuality if they
wanted to continue to serve.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 191 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

192 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

military discharged [Sergeant] Perry Watkins for his sexual ori-

entation; he promptly filed a lawsuit” (Webley, 2010). Perry won
the lawsuit and the court awarded him retroactive pay, an hon-
orable discharge, and promotion from staff sergeant to sergeant
first class.
In 1993, the United States Congress passed the Military Per-
sonnel Eligibility Act, informally known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell.” The act barred the military from asking those seeking to
serve about their sexual orientation. However, contrary to the
common understanding of the law, the act continued to allow the
military to investigate the sexual lives of serving personnel. As a
result, between 1994 and 2010, “more than 12,000 service mem-
bers” were dismissed from the military for their sexual orienta-
tion” (Webley 2010).
In 2010, The U.S. Congress passed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Repeal Act.” The act removed all restrictions against homosexu-
als serving in the military. While surveys suggested most Ameri-
cans (about 60 percent) were in favor of allowing gays to serve,
there was opposition. In 2009, for example, more than 1,000
retired admirals and generals published a statement saying that
“Repeal . . . would undermine recruiting and retention, impact
leadership at all levels, have adverse effects on the willingness
of parents who lend their sons and daughters to military service,
and eventually break the All-Volunteer Force” (quoted in Belkin,
et al., 2012).
A year after repeal, research suggested that the pessimistic pre-
dictions about allowing gays to serve openly in the military were
wrong: The repeal of DADT has had no overall negative impact
on military readiness or its component dimensions, including
cohesion, recruitment, retention, assaults, harassment or morale”
(Belkin, et al., 2012, 4). In June, 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon
E. Panetta celebrated “Pride Month” with a video statement
thanking “gay and lesbian service members and lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender civilians for their dedicated service to
the nation” (U.S. Department of Defense, [Link]
[Link]/[Link]).

Chapter Review
1. Below I have listed the major concepts discussed in this chap-
ter. Define each of the terms. (Hint: This exercise will be more
helpful to you if, in addition to defining each concept, you
create an example of it in your own words.)
relativity of deviance
normative behavior

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 192 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

Chapter Review 193

nonsociologial approaches to deviance

demonic possession as a theory of deviance
Cesare Lombroso’s theory of atavism
William Sheldon (ecto-, endo- and mesomorph)
Émile Durkheim, collective conscience
structural strain
anomie and egoism
Robert Merton and anomie
responses to anomie (conformity, innovation ritualism,
retreatism, rebellion)
Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin
differential opportunities to deviate
Howard Becker
deviance as learned behavior
societal reaction/labeling theory
Edwin Lemert
primary and secondary deviance
Erving Goffman
stigma
discreditable versus discredited identity
functions of deviance
2. Review Merton’s typology of adaptation to anomie. Create an
example of each type of adaptation (conformity, innovation,
ritualism, and rebellion) and explain how each of your
examples fits the definition of that type of adaptation. (Don’t
use examples given in the chapter; make up your own.)
3. Durkheim suggested that deviance can be a source of social
change. Give an example of someone who, during your life-
time, was judged to be deviant or criminal but nonetheless
brought about social change.
4. The relationship between conformity to norms and deviance
is frequently a complicated one. Describe a situation in which
conformity to the norms of some smaller group would result in
nonconformity to the norms of the larger society. Then, discuss
what implications this sort of conflict of norms might have for
sociologists who want to understand why people deviate.

Answers and Discussion STOP

11.1
R
a. False—society cannot be divided into people who conform and EVIEW
people who do not conform to social norms. If we tried to make
such a division, everyone would be on the same side of the line.
Everyone deviates sometimes, and most people conform most of
the time. (Even chainsaw murderers usually eat dinner with a fork
and use toilet paper in the socially prescribed manner.)

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 193 19/04/13 3:59 AM

 Confirming Pages

194 CHAPTER 11 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

STOP b. False—people generally do not agree on which behaviors are

deviant and which are not deviant. In fact, there is a great deal
of disagreement in society about what is deviant and what is not.
R
EVIEW It varies among subcultures and across time. However, within
a particular society, there may be general agreement on the
most important norms (for example, there is usually pretty solid
agreement on what constitutes taboo behavior).
c. True—most people have violated one or more important mores
at some time in their lives. You may be the exception, but most
of us will violate an important norm at least occasionally.
d. False—most deviant behaviors are not regarded as deviant in all
societies and at all times. As I tried to emphasize, it is very difficult
to identify a particular behavior that is deviant everywhere.
e. False—it is not merely acts that are harmful to people that are
judged to be deviant. There are many acts that really do not harm
anyone but that are still regarded as deviant. It would be accurate,
I think, to say that all deviant behaviors are offensive (if only in
the sense that deviant acts offend social norms). Talking with your
mouth full of food, for example, or picking your nose doesn’t harm
anyone, but these behaviors certainly do offend people.

11.2
a. For Merton, the structural strain that led to anomie was the con-
tradiction between socially approved goals and socially approved
means. In our society, earning lots of money is a socially approved
goal. But there are not enough socially approved/legitimate means
for everyone to achieve this goal. This contradiction leads some
people to deviate.
b. Their contribution was to point out that just as not all people
have the same access to socially approved/legitimate means, not
all people have the same access to illegitimate means.

11.3 Primary deviance is deviance that people commit—on a whim or

owing to particular circumstances. If they are caught and sanctioned for this
act, they may be led to perform secondary deviance. Secondary deviance is
deviance that people perform as a result of being labeled as a deviant.

11.4 She said that she did it because her feet were tired, but when Parks
refused to give up her seat to a white person and was arrested for this
“crime,” she became a symbol that helped launch the civil rights movement.

mcI26873_ch11_169-[Link] 194 19/04/13 3:59 AM