The Complexity of Deviance: Beyond Action to Impulse

“There is no reason to assume,” wrote Becker (1999), “that only those who finally commit a deviant act actually have the impulse to do so. It is much more likely that most people experience deviant impulses frequently. At least in fantasy, people are much more deviant that they appear” (p. 26). Becker suggested that the proper sociological question is not why some people do things that are disapproved of but, rather, why “conventional people do not follow through on those deviant impulses they have” ((p.

26).

According to Becker and other interactionists, the answers are to be found in the individual’s commitment to conventional institutions and behaviors. Commitment means adherence to and dependence on the norms of a given social institution. The middle-class youth’s commitment to school, which ahs developed over many years of socialization in the family and the community, often prevents him or her from giving in to the impulse to play hooky.

“In fact,” Becker asserted, “the normal development of people in our society (and probably in any society) can be seen as a series of progressively increasing commitments to conventional norms and institutions” (p.

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27). Travis Hirschi studied how people become committed to conventional norms. Such commitment, he found, emerges out of the interactions that create our social bonds to others. When we are closely tied to people who adhere to conventional norms, we have little chance to deviate.

And as we grow older our investment in upholding conventional norms increases because we feel that we have more to protect.

This process of lifetime socialization in groups produces a normative system of social that it internalized in most members of the society (Hirsch, 2000). By the same token, a person who once gives in to the impulse to commit a deviant act and is caught, or who becomes a member of a deviant group because it has recruited him or her, gradually develops a commitment to that group and its deviant culture.

The reasons for taking the first step toward deviance may be many and varied, but from the interactionist perspective “one of the most crucial steps in the process of building a stable pattern of deviant behavior is likely to be the experience of being caught and publicly labeled as deviant” (Becker, 1999, p. 31). In a well-known empirical study of youth gangs, William J. Chambliss (2003) applied both the conflict and interactionist perspectives. For two years Chambliss observed the saints, a gang of upper-class boys, and the Roughnecks, a gang of lower-class boys from the same community.

Both gangs engaged in a car theft and joyriding, vandalism, dangerous practical jokes, and fighting, and in fact the upper-class Saints were involved in a larger overall number of incidents. But the members of the lower-class gang were more frequently caught, described as “tough young criminals headed for trouble,” and sent to reform school. Members of the upper-class gang were rarely caught and were never labeled as delinquent. Chambliss observed that the upper-class gang members had access to cars and could commit their misdeeds in other communities, where they were not known.

The lower-class boys hung out in their own community and performed many of their antisocial acts there. A far more important explanation, according to Chambliss, pertained to the relative influence of the boys’ parents. The parents of the upper-class boys argued that the boys’ activities were normal youthful behavior, just the “sowing of wild oats. ” Their social position enabled them to influence the way their children’s behavior was perceived, an influence the lower-class parents was perceived, an influence the lower-class parents of the Roughnecks did not have.

Thus the Roughnecks were caught and labeled and became increasingly committed to deviant careers, but the saints escaped without being subject to serious sanction. Sociologists often note that members of both gangs engaged in deviant acts, referred to as primary deviant, but that only the lower-class boys were labeled as delinquent by the police and the juvenile courts. As a result of that labeling, many of the lower-class boys went on to commit acts that sociologists call secondary deviance—that is, behaviors appropriate appropriate to someone who ahs already been labeled as delinquent.

(For example, in juvenile detention centers teenage offenders often learn deviant skills such as how to deal in drugs). The distinction between primary and secondary deviance is useful because it emphasizes that most of us deviate from cultural norms in many ways but that once we are labeled as deviant we tend to commit additional deviant acts in order to fulfill the negative definitions society has attached to us (Lemert, 2001). Conclusion In conclusion, reasonable as the labeling perspective appears, it has nor always been borne out by empirical research.

Some studies have found that people who have been labeled as delinquent after being caught and convicted of serious offenses go on commit other deviant acts. On the other hand, other studies have found that labeling can lead to decreased deviance and a lower probability of further offenses.

References:

1. Becker, H. S. (1999). The outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. New York: Free Press. 2. Chambliss, W. J. (2003). The Saints and the Roughnecks. Society, pp. 23-31. 3. Curtis, L. A. (2003). American and public policy, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 4. Hagedorn, J. M. (2003).

People and folks: Gangs, crime and the underclass in a rustbelt city. Chicago: Lakeview Press. 5. Hirsch, T. (2000). Understanding Crime: Current theory and research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. 6. Horowitz, R. (2001). Honor and the American dream: Culture and identity in a Chicago neighborhood. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University press. 7. Larkin, R. W. (2001). Suburban youth in cultural crisis. New York: Oxford University press. 8. Lemert, E. M. (2001). Human deviance, social problems and social control. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 9. Williams, Terry (1989). The cocaine kids. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.