Emma’s Deviant Behavior

There is a girl, let’s call her Emma, who has always seemed rebellious. She comes from a religious family, so she has found her own way to stand out on her own and reject the rules that her parents and religion have set out for her. Emma has stated on many occasions that she has slept with multiple people, drank, and done drugs. She happens to be under the legal drinking age. She is also a freshman on a sports team that frowns upon drinking during the season.

Emma decided that she wanted to hang out with the older crowd of people at the college that she attends, so she decided to get a fake ID to be able to get into the bars and buy alcohol while she is underage.

She got it with no problem and even said that the cost was for something at school to get her parents to pay for it. Now, Emma goes out to hang out with her new older friends and starts drinking at one of their houses.

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Later that evening, Emma ends up going to one of the bars around the university and uses her fake ID to get in. At the bar, she ordered multiple drinks and got pretty intoxicated. She ended up going home with one of the guys at the bar. The next day she told multiple people about the night that she had had.

At the beginning of the year, she had made friends with the other freshman on her team, but her drinking and sleeping with multiple men caused them to start to separate themselves from her and call her names.

For Functionalism, there are three theories. The theory that I want to take a closer look at would be strain theory. This is when there is something in society that everyone should want to achieve or obtain and a person is not able to get what they want. When people cannot get what they want, they tend to get frustrated. This frustration could be considered as a strain on the person and cause them to act in a different way to get what they desire. The way that they act could be considered deviant from what people would normally do because the way that most people act is not working for them.

The deviance could be anything from a minor offense, like disturbing the peace, or something major, like murder. From Conflict Perspective, the theory I am going to analyze this situation by is the subcultural theory. This theory says that there is a part of the population with a lot of power and a part of a population that does not have a lot of power. The part that does not have power is to go along with the rules and norms of the population that holds the power. When they go against the norms of the more powerful population, it is considered deviant. Symbolic interactionism also has a take on deviance. One of the theories from symbolic interactionism is the labeling theory. This theory says that people do not necessarily think that what they are doing is going against the norms or deviant; this is called primary deviance.

The people around the person that deviated may act differently towards them, tell them that they are disappointed in them, or that what they have done is wrong. This makes the individual realize that what they have done is wrong, but sometimes they end up doing it again or more because they have already disappointed people around them, so why not keep doing what they have. This is called secondary deviance. Based on the definition of strain theory I provided earlier, the situation would apply to strain theory. Emma in this situation has had so many rules to follow that her parents have made for her and it is obvious that she has not been able to follow them and has disappointed her family, this is what caused her to start rebelling in the first place.

She started to go out and party to have a good time on her own even though she knew that it would disappoint them. She had already seen herself as a disappointment to them, so it made breaking their rules even easier for her. She decided that since she could not meet their standards for her, that she would make her own standards. This goes along with the rebellion and substitution part of strain theory. The fact that Emma also was not getting the attention that she wanted from the people on her team also made her deviate from what her freshman class wanted. Emma ended up conforming to what the upperclassman on the team wanted to get their attention.

The strain of this situation was not getting the attention that she wanted and she conformed to the rules and standards of a different group to hopefully measure up to what they expected and fit in with them. The strain caused Emma to find a different group of people to hang out with and when she hung out with them, she ended up breaking the law quite a bit as well. The subculture theory could be used to analyze this situation in three different ways. The first way has to do with the upperclassmen on her team. They would be seen as more powerful and able to get her to do what they wanted. In this situation, Emma goes along with what they want to do and what they want.

This means that she avoids being deviant looking at it this way from this theory. Second, the subculture theory could also be applied to this situation in terms of the other freshman on Emma’s team. There are more of them than her, so they would be the powerful group. Also, since they seem to be rule followers, they would be more popular with the coach. The rest of the freshman class does not go to parties, drink, or have fake IDs. This means that all of these actions that she has performed have deviated from their norms.

Third, Emma would be less powerful than her parents. Their rules would be the norms for their household. When she started to go out, drink, and party, she was deviating from what they considered right. The difference between the situation with the upperclassman and the situation with the rest of the freshman class and her parents really highlights the fact that in the subculture theory norms differ for different types of people and with people from different backgrounds. As described above, labeling theory has to do with the reaction that people have to what people have done. In my deviation example, Emma does not see what she is doing as deviant.

To her, it just seems like she is going out and having a good time with some of her new friends. This is the example of primary deviance under the labeling theory. When the other people on her team start calling her a drunk or a drug addict or a slut, is when it sets in that what she is doing is wrong, at least by their standards. She could think that if her classmates think that this is wrong, her parents would as well. Even if they do not know that she is doing this, the fact that her parents would be disappointed if they found out makes her question her behavior. Emma ends up continuing to party and accepting the role that her classmates have given her.

This shows secondary deviance of the labeling theory. Out of the three theories that I have presented, labeling theory directly fits the situation the most. In the lecture and in the book, it describes underage drinking and partying as an example for this theory. Emma’s classmates even directly labeled her and started calling her names to her face and behind her back. They made it quite clear that they did not agree with what she was doing and the fact that Emma did not know it was wrong highlighted primary deviance. This is where Emma had to make a choice and she decided to keep partying and take on the role given to her by her classmates, which shows us secondary deviance. The situation with Emma hits all the main points that labeling theory has to offer, which is why it is the theory that fits this situation the most.

The other two theories that I chose seemed to have a longer explanation for why the theories fit the situation, but that made me feel as if I had to stretch more to find how the situation fit the theories. The strain theory was not as good of a choice because the strain between her parents and Emma that caused her to rebel did not really get Emma anything big out of it. The strain between her want for attention and the amount of attention she was getting actually made her conform towards the upperclassman’s rules. This made the theory not as strong because of the different viewpoints. The subculture theory was also a bit of a stretch.

The way it was discussed in the book and in lecture made it more of a majority and minority situation. The fact that Emma was not really part of a minority except for the fact that she would have been outvoted by her classmate, made it seem that this theory was not the right fit for this situation. Based on the three theories that I analyzed, the labeling theory fits this situation best because the situation highlighted all of the major components of this theory.