SOC 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Motor Vehicle Theft, Arson, Organized Crime
Deviance
What do we Mean by Deviance?
• Deviance – any attitude, behavior, or condition that violates cultural norms or societal
laws and results in disapproval, hostility, or sanction
• Everyone partakes in deviance of some sort (characterized in children, minor infractions
like jay walking, not so minor infractions like driving after drinking, even the oldest of
people break rules)
Deviance Comes in Many Forms
• Three main types
o Everyday deviance
▪ Small norm violations – not just social norms, but work norms, family
norms, school norms, etc.
▪ Everyone participates
▪ Not enforced by laws
• Sanctioned by interactions
o Sexual deviance
▪ Sex norms have evolved over history
• Victorian to Victoria Secret
• Arrested for a bathing suit?
▪ Currently America is as tolerant as it has ever been, but not as tolerant as
many European countries
▪ Some deviance is universally unactable
• This type of deviance considered a crime
o Deviance among the powerful
▪ Spectacle: Television Miniseries of 2016
▪ Many reasons why these cases are of interest is due to societies’
perception that this group does not participate in deviance
• Crime is not included in deviance
o Crime – any act defined in the law as punishable by fines, imprisonment, or both
o Two main types of sociological crime
▪ Violent crimes – crimes that involve force or threat of force, including
robbery, murder, assault, and rape
▪ Property crimes – crimes that involve the violation of individuals’
ownership rights, including burglary, larceny/theft, arson, and motor
vehicle theft
o Crimes of the Powerful
▪ State crime – criminal acts committed by state officials in the pursuit of
their jobs as representatives of the government
▪ White-collar crime – crime committed by people of high social status in
connection with their work
▪ Organized crime – crime committed by criminal groups that provide
illegal goods and services
o American Prison System
▪ Jails and Prison life have their own sociology
• Institutionalization
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