SOC 104 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Anomie, Mothers Against Drunk Driving
Document Summary
* illustration: we think of child molesters, drug addicts, alcoholics; tell us nothing about what the term actually means. * statistical terms: statistical de nitions of deviance make it hard to distinguish negative deviance from positive deviance. * as harmful: we equate deviant actions with actions that produce destructive outcomes; however, many. Deviant people such as the mentally ill, homosexuals and others outside the mainstream do not cause harm. * deviance as a product of social interaction and group structure; deviance is the study of people, behaviors and conditions that are subject to social control (the ways in which social groups express their disproval of people and behavior) * example, homosexuals are the targets of various forms of social control in society. * in order to be deviant according to sociologists, a behavior must hold the potential for being called deviant (ex. unusual behavior) as well as be labelled deviant by powerful others.
