SOCI 1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Incest Taboo, Gamification, Panopticon
13 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Sociology of crime and deviance
Lecture 8
Defining deviance & crime
deviance is a violation of established contextual, cultural, or social norms, whether
folkways, mores, or codified law (1906).
◦ Folkways are norms based on everyday cultural customs concerning practical
matters like how to hold a fork, what type of clothes are appropriate for different
situations, or how to greet someone politely.
◦ Mores are more serious moral injunctions or taboos that are broadly recognized in
a society, like the incest taboo. Codified
◦ laws are norms that are specified in explicit codes and enforced by government
bodies. (Little et al, p. 200)
A crime is therefore an act of deviance that breaks not only a norm, but a law. (Little et
al, p. 200)
Social control
Social control, the regulation and enforcement of norms. (Little et al, p. 203).
How members of society condemn or condone certain behaviors, beliefs, and bodies.
Positive sanctions
Negative sanctions
Theorizing crime
Durkheim on crime
Two functions:
◦ Crime and punishment reinforce social solidarity (strength)
◦ Crimes allow societies to reconsider social norms (flexibility)
Functionalist approaches towards deviance
From Robert Merton (1938)
“access to socially acceptable goals plays a part in determining whether a person
conforms or deviates” (Little at al, p. 209).
Deviance and crime results when cultural goals and cultural means do not align.
“status frustration”
labeling theory
“What is considered deviant is determined not so much by the behaviours themselves or
the people who commit them, but by the reactions of others to these behaviours” (Little et
al, p. 215).
Interested in social roles (functionalist perspective) and social stigma (Goffman)
For deviants & criminals, the deviant behaviour becomes the “master status”: “a label
that describes the chief characteristic of an individual” (p. 215).
Foucault and the panoptic-on
“Surveillance refers to the various means used to make the lives and activities of
individuals visible to authorities”. (Little et al, p. 204)
Normalization
Examinations
The panoptic-on: “seeing machine”
Gamification and social control
Gamification= treating more and more of everyday life like a game
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