SOCI 1210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Norm (Social), Social Control, Moral Panic
Deviance and social control
Deviance: a violation of established contextual, cultural, or social norms, whether folkways,mores, or
codified law
-deviance can be as minor as picking one’s nose in public, or as major as committing murder.
Categories of deviant behaviour:
-john hagen provides a typology to classify deviant acts in terms of
-perceived harmfulness
-degree of consensus concerning the norms violated
-the severity of the response to them
-consensus crime: most serious acts of deviance about which there is a near unanimous public
agreement
-generally regarded as morally intolerable, injurious, and subject to harsh penalties
-conflict crimes: acts which may be illegal but about which there is considerable public disagreement
concerning their seriousness
Key Question: What is deviant behaviour?
-cannot be answered in a straightforward manner
-follows from two key insights of the sociological approach to deviance
-deviance is defined by its social context
-deviance is not an intrinsic attribute of individuals, nor of the acts themselves, but a product of
social processes
Deviance is defined by its social context
-to understand why some acts are deviant and some are not, it is necessary to understand what the
context is,what the existing rules are, and how these rules come to be established
-if the rules change, what counts as deviant also changes
-as rules and norms vary across cultures and time, it makes sense that notions of deviance also
change
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Document Summary
Deviance: a violation of established contextual, cultural, or social norms, whether folkways,mores, or codified law. Deviance can be as minor as picking one"s nose in public, or as major as committing murder. John hagen provides a typology to classify deviant acts in terms of. Consensus crime: most serious acts of deviance about which there is a near unanimous public agreement. Generally regarded as morally intolerable, injurious, and subject to harsh penalties. Conflict crimes: acts which may be illegal but about which there is considerable public disagreement concerning their seriousness. Follows from two key insights of the sociological approach to deviance. Deviance is not an intrinsic attribute of individuals, nor of the acts themselves, but a product of social processes. To understand why some acts are deviant and some are not, it is necessary to understand what the context is,what the existing rules are, and how these rules come to be established.