SOC 2070 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Rela
15 Feb 2013
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Document Summary
Erikson: deviance and boundary maintenance for communities. Deviance is focal concerns of every community that is scrutinized: communities are boundary maintaining. Every community occupies a specific space in the world, which marks it as a special place. A community maintains boundaries as its members tend to confine and limit them- selves to a confine and limit themselves to a certain range of conduct and behaviour. Human communities maintain boundaries for the following reasons: to retain a given pattern of consistent activity and behaviour to make possible a degree of stability to retain cultural integrity: marking and publicizing boundaries. Erikson states that newspapers and radio and television (and internet) offer much the same kind of entertainment as public hangings. A considerable portion of news is devoted to reports of deviance: communities promote deviance, boundaries are not fixed and constant. Over time there are changes in group structure and leadership. Provides the community with the opportunity to restate the group"s boundaries.
