Deviance In Criminology

Blog 1: Blurred Lines Between “Right” and “Wrong” Because our physics class has a relatively small population of forty students, it is easy to see what everyone is doing during lecture. During the first few days of lecture, the class could easily be divided into two groups: students who actually listened to the professor’s lecture and those who didn’t. But after the first week of lecture passed, most, if not all, students found the professor difficult to follow and naturally became bored or frustrated with his lectures. Though playing on one’s phone and sleeping during lectures are not commendable (and blatantly rude) actions, these behaviors became our social norm given the unengaging environment of our physics class. By the third week, looking …show more content…
And more importantly, most people associate acts of deviance with criminal acts or “bad” behaviors. Of course, murder, rape and robbery are commonly considered acts of deviance by our society. In class, we elaborated on how social deviance doesn’t necessarily have to be a transgression of a written rule but can take the form of informal deviance, minor transgressions of unwritten socially established norms, like picking one’s nose. We went on to use normative compliance and informal social sanctions to explain why there isn’t more deviance. But taking on a slightly different perspective, I believe that normative compliance and informal social sanctions as means that can encourage “bad” behaviors in certain communities. Deviance doesn’t have to be illegal, and it doesn’t even have to be “bad” behaviors. This is because deviance isn’t defined by properties of the act itself. Deviance is subjective and can change based on social contexts and the population that determines social norms. Normative compliance is simply adhering to society’s norms or following the rules of group life, but this does not always mean that the rules/norms of this group uphold “good” behaviors. In my physics class, it was normative to skip class or play on your phone. It was considered “deviant” by other students to go to lecture everyday, take notes, and ask questions. I felt …show more content…
I started with my empirical observation of my physics class and worked to from a theory about the subjectivity of deviance: social contexts determine different social norms, which defines “deviance” in a way that fits that social group. To determine if a correlation between social context and deviance exists, I could observe various college classes in which different norms are established and see if responses differ to someone playing on their computer in the front the room. I would initially use surveys asking what students believe are acceptable and deviant behaviors in different classes to get a general sense what the social norm is for a particular class. But then I would move on to more in-depth interviews with students in different classes about what actual behaviors they exhibit in different classes, how they feel when exhibiting certain behaviors, and how others respond to their behaviors. Or I could take this theory and apply it to social contexts outside college classrooms; I could also study the norms of deviant communities and compare them to the norms of the dominant culture/law. Nevertheless, taking a more qualitative and interpretive approach to researching this phenomenon would yield more important information than using a more quantitative, statistical approach because I am interested in the micro-level interactions between people in a community (the audience) and the