Topics in Sociology: Deviance, Social Control, and Law

Key Concepts

• Deviance: Behavior that violates established social norms. Sociologists do not see any act as intrinsically deviant.

• Social control: Social practices and mechanisms that encourage conformity to established norms, prevent deviant behavior, and deal with the repercussions of deviance.

• Law: A formal type of social control associated with complex societies; includes a system of rules and sanctions with specialized personnel and institutions to carry them out.

Major Perspectives

• Functionalism, Durkheim

  • Deviance has positive functions: it provides opportunities for society to reassert common values and norms, and it spurs social change.

  • One of the first social thinkers to explain deviance in social rather than biological and psychological terms. (Durkheim only)

• Conflict theory

  • Deviance is one aspect of the power, inequality, and conflict that pervade society.

• Symbolic interactionism

  • Focuses on how people come to engage in deviant behaviors and assumed deviant identities.

  • The labeling of deviants as such strengthens their deviant identities and may encourage further deviant behavior.