Functions of Deviance

Functions of Deviance

Most explanations of deviance focus on the motivation of individual deviant actors. Sociological explanations of deviance typically provide a social psychological account of how deviant individual behavior is shaped by social conditions. It is possible, however, to look at the relationship between deviance and organization apart from the ways individual acts are influenced by social structure. One way of conceiving such relationships is in terms of the functions deviance performs for the organization.

Perhaps the oldest and most familiar versions of this perspective are theories of scapegoating (Mizruchi 1998). Communities unable to cope directly with the source of their problems seek out suitable targets to expel. While such collective exercises seldom resolve the underlying problem, the collective act of expulsion strengthens the bonds of the community so that it is better able to endure the real crisis. Frustration-aggression theory, developed by motivational psychologists, is an individual-level variant of this generalization: individuals facing blocked goals release tension through acts of violence directed against a safe and suitable target. Such targets are usually unrelated to the source of frustration, which is unrecognized or unreachable. For example, frustration-aggression theory predicts that lynchings and hate crimes vary with the level of frustration induced by economic recessions (Green, Glaser and Rich 1998).

The social organizational version of this perspective is due to Durkheim (1893; 1895). Durkheim began with several observations: (1) deviance is not abnormal, but an ordinary and routine aspect of social organization (2) deviance is universal yet relative; all societies encounter deviants, but are few common denominators can be found among all the acts societies regard as deviant (3) while deviant may be socially destructive, so may normative acts; the correlation between an act’s destructiveness and its deviant status is curiously imperfect. These observations led Durkheim to theorize that deviance performs functions for the larger society. One such function is the galvanizing of the community. By expelling the deviant, the ordinary people confirm and validate their commitment to the existing order. Even a community of morally perfect individuals, Durkheim (1895, pp. 68-9) argued, will be driven by the logic of its social organization to single out one member for expulsion through a communal ritual. The source of deviance is, thus, social organization; the particular activity is incidental.

Durkheim left this idea logically unrefined and empirically unsupported (see critiques from Trade [1895] to Jenkins [1988]). Unlike Suicide (Durkheim 1895), which deployed massive empirical evidence to support the argument that social integration influenced the individuals’ decisions to take their own lives, his ideas about the symbiotic relationship between deviance and social integration lacked the refinement that comes with sustained empirical inquiry. While Durkheim’s argument entered the canon of sociological theory for the next half century, serious effort to explore empirically the functions of deviance began only in the 1960s.

Dentler and Erikson (1959) examined how small military and religious task-oriented groups maintained deviants as focal points of group integration. Deviant individuals were excluded from the circle of ordinary members, but at the same time the groups resisted external efforts to remove physically the deviants from the group. In the most sustained and influential analysis of this process, Kai Erikson turned to three episodes in the history of seventeenth century Puritan Massachusetts. At roughly thirty-year intervals the prosecution of religious heresy preoccupied the colony. Erikson uses historical evidence to build a case for interpreting these three prosecutions as supporting Durkheim’s thesis. Because he lacked direct indicators of social integration, Erikson explored variation in the disposition of the colony engaged in ritual punishment (cf. Cohen 1982).

While Erikson’s formulation inspired several extensions (e.g., Bergesen 1977; Inverarity 1976; Lauderdale 1976), current thinking has followed a third rendition of the argument initiated by Stanley Cohen (1972). In a case study analysis of media and political reactions to a relatively minor episode of youth gang violence in Britain, Cohen coined the terms “moral panic” and “folk devil.” The moral panic version gives greater attention to the multiplicity of moral communities in society and the independent that roles of institutional structures like the mass communications media and electoral politics play in the social construction of deviance (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994).

Functional explanation treats deviance and control as symbolic actions driven by factors beyond the deviants’ or the controllers’ rational understanding actions. The burden of proof falls on the investigator to provide clear and convincing evidence of connections between the boundary crises or panics and the societal preoccupation with witches, serial killers or drug kingpins. Functional explanations of deviance risk degenerating into post-hoc explanations: with a small investment in ingenuity one can always point to a consequence for or a disposition in the social organization that will seemingly explain the epidemic of deviance. Such explanations can, however, be grounded in sound logic and persuasive evidence. For example Tyler and Boeckmann (1997) show how support for three-strikes sentencing laws is related to broader moral anxieties rather than to immediate instrumental calculations of victimization risk. As in any explanation, validity of the functional analysis depends on the attention paid to the logical hazards of the argument (Hempel 1965; Merton1968; Stinchcombe 1978) and to weighing of the account against plausible alternative explanations (cf. Waddington 1986).

REFERENCES

Bergesen, Albert J. 1977. "Political Witch Hunts: The Sacred and Subversive in Cross-National Perspective." AmericanSociological Review 42:220-233.

Cohen, Gerald A.. 1982. "Functional Explanation, Consequence Explanation, and Marxism." Inquiry 25:27-56.

Cohen, Stanley. 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers. London: McGibbon and Kee.

Dentler, Robert and Kai Erikson. 1959. "The Functions of Deviance in Small Groups." Social Problems 7:98-107.

Durkheim, Emile.. 1893 [1984]. The Division of Labor in Society. Translated by W. D. Halls. New York: Free Press.

Durkheim, Emile. 1895 [1950]. The Rules of Sociological Method.Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Durkheim, Emile _. 1897 [1951]. Suicide.New York: Free Press.

Erikson, Kai T. 1966. Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance.New York: Wiley.

Goode, Erich and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. 1994. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford: Blackwell.

Green, Donald P., Jack Glaser and Andrew Rich. 1998. "From Lynching to Gay Bashing: The Elusive Connection between Economic Conditions and Hate Crime." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75:82-92.

Hempel, Carl. 1965. "The Logic of Functional Explanation." Pp. 297-330 in Aspects of Scientific Explanation.New York: Free Press.

Jenkins, Philip. 1994b. Using Murder: The Social Construction of Serial Homicide. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Jensen, Gary F. 1988. "Functional Research on Deviance: A Critical Analysis and Guide for the Future." Deviant Behavior 9:1-17.

Lauderdale, Pat. 1976. "Deviance and Moral Boundaries." American Sociological Review 41:660-76.

Liska, Allen E. and Barbara D. Warner. 1991. "Functions of Crime: A Paradoxical Process." American Journal of Sociology 96:1441-1463.

Merton, Robert K.. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure.New York: Free Press.

Mizruchi, Susan L. 1998. The Science of Sacrifice: American Literature and Modern Social Theory. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Schattenberg, Gus. 1988. "Social Control Functions of Mass Media Depictions of Crime." Sociological Inquiry 51:71-77.

Stinchcombe, Arthur. 1978. Theoretical Methods in Social History.New York: Academic Press.

Tarde, Gabriel. 1895 [1983 ]. "Criminality and Social Health." Pp. 76-92 in Durkheim and the Law, edited by Steve Lukes and Andrew Scull. New York: St. Martins Press.

Tyler, Tom R. and Robert J. Boeckmann. 1997. “Three Strikes and You Are Out, but Why?: The Psychology of Public Support for Punishing Rule Breakers.” Law and Society Review 31:237-265,

Waddington, P. A. J. 1986. “Mugging as a Moral Panic.” British Journal of Sociology 37:245-259.

JAMES INVERARITY

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