Preview

Understanding Deviance: Borrowing Part Of Cohen's Theory

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1133 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Understanding Deviance: Borrowing Part Of Cohen's Theory
Deviance is behaving out of social normalities and the severity of the deviant behaviour varies from legal issues to everyday problems such as “role problems of old age” (Clinard, 1968), suggesting that it is difficult to determine deviant behaviour due to it’s subjectivity. In fact, the deviant behaviour that concerns issues of legality are created by those who have power in the society to draw a line between those who conform and those who do not. These people with greater power and authority will then be able to alienate those who carry out more “serious” (subjective) acts (Becker, 1963). A friend of mine, Tom (not his real name), shared his experience of owning an electronic cigarette (e-cigarette), which in Singapore would be considered …show more content…
Borrowing part of Cohen’s theory, Tom’s behaviour is a learned behaviour as his group of friends started using the product first. Although in this case, the whole theory cannot be adopted, one out of six characteristics offered by Cohen seem relevant – group autonomy. Cohen believed that there is a large possibility of that his group of friends indulged in such behaviour due to “loyalty” amongst the group. These people may enjoy the adrenaline they get by doing something illegal and may also be pressured by their peers to consume such products. This suggests a subculture amongst this group resulting in their actions as these actions are a learned behaviour and acts as a social gathering (Donovan & Jessor, 1985). In addition, Cohen also suggested that the most susceptible to such behaviour would be the “lower-class, male, urban adolescents” which the last two applies to Tom. Cohen explains that females tend to not engage in such behaviour as compared to males due to the practice that they should marry someone successful while urban adolescents may feel pressure to succeed in schools and the inability to leads to delinquent acts. Paralleling Singapore to Japan (both developed countries), women are delaying their marriage or even giving marriage up to pursue their career (Dixon, 1978), such a custom for girls is no longer very strong, although it may still hold for some. In addition, in this fast-paced society, the stress put on the young to do well may have driven to these delinquent acts as a form of stress relief. Hence, I believe Cohen’s theory still holds true to a certain extent. (Downes & Rock,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Lemert distinguishes between primary and secondary deviance in society. Primary deviance involves minor offences such as vandalism or smoking underage and these acts are usually uncaught or insignificant. However an individual may be caught for such acts and inturn be labelled as delinquent or deviant, the social reaction of this label results in the development of secondary deviance: more serious crimes such as assault or drugs. This therefore illustrates that it is not the act itself but the hostile societal reaction by significant others that creates serious deviance, thus crime and deviance being products of the labelling process.…

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Since the early studies of sociology, crime has been considered normal. It was though to be impossible for any society free of it to exist. In his essay title "Defining Deviancy Down", Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan states that "By defining what is deviant, we are enabled to know what is not, and hence to live by shared standards."(Moynihan, p.17) The complication with deviancy in this case comes when societies choose to overlook or not notice behavior that would usually be controlled, disapproved or punished. According to Moynihan, this is what the United States has been doing as of late.…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The interactionist Jock Young conducted a participant observation in London on marijuana usage by hippies. In the past hippie usage of marijuana was minor and relatively insignificant. Over time, the police started to see the hippies as dirty and scruffy, thus giving them a negative label. Due to this police reaction, the hippies united, feeling different from the rest of society. They then retreated into small closed groups, cut off from society and deviant norms and values developed. They were treated as outsiders and chose to accentuate and express their differences by becoming more and more unconventional. Thus, a deviant career developed. Interactionists would argue that because the police had labelled them so negatively they had caused more crime. Jock Young called this deviancy amplification. Before, the hippies had not been causing any trouble; they weren’t hurting or bothering anyone, until the police labelled them. Once they had been given this label, they couldn’t help but fulfil their master status.…

    • 1669 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In “Outsiders Defining Deviance” The author Becker talk about how when someone does not follow the rules they become an outsider and are deviant. People are see this way because our society set it up that if you don't do what everyone is doing or what your are supposed to do you are the odd ball out. This is just how when someone has the choice to go to college and doesn't take it they are looked down upon because they don't meet the society's requirements of education. And then that one choice can change someone's whole life because just for not going to college some jobs won't even look at that person for the job. And this type of thing is what's wrong about society because it's set up so that if you don't follow the rules that it has then…

    • 278 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Mr Stefan Sledmore

    • 1499 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Pease (1994) said, ‘Crime comprises those actions which are deemed so damaging to the interest of the community that the state determines that it must take a direct role in identifying and acting against the criminal.’ Downes and Rock (1998) said ‘Deviance may be considered as banned or controlled behaviour which is likely to attract punishment or disproval.’ In short, ‘Deviance’ is a asocial construct that can change across time and place and ‘Crime’ is an action that breaks the law.…

    • 1499 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In the eighteen hundreds, life was very different from today. There were no televisions, washing machines, modern cooking ranges, or any modern appliance. Overall, life was much more difficult then than it is today. In these times, there were certain gender roles to which each respective sex had to adhere. There are certain gender roles even today, but these have evolved since earlier times. For example, in the 1800 's, women were expected to be the quintessential mother woman. They were expected to run the household, take care of the children, and adore the husband. The husband however, was expected to go out and work to provide for his wife and children. While these gender roles may seem unfair and stereotypical to a person today, they were a result of societal evolution, just like the roles further evolved to what they are today. Kate Chopin was born in 1851, and lived a mostly fortunate childhood, growing up exposed to many arts. She married at seventeen, and was a graduate. Her husband gave her much freedom to do what she pleased, and she utilized that freedom to become an author. She had six children by 1881, and she wrote The Awakening in 1899. Most of her writings had a slight feminine theme to them, for example, literary critic Patricia Bradley uses the example "the bird imagery Chopin uses to set the opening scene in The Awakening… to similar uses in George Bernard Shaw 's feminist essay "The Womanly Woman"" (Bradley 40). There is also a theme in Chopin 's writing, according to author Allen Stein that wives fail to find fulfillment in their marriages, and then are driven to adultery, desertions and suicide (Stein 357). The Awakening was not received well by the public however, and she eventually quit writing because of this. After that she dedicated herself to her family for the rest of her life, which ended the second of August, 1934. The novel The Awakening was about a woman who decided not to conform to the norms of society, and she…

    • 1803 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    This encompassed but was not restricted to engaging in sexy undertaking at an early age, discovering and utilising obscene dialect, consuming alcoholic beverage in taverns if not at dwelling, employed and discovering deals and battling in conflicts (Empey, 1976). In the United States there was little distinction than remainder of western society. Colonial reformist glimpsed deviant demeanour as certain thing to be worried about but it was advised a critical communal difficulty or a breakdown in the communal association (Empey, 1976). Basically they glimpsed humans as inherently feeble and drew a aligned between sin and misdeed and they treated either identically with the identical rough, generally public, punishments. But with the freshly won flexibility of the United States came a new viewpoint on things. With people’s freedoms being founded on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which had their bases in the Enlightenment Eras’ beliefs, there came numerous alterations in the way persons glimpsed things (Empey, 1976). People were no longer glimpsed as inherently bad or preordained to a certain life path. Deviance was no longer equated with sin; it was due to a flaw in upbringing or other communal problem. With these new beliefs overriding humanity there came a pushing require to most to change and modify the lawless individual ciphers of the past and furthermore the decrease in penalty for a most of “less serious” crimes. But even this did not conceive a parting of youths and mature individuals in humanity or in the lawless individual fairness system. That did not happen until the early nineteenth 100 years when Progressive Era reformist were impelling for a grave of programs directed at assisting the youth of humanity (Empey, 1976). Among these programs were progeny work regulations, mandatory…

    • 786 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Deviance, social sanctions, and the control theory are other sociological concepts observed in the film. Deviance depicts an action that disobeys social norms. Every character in the film is seen as deviant by either their actions that forced them into detention, or executed actions during the detention. For example, Claire is deviant because she skips class so she can go shopping, and during detention, she instigates a relationship with John. Allison appears in detention because she was bored on a Saturday, and during detention, she steals Brian’s wallet. Andrew is deviant when he smokes since he is a varsity-lettered wrestler. John is incessantly deviant because he challenges and argues with Principal Vernon, does not partake in school clubs…

    • 853 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    New deviancy theory emerged in the 1960s and early 1970s. It was primarily a radical response to positivist domination of criminology (that crime is the result of individual, physical, and social conditions).…

    • 1096 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Delinquency Thesis

    • 1075 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Each year an untold number of teens, from seemingly well-grounded families, have become criminal statistics as they migrate from disassociated youths, to delinquency, to criminal activity. The common thought is middle-class young people are being pushed to gang life out of a need or desire to fill an emotional or physical void and these underlying desires have permeated the subculture and have become the norm instead of the exception. There are several theories which have attempted to explain the reason teenagers turn to deviant behavior, however, for this context we will be discussing only two; the first is the theory of Social Control, which is the way a society attempts to prevent and discourage behaviors that violate norms or laws. People tend to comply with social controls because we dread negative reactions from other people, and these reactions can include, anger, frustration, disappointment, pity and contempt, and if the deviant activity is extreme, then negative reactions may generate from the legal system, to include law enforcement, the courts, correctional and probationary systems (Barkin, S., 2012). The second theory, Strain Theory and Cultural Deviance, is the concept which advocates the values and moral of the middle-class, with a focus on financial success. Violations of this strain theory occur…

    • 1075 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Crime and deviance are always been a matter of fact, the ‘collateral effect’ of living among other people. Norms and rules are set in each society, from rural ones to the largest urban environments, but this cannot prevent the attitudes by some individuals, that in the most of case gang up, to not follow these norms. They are the deviant ones and they are condemned to be considered not normal, sometimes just without choosing that. Paradoxically, most of actions and situations that are considered as normal, under a more peculiar analysis may be not so ‘normal’. For example, the norms that consider smoking as a ‘crime’ are the ones that ban this action in public places, since smoking is injurious both to yours and to the others’ health but, in…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    moral panics

    • 548 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The term moral panic was coined by Stanley Cohen in 1972. According to Cohen, society is often subject to such instances and periods of moral panic. Essentially a moral panic refers to an exaggerated reaction from the media, the police or wider public, to the activities of wider social groups. These activities may have been relatively trivial but have been reported in somewhat sensationalized form in the media, and such reporting and publicity has led to an increase in general anxiety and concern about those activities. An example of this is ‘jock young’ hippies who smoked marijuana in Notting Hill. Cohen described the process as a ‘deviance amplification’ which is a reinforcing effect that happens as a result of negative social reaction to such criminal or deviant behaviour. The ‘Jock Young’ study considers the effect of the beliefs and stereotypes held by police about drug users and conflict between them.…

    • 548 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Deviance In Sociology

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Many sociologists have said that the sociology of deviance is dead, such as Colin Sumner in 1975. It was said that behaviors are not deviant but rather just seen as not normal in society, but the term ‘normal’ cannot exactly be defined. Deviance is a discipline in Sociology that many claim is now ‘dead’. Deviance is an act with refers to ‘norm-breaking’ in our society. A social norm is appropriate behavior for a social group and an appropriate behavior for the environment an individual is in. Deviance is the act of breaking these social norms whether it be your behavior or something you do. Once you break…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Crime and Deviance

    • 2163 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Definitions of crime and deviance would change according to time, place, situation and culture, as what is acceptable in one would be unacceptable in another. Crime would entail the breaking of the law according to time and place, deviance would be an action that is unacceptable to the majority within the time and place, but both can alter during time, place, culture and social norms including religion. One example of crime would be where a person has broken the law of the land, and has to be tried by a court of law in order to be punished accordingly. In Britain murder would merit a life imprisonment, but in other parts of the world it could merit a different sentence such as, the death sentence or the family would pay compensation (blood money). This range of difference in punishment is subject to the law set according, to the given societies and cultures of the land where the crime was committed, which justifies official intervention.…

    • 2163 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Deviant behavior is defined as human activity that violates social norms, (pg. 5 Schmalleger).” A number of crimes can be classified as deviant. Some people who commit deviant crimes may not see their crimes as being deviant like others would. Certain individuals consider the way others dress as being deviant if it’s not within social norms. Deviant behavior is not accepted by the general public and is seen as abnormal behavior compared to the rest of society.…

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays