Issues Of Deviance And Social Control Sociology Essay

Issues Of Deviance And Social Control Sociology Essay Deviance is a term used by society to define behaviors that differ from the everyday social norm, this means that majority of people in a society must agree or conform to a certain action or behavior. In 1906, William Sumner came up with the concept to categorize norm into three different groups: folkways, mores, and laws. He defines folkway as the simple day-to-day norm which was based on customs, traditions and mannerisms. If one were not to follow the way of folkway norm it would probably cause others to believe that they are strange or abnormal but would not cause fury. Typical folkway norms include style of dressing, character, physical distance or closeness with others, and eating patterns. Moving on, mores are norms which reflect wide-ranging social ethics. Interracial marriage, having an illegitimate child, and abusing drugs and alcohol would violate the mores laws and would cause a havoc and produce more serious social denunciation. Being in an interracial marriage may make one seem racially impure, bearing an illegitimate child can threaten social definition of a marriage, and abusing or being addicted to drugs and alcohol shows victory of hedonism over prudence. Those who dont comply with mores norm may seem sinful, and set themselves up as a potential threat to society. Furthermore, the laws norm is the strongest custom out of the other two norms. This is because it is backed up by codified social approval. Those who infringe this norm are punished in ways ranging from a fine to imprisonment. Although one may break laws and regulations, it wouldnt necessarily label the offender as deviant. With this said, deviance and crime can respectively fall into one category. Consider this, if certain individual decides to burglarize or vandalize someones property, or even causing harm to another being, it considered both deviant and a crime. Also, there are many other deviant acts that are not considered criminal, such as being over or underweight, being physi cally or mentally handicapped, being in an interracial marriage, and having an illegitimate child. To restate a prior point, these can be considered deviant because although it is not considered a crime, it violates the norm accepted by society. With that said, we can consider crime and deviance as overlapping categorizes with its own individual magnitudes. Attitude, behavior, and condition are the ABCs of deviance. People may be labeled deviant based on their attitudes or belief system which includes religion, political views and beliefs in the supernatural. Having a mental sickness can also fall into the deviant category. The B in the deviant ABCs stands for behavior which people are the most familiar with. Deviant behavior can happen intentionally or unintentionally, for example, one might unintentionally violate a dress-code, or a couple may intentionally engage in bizarre sexual activities, or one may commit murder. Lastly, the C stands for condition. Those who are considered d eviant because of their condition probably acquired it from birth such as being born un-wealthy, being a person of color in a mainly Caucasian dominated community, being born physically handicapped, or being height deviant. In this case, the individual has done nothing wrong or taken any negative actions to be labeled deviant; this also makes it almost impossible to change their deviant status. Although some actions that an individual chooses to take will be universally labeled as deviant behavior, others are judged strictly based on social customs. Heckerts idea of positive deviance would primarily refer to engaging in less selfish actions and more devotion toward the society. Heckert has defined many different ways in which positive deviance is evitable such as altruism, pacifism, cooperation, temperance and many more. Altruism is one of the most cherished form of positive deviance because it brings out the loyalty. All the martyrs fall under this category as they sacrificed themselves for their nation and they can never be forgotten. Those who spread the sign of peace throughout the societies also fall under positive deviance such as Gandhi. Positive deviance is clearly evident in every community where certain individuals or groups are more successful than other when everyone has received same resources but the approaches were different. Positive deviance is how successfully a person, a group or a community move forward to a better future and creates an example for other. Societies require positive deviance so they could move on with the rest of the world. Example of positive deviance could be to move forward and stop child labor in developing countries and putting them in a school for education. Labeling theory which is also known as social reaction theory suggests that deviance is not an inherit to act instead its the people who obtain labels from how other view their tendency or behavior. Its the society that makes the criminals by keep being either unfair or by false accusations. Suppose a person does commit a crime under very difficult circumstances and later on gets the label of a criminal will have negative effect on his personality and this person will be always considered as a criminal. If the society has choose to consider a person dangerous for reasons such as past criminal record or the color of his/her skin than perhaps it wont be any harder next time for this person to commit crime. Our societies also look for auxiliary traits within a position or career. For example, a doctor is consider as an white male, upper middle class and more. On other hand, black people were more attached to criminal activities and those who turned out to be doctors were hard to believe by the society because they were never seen in that form. Basically , an individuals past action create or shape his/her future and this lacks the fairness in sense this person could have adopted better human traits. Students who study deviance should not make an assumption if the person is actually a criminal or broken rule because the process of labeling may not be infallible. According to the conflict perspective, deviance is a social creation and the power structure in any society defines what to be consider normal and what is not. So basically there is no such thing as human nature, hence deviance is the creation of the social structure rather than something build into our nature. On the other hand, functional deviance approach believes that its the majority members of the society who defines what is normal and what is not. Both approaches look at the society as a whole rather than on individual level. Conflict theory mainly defines societies made up of powerful or powerless. Powerful has no right to be in power but manipulates other convince public about their legitimacy. This can be related to Durkheims state of anomie. Anomie is the result of collective conscious being collapsed. In this situation, people tend to look away from fundamental social expectations and solely focus on their self-interest. The long term collapse of order and harmony in both approaches are harmful to the society. In conclusion, Human norms refer to the set behavioral standards on which human are supposed to act. Deviance is a study that helps understand the reason behind violation of human norms. There is not one particular answer that is enough to justify human norms violation, hence many sociological scholars have presented different set of theories that can help us understand deviance with broad perspectives. Some of the scholars that have played tremendous part in understanding deviance are Erikson, Hackerts and lastly the father of Sociology Emile Durkheim. Deviance will be present no matter how perfect the society is, as Durkheim explained about the society of saints which is perfect but the identification of deviance level would be so high that even smallest error can be regarded as a strong disapproval from the society.

Equity :: Papers

Equity In 1066 when William the conqueror came to England the law was very different from today. Itinerant judges who would travel around the country settling any disputes administrated it. They started out using local laws and applying these to cases before them. However, the Normans were keen to develop a law which they could apply to the whole country, a law which would be common to every one. So they gathered what was considered to be the best of different local laws and developed a common law. Soon though many problems were found with common law. It soon became too ridged. Two of the main problems with common law were, that it didn’t offer sufficient remedies and, a civil action could only be taken by use of a â€Å"writ.† A writ was used to set out the cause of the action and the grounds for the claim. The writ became a problem because it had to be made to fit and existing writ. To start with a new writ was created when a suitable previous case could not be found however, it was soon stopped and no new writs could be issued. This meant that some cases were unable to be pursued, as an existing writ that suited the case could not be found. This made many people unhappy with the common law system. The other main reason people were unhappy with the common law system is that insufficient remedies were offered in some cases. The only remedy available was damages, this meant compensation, which was not always satisfactory. As a result of these problems many people became increasingly dissatisfied with the common law system. More and more people began to petition to the king as a â€Å"fountain of justice† for a more suitable

University of Phoenix Material: Appendix C

University of Phoenix Material Appendix C Part I Define the following terms: Term| Definition| Discrimination| * This is the denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals and groups because of prejudice or other arbitrary reasons. * | Institutional discrimination| * This is the denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals or groups, resulting from normal operations of a society. * | Political correctness| * This can also be called political correct, this is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior, seeking to minimize social and institutional offenses in occupations.Such as gender, religion, racial, and sexual orientation. * | Part II * Write a 150- to 250-word response to each of the following questions: * * How is discrimination different from prejudice and stereotyping? * Discrimination is different from prejudice and stereotyping by that of discrimination actually takes action. Whereas prejudice and stereotyping are more of making assumpti on of a person or a race, assuming that they are one way due to their ethnicity or what they heard about them before getting to know them.Discrimination as I stated actually takes action there are so many different types of discrimination that actually take place today. Example: Hate crimes- people do these acts based on a person’s race, religion, or sexual preference. With this form familie’s. Another type of discrimination is institutional discrimination this can hinder someone from being hired because of their past or even color. An institution can hire just one race that controls all the laws over a town, and then make it hard for the minority to live since they may not know what it is like to struggle with everyday life. * * * What are the causes of discrimination? * * There are speculations of what causes racism some of this is caused by stereotyping. This can be caused by reading, music, television, and internet, say for instance a young child was watching telev ision or listening to music and saw how people of one ethnicity acted they may then assume all are like this causing them to discriminate against another race. Another factor of discrimination can be unfamiliarity there is a saying- people fear what they do not know, or yet to find out about.Some people are afraid to go out and meet new people based on what they hear or watch on television thinking that they are the same as the people they watch. If people grow up only around their race then the chances of them becoming racists and discriminate towards another race then become higher. Environmental factors can also lead to discrimination such as the way a person lives, maintains their property, and how they keep up their appearance. All of this can have a person become hateful towards you, or if they heard a certain race lives a certain way and then sees it, they then believe it and hate the race too. * * How is discrimination faced by one identity group (race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability) the same as discrimination faced by another? How are they different? Discrimination faced by one group is the same as discrimination faced by another by wanting it to stop. Not one ethnicity wants to be discriminated against, or have their children, wives, and family walk in fear not knowing if something is going to happen to them. Any race wants to live the same as any other race, safe, and peacefully, not having to fear tomorrow.Races that are discriminated against also can be the same as the other race by spreading the word of what is going on, and helping people who have this problem finding ways to conquer it. They can be different by many ways such as the way a race handles the discrimination. Some can act out by hurting people, retaliating, and teaching their children to do the same. Others can handle it in a nonresponsive way by ignoring it and turning the other cheek. Some may call the police and let them handle it, w hile others take it into their own hands.

Affermative Action - 1316 Words

By: Elissa Thomas E-mail: elissa@usais.net Affirmative Action Affirmative Action efforts were started in 1964 to end the long history of overlooking qualified people of color and women from higher education. Affirmative Action sets standards for a business or office of admissions, so that a white man does not have the upper-hand over an equally or greater educated minority. The initial way the government tried to justify Affirmative Action was to develop a human resource approach: first identifying the problem, which is racism then establishing the solution (Phillips 67). The intent of Affirmative Action helps cut down discrimination in the work place and in schools, despite the fact that some believe that affirmative action is a†¦show more content†¦Some might believe that this could be just a random occurrence, but the same results showed in the University of Texas Law School s enrollment, three blacks this fall to last years fifty-nine (Applebome a14). Thus, bans on Affirmative Action are having negative effects o n enrollment for blacks and other minorities in Texas and California s prominent universities. Therefore, proving that without Affirmative Action, any minority will not have a fair chance in today s society. Professor Lino Graglia, a critic of Affirmative Action points out The whole reason you have racial preferences is that the racially preferred do not meet the standards applied to others, if you require that they meet the standards, then they don t get in. This might be true in some maybe all cases, but in this very true rebuttal to Graglia s statement Rodney Ellis, Texas state senator, graduate of the University Law School in 1976 says I clearly got in through an Affirmative Action program, and I don t apologize for it... I m proud of it. It got me in, but it didn t get me out, didn t take the bar exam for me, didn t pass the two hundred and eighty five or so pieces of legislation I ve Scott4 authored. (Applebome a14). Rodney Ellis is a perfectShow MoreRelatedAffirmative Action s1078 Words   |  5 PagesRunning Head: AFFERMATIVE ACTION Affirmative Actions Affirmative action is an action taken by an organization to select on the basis of race, gender, or ethnicity by giving due preferences to minorities like women and races being not adequately represented under the existing employment. To make the presentation of all these compositions almost equal in proportion to do away the injustice done in the past. The Supreme Company need to design an affirmative action program in the light