Deviance As A Violation of Social Norms
Norms are rules and expectations by which members of society are conventionally guided. Deviance is a failure to conform to these norms. Social norms are different in one culture as opposed to another. For example, a deviant act can be committed in one society that breaks a social norm there, but may be normal for another society.
Viewing deviance as a violation of social norms, sociologists have characterized it as "any thought, feeling or action that members of a social group judge to be a violation of their values or rules"; "violation of the norms of a society or group"; "conduct that violates definitions of appropriate and inappropriate conduct shared by the members of a social system"; "the departure of certain types of behavior from the norms of a particular society at a particular time"; and "violation of certain types of group norms behavior is in a disapproved direction and of sufficient degree to exceed the tolerance limit of the community."
Read more about this topic: Deviance (sociology)
Famous quotes containing the words deviance, violation, social and/or norms:
“Philosophically, incest asks a fundamental question of our shifting mores: not simply what is normal and what is deviant, but whether such a thing as deviance exists at all in human relationships if they seem satisfactory to those who share them.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“There is all the difference in the world between the criminal’s avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient’s taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets ours norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)