Deviance (sociology) - Functions of Deviance

Functions of Deviance

Deviant acts can be assertions of individuality and identity, and thus as rebellions against group norms of the dominant culture and in favor of a sub-culture.

Deviance affirms cultural values and norms. It also clarifies moral boundaries, promotes social unity by creating an us/them dichotomy, encourages social change, and provides jobs to control deviance. "Certain factors of personality are theoretically and empirically related to workplace deviance, such as work environment, and individual differences.""Situated in the masculinity and deviance literature, this article examines a "deviant" masculinity, that of the male sex worker, and presents the ways men who engage in sex work cope with the job."

In the seminal 1961 report The Girl Delinquent and the Male Street-Corner Gang, Martha S. Lewis wrote that female juvenile delinquents were attracted to male gang members and the gang sub-culture.

Read more about this topic:  Deviance (sociology)

Famous quotes containing the words functions of, functions and/or deviance:

    When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.
    Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)

    Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    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)