Deviance and Crime – Study Guide
Deviance:
Behavior that departs from the norm; i.e. departs from whatever standard is typical within a given
situation or in Society as a whole.
Behavioral departures from the norm can be in either a positive or negative
direction
Good –
Olympic gold medalists; whose deviance is their decidedly-superior level of athletic skill,
compared to the rest of us.
Because they deviate from the norm in a socially-approved, positive direction,
we aren’t going to arrest these athletes.
In fact we give them medals and turn them into celebrities
Bad –
behavior that departs from the norm in a way that criticized or condemned by society. i.e. cutting in
line or picking your nose in public, to supremely unconscionable acts such as the human trafficking or
child molesting.
When sociologists write or talk about “deviance,” you can assume they are talking about
bad deviance unless they say otherwise
Default –
Pertains to the overall physical functioning of an individual, or any characteristics of
appearance, which depart from the average human condition and which the average person would regard
as substantially undesirable.
Significant physical injuries, disabilities or deformities would fall into this
category.
Stigma:
A discredit, a taint, a stain applied to an individual or to his/her character.
The stain may be applied on
the basis of some act(s) of wrongdoing, an unwholesome lifestyle, or some radical departure of his/her person or
presentation-of-self from Society’s conceptions of what is physically or psychologically “normal.”
The Discreditable:
