Forms Of Deviance Research Articles

The Limitations of a Somatics of Resistance: Sexual Performativity and Gender Dissidence in Dickens's Dombey and Son

This essay considers some of the implications of a critical turn from a concern with a 'political technology of the body' in the Foucauldian sense to one with embodied micropractices. I will contend here that a critique of social experiences that is conceptualised through attention to individualised, or intersubjective, corporeal practices, is necessarily limited. A critical focus on the affective or performative self potentially colludes with a political agenda that privileges the bourgeois concept of individuality over that of collectivity, and performative micropractices over the transformation of social relationships on a structural level. This article approaches these issues by investigating two forms of sexual deviance, enacted by the figures of Paul and Edith Dombey, in Dombey and Son - a text that explores the problematic of nineteenthcentury gender-specific discipline and resistance, but also a narrative that points to the conceptual limitations resulting from individualised notions of embodiment and embodied resistance. I will suggest that this novel codes Paul and Edith's resistance to Dombey's regime of gender-discipline as specifically physical and sexualised forms of deviance.

Reclaiming the expressive subject: deviance and the art of non-normativity

Situated within the theoretical and philosophical frameworks of Romanticism and expressionism in the arts, the present exposition argues for conceptual renewal in the study of deviance, specifically entailing a reclamation of the expressive subject of deviance. In particular, it is argued that many forms of deviance can and should be understood as fundamentally artistic, embodying creative, expressive, emotive, symbolic, and communicative elements characteristic of art. The emergence of expressionism in the arts is described as issuing from the more general Romantic ethos, characterized through its critique of transformations brought by modernity by an affirmation of the creative, expressive dimension of being human. It is argued that many forms of deviance, at least analogously, embody characteristics of this Romantic ethos. The paper concludes by discussing the need for renewed attention to human subjectivity in the study of deviance, drawing in part from existentialism as a contemporary sociological counterpart to the Romantic ethos.

Deviance and marginal occupations: the case of taxi drivers

The taxi industry provides a strategic site to explore workplace deviance in low supervision, low status, occupational settings. Despite this theoretical opportunity and the objective importance of the taxi industry worldwide, very little is known about deviance among taxi drivers. Making use of interview data, this exploratory study maps out forms of workplace deviance and the explanations given for them by a sample of male taxi drivers. Major illegal activities reported included speeding, driving unsafe vehicles, taking drugs, and fraud. Theories pertaining to worker alienation, stress management, victim precipitation, and social control were relevant to the rationalizations some of the drivers provided to account for their illegal behaviors. We conclude that the occupational culture of taxi drivers and the structure of the taxi industry facilitate the forms of deviance reported here.

Déviances sportives et intégration sociale ?

Deviance in sport and social integration ? Traditional sport is widely part of the measures of social intervention intended to young people in lack of points of references. Some approaches in the field of sociology of sports reveal various forms of deviance within the sports cultural world itself. These new data disturb the instrumental relation which, up to now, associated mechanically social deviance and integration through sports. Would not it be more relevant to consider the issue in terms of sporting deviance and social integration, or still more subtly to view it from the tension between sporting deviance and sporting integration ?

Antecedents and Correlates of Deviant Activity in Urban Youth Manifesting Behavioral Problems

This study examines both risk and protective factors preceding and associated with the origin and extent of deviant activity reported by 375 inner-city, primarily African-American, youth admitted to “youth bureaus” designed to address early problematic behavior in the community. This report focuses on the findings and key underlying issues for the development and evaluation of primary prevention strategies targeting high-risk youth. Study participants varied considerably in terms of their self-reported exposure to risk and protective factors and in the nature and extent of their previous engagements in deviant activity. The principal antecedents and correlates of deviant behavior were found to be age, gender, school behavior problems, and the deviance of peers. For youth reporting ever having engaged in delinquent activity, the most prominent predictors of the extent and severity of activity, besides chronological age, were age at first deviance, the deviance of peers and the manifestation of school behavior problems. Family deviance was an additional predictor of engagement in multiple forms of deviance. In addition to reaffirming the utility of self-reported measures of early development in the prediction of deviant behavior, results of the study point to the need for a finer differentiation of the predispositional characteristics and circumstances of targeted youth than is ordinarily undertaken in primary prevention efforts.

The Professional Ex- Revisited

An ongoing question is whether participation in deviance is fluid or stable. In a 1991 article, Brown introduced the concept of the “professional ex-,” an individual who uses former deviant status as a springboard into a counseling career. The professional ex- thus exits a deviant career, transforming it into a legitimate status. In the current article, the authors present a different perspective, grounded in self-control theory. The 1990s substance abuse treatment industry scandals in Texas provide the framework. A case study of one agency, in-depth interviews with fifteen professional ex-s employed by the agency, official records, and newspaper accounts of the scandals are used to explore the issues of stability and generality. Findings suggest that at least some professional ex-s continue to engage in other forms of deviance, providing support to Gottfredson and Hirschi's claim that the propensity to engage in deviance is both general and stable.

Exploring the relationships between gender, control balance, and deviance

Most scholars acknowledge that males are overrepresented in crime statistics, but existing criminological theory has not yet provided a widely accepted explanation of this difference. In this article, we review Tittle's (1995) arguments concerning gender differences in deviant behavior and derive five gender hypotheses from control balance theory. Using data collected specifically for the purpose of operationalizing the control ratio, we examine differential involvement in two forms of deviance (predation against self and exploitation against others) and empirically assess each of the derived hypotheses. Three key findings emerge from our effort. First, we fail to find a statistically significant difference between the mean control balance ratios of males and females as well as the items that comprise the control balance scale. Second, we find a significant relationship between gender and involvement in two types of deviance. Third, and more importantly, we uncover differential effects of the control balance ratio on the two types of deviance that are contingent on gender. We discuss the implications of our gender-control balance-deviance interaction for control balance theory, and outline directions for future research.

Legal Cynicism and (Subcultural?) Tolerance of Deviance: The Neighborhood Context of Racial Differences

We advance here a neighborhood-level perspective on racial differences in legal cynicism, dissatisfaction with police, and the tolerance of various forms of deviance. Our basic premise is that structural characteristics of neighborhoods explain variations in normative orientations about law, criminal justice, and deviance that are often confounded with the demographic characteristics of individuals. Using a multilevel approach that permits the decomposition of variance within and between neighborhoods, we tested hypotheses on a recently completed study of 8,782 residents of 343 neighborhoods in Chicago. Contrary to received wisdom, we find that African Americans and Latinos are less tolerant of deviance—including violence—than whites. At the same time, neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage display elevated levels of legal cynicism, dissatisfaction with police, and tolerance of deviance unaccounted for by sociodemographic composition and crime-rate differences. Concentrated disadvantage also helps explain why African Americans are more cynical about law and dissatisfied with the police. Neighborhood context is thus important for resolving the seeming paradox that estrangement from legal norms and agencies of criminal justice, especially by blacks, is compatible with the personal condemnation of deviance.

Relationships with children and aids‐risk behaviors among female IDUs

This study utilizes in‐depth interviews of female injecting drug users (IDUs) supplemented by analyses of a large national data set to explore the association between the strength of the social bond and participation in a health‐related form of deviance: AIDS risk behaviors. The theoretical framework extends social control theory by examining the effects of further weakening of the social bond in an already deviant population. Risk behaviors are operationalized as a second‐level of deviance among individuals already participating in initial‐level deviant behavior (drug use). Prior research on how aspects of the social bond deter the individual from further deviance during adulthood has focused on males. Careers and marriage have been examined as elements of social control. The subjects of this study are female, however. For women, careers and marriage are often less salient, and relationships with children may be a more relevant measure of the social bond. In‐depth interviews with eighteen female IDUs and two former IDUs are presented to explore the degree to which relationships with children deter female IDUs from participating in risky behaviors. Analysis of the interview data suggests that the presence, weakening, or rupturing of the bond to children is related to higher levels of second‐level deviance in the form of AIDS‐risk behaviors. However, the interviews also suggest that there are qualitative differences in the deterrence effects of weakened bonds to children, depending on the circumstances as well as the level of ongoing interaction between mother and child. Analyses of the data from the National AIDS Demonstration Research (NADR) Project are then presented, providing additional support to the conclusion that loss of relationships with children is related to higher levels of risk.

“They’re making a bad name for the department”

Examines the link between level of organizational commitment and patrol officers’ attitudes toward and participation in police occupational deviance in a police patrol bureau. Uses analysis and interpretation of qualitative data gathered during field research in one mid‐sized police department to develop the subject. Field research was conducted over a seven‐month period, during which 580 hours of field observations were made and 48 unstructured interviews with patrol officers were conducted. Analysis disclosed that patrol officers with low levels of organizational commitment tended to engage in patterns of work avoidance and manipulation and employee deviance against the organization ‐ in contrast, patrol officers with high levels of commitment to the organization were likely to engage in employee deviance against the organization. Finally, patrol officers with a medium level of organizational commitment engaged in any of the three forms of deviance, depending on which end of the commitment continuum they tended toward. Claims that all patrol officers accepted informal rewards.

Patterns of deviance in crime news

Existing research has failed to develop a satisfactory theoretical explanation for journalists' decisions about which crimes to highlight and which to ignore. We proposed that four forms of deviance (normative deviance, statistical deviance, status deviance, and cultural deviance) account for much of the variation in decisions about crime news. To test deviance-based explanations for crime news, we conducted a comprehensive investigation of Milwaukee, WI, homicides and how two newspapers covered them. We used content analysis and interviews with journalists. The results showed that the newsworthiness of a homicide is enhanced when Whites are suspects or victims, males are suspects, and victims are females, children, or senior citizens. We concluded that status deviance and cultural deviance are important components of newsworthiness and that statistical deviance (unusualness) may be much less important than commonly assumed.

Testing the deviance syndrome perspective among boot camp participants

This is a study of 601 participants in the only boot camp in Arkansas, the purpose of which is to examine the deviance syndrome perspective with a twofold approach: (1) determine whether drug use, property crimes, and crimes against persons among boot camp participants represent one factor through the use of factor analysis procedures, and (2) investigate whether the same sociodemographic and theoretical variables predict each of these forms of deviant behavior. Proponents of the deviance syndrome perspective argue that these forms of deviant behavior are manifestations of one underlying problem and, therefore, the same theoretical factors suffice to explain each form. Findings fail to support either of these assumptions. Items measuring each form of deviant behavior loaded on the separate factors of drug use, property crimes, and crimes against persons. Moreover, analyses of elements from control, strain, and social learning theories indicate that different predictors are relevant to each form of deviance. Implication of these findings for conceptual development are discussed.

Sex, tourism and sex tourism: fulfilling similar needs?

This paper explores tourism and tourists visiting prostitutes as both being examples of liminal behaviours, that is behaviours undertaken by those operating at social thresholds. Prostitution exists as a ‘fuzzy legal’ activity, in that while largely proscribed in many countries, it nonetheless continues within a legal and social framework of constraint and limited tolerance. Tourism can also be observed as a liminal behaviour. in that it is a temperorally constrained, socially tolerated period of wish fulfilment, a form of fantasy enactment that is normally denied to people. Generally, the tourism literature has tended to perceive sex tourism as a form of deviance, but this paper argues that it is not an added component to tourism, but a form of behaviour quite consistent with the motivations that underlie much of tourism. Both activities of tourism and going to a prostitute involve satisfaction of needs of social companionship, fantasy fulfilment, family bonding, the search for something new and opportunities for relaxation. Sex tourism is thus not a deviance, but fully consistent with the norms of tourism; yet both, as liminal activities outside the main norms of behaviour, imply much about the consensus of what constitutes socially acceptable behaviour.

The Parental and Peer Contexts of Adolescent Deviance: An Algebra of Interpersonal Influences

Estimates of the relative influence of peers and parents on adolescents' drug use and other forms of deviance have inflated the importance of peers and underestimated the influence of parents. Following a brief review of major findings in research on parental-peer linkages, sources of distortion and overestimation in peer effects are identified: reliance on cross-sectional designs, which confound selection and socialization effects; reliance on perceptual reports of friends' behaviors, which reflect projection and attribution; failure to take into account parental contributions to children's peer selection; and failure to consider genetic contributions to observed parental effects. Selected empirical studies that have estimated peer and parental effects on drug use and delinquency from relational and longitudinal designs are utilized to develop correction factors. These are incorporated in equations designed to estimate biases in peer estimates and the effects of parental contributions to peer selection. Within the limitations of the available data, I conclude that peer effects based on cross-sectional data and perceptions of peer behavior are overestimated at least by a factor of five.

RELIGION AND CRIME REEXAMINED: THE IMPACT OF RELIGION, SECULAR CONTROLS, AND SOCIAL ECOLOGY ON ADULT CRIMINALITY*

Since Hirschi and Stark's (1969) surprising failure to find religious (“hellfire”) effects on delinquency, subsequent research has generally revealed an inverse relationship between religiosity and various forms of deviance, delinquency, and crime. The complexity of the relationship and conditions under which it holds, however, continue to be debated. Although a few researchers have found that religion's influence is noncontingent, most have found support—especially among youths—for effects that vary by denomination, type of offense, and social and/or religious context. More recently the relationship has been reported as spurious when relevant secular controls are included. Our research attempts to resolve these issues by testing the religion‐crime relationship in models with a comprehensive crime measure and three separate dimensions of religiosity. We also control for secular constraints, religious networks, and social ecology. We found that, among our religiosity measures, participation in religious activities was a persistent and noncontingent inhibiter of adult crime.

Concepts of deviance in children and adolescents: The case of Japan

This paper reviews the theoretical, clinical, and empirical literature on three forms of deviance in Japan: bullying, school refusal, and children's violence against parents. These behaviors are among the most widely discussed and extensively researched behavioral problems of children and adolescents in Japan today, yet they occur with relatively low frequency compared with other industrialized nations This paper analyzes the relationship among Japanese child‐rearing goals, traditional values, interpersonal dynamics, and concepts of deviance in children and adolescents and explores the emergence of these expressions of deviant behavior as major social problems in Japan. Application of this type of sociocultural‐psychological analysis to the study of deviance in American society is considered.

The Influence of Adolescent Substance Use and Socialization on Deviant Behavior in Young Adulthood

This study examined the impact of adolescent substance use on adult substance use and criminal behavior. Longitudinal data from 657 participants were assessed over 12 years (1969-1981). Latent variable models were used to determine what effect, if any, adolescent drug use had on later deviance. In addition, constructs relevant to traditional theories of social control, such as the extent of socialization and obedience to rules, were also included as predictors. The results showed that a general drug use factor in adolescence significantly predicted adult illicit substance use, theft, and interpersonal aggression. Drug-related accidents (automobile and other) were also predicted from adolescent drug use. These findings are consistent with several theories suggesting that different forms of deviance may influence each other over time.

Crime, criminal justice, and popular culture

Significant attention has been given, especially in nonacademic circles, to various forms of popular culture and their relationship to violence, crime, and other forms of deviance. Nonetheless, relatively little criminological thought has been directed toward this important area. In this paper we articulate the value of popular culture analyses to studies of criminal justice and criminology, and describe a new scholarly journal titled the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, which is dedicated to this topic.

Alcohol, Community, and Modernity: The Social Organization of Toddy Drinking in a Polynesian Society

Drunkenness, poet (Housman 1940) suggests, creates a new and perhaps lovelier world, the world as world's not. For Housman, however, this world of intoxication is ephemeral and fleeting (The mischief is that it will not last), inevitably replaced by a colder, harsher world of sobriety. I will describe here patterns of drinking and intoxication on Sikaiana, a Polynesian outlier in Solomon Islands. When drinking, Sikaiana create a new and different world with its own conventions for behaving and interpreting behavior. But this world is not only one of giddy relaxation or escape; it also is ultimately related to other worlds in which Sikaiana live. In their interpersonal relations within community, drinking offers opportunity to behave in ways that are not acceptable according to more formal expectations for sober behavior and at same drinking also serves to re-evaluate and often reaffirm those relations. In context of their involvement in modernizing processes, drinking is an opportunity to preserve intimate relations in a world system which increasingly causes differences among them in wages and specialized occupations. Drinking also creates a timeless stream of involvement that is opposed to segmented and scheduled relations of modernity.(1) This article is not only about alcohol consumption, it is also about broader issues in social relations and interaction. Drinking creates a social world by defining a context with distinct expectations and understandings about behavior. Goffman (1974) has described such contexts of meaning as interpretive frames (see also Gusfield 1987).(2) Drinking is similar to other framed activities which reinterpret behavior, for example: sarcasm, ridicule, legends, and dramatic performances. Like these activities, Sikaiana drinking reorganizes experience in ways that appear to be unreal, but at same are also very real. In this respect, its organization is also similar to special communal events, often ritualized, during which non-normal behavior underscores normal behavior. Such events include ritual rebellions and liminal states (Van Gennep 1960; Gluckman 1962; Turner 1969), role distance (Goffman 1961), drama (Peacock 1968), and socially determined deviant behavior (Erikson 1966). Sikaiana drinking not only distances participants from other social contexts but also allows them to reinterpret those contexts. It is a framed experience which--like satire, joking, drama, and some forms of deviance--exposes underlying taken-for-granted assumptions in other frames organizing everyday life.(3) Anthropologists often describe intoxication as creating world as it normally is not, especially an opportunity for a temporary time out from everyday activities (MacAndrew and Edgerton 1969; Marshall 1982:6-7; Gusfield 1987). Many argue that drinking and drunken behavior vary in different cultures and must be understood in cultural context (MacAndrew and Edgerton 1969; Marshall 1979b). Anthropologists also generally emphasize drinking's integrative functions in developing and maintaining social solidarity (Washburne 1961; Mandelbaum 1966; Heath 1987: 18-19; Marshall 1982; Douglas 1987) and as a mechanism for presenting a traditional ethnic identity in a changing and sometimes hostile global system (Lurie 1971; Marshall 1979a; Keaulana and Whitney 1990). Recently, however, there has been increased concern about drinking's destructive consequences, especially in societies undergoing rapid social change (Room 1984; Ogan 1986; Colson and Scudder 1988; Marshall and Marshall 1990). Inherent in Sikaiana drinking is a contradiction which explains both its constructive and destructive potential: drinking is an occasion when some degree of individual disorder is converted into communal order. As Sikaiana community becomes more fragmented as result of changes associated with modernization, this communal order becomes both more valued and also more tenuous. …

Generality versus Specificity of Problem Behavior: Psychological and Functional Differences

Data from a longitudinal study of male and female youth were used to examine the association between cumulative levels of delinquency and drug use from early adolescence to young adulthood. Results from a principal components analysis indicated that delinquency and drug use represent two distinct dimensions of problem behavior. Subjects were categorized into four groups based on their cumulative levels of drug use and delinquency over a nine-year period. Group differences in the reactive coping use of problem behaviors, in psychological problems, and in personality traits were assessed. Results indicate that subjects who are high in both drug use and delinquency have significantly higher levels of mental health problems than all other subjects. Overall, the findings support the notion that the expression of deviance is not necessarily undifferentiated. Instead, different individuals may specialize in different forms of deviance.