Individual Deviance Research Articles

Grassroots Associations are Important: Some Theory and a Review of the Impact Literature

Grassroots associations (GAs) are defined as locally based and wholly volunteer nonprofits-essentially local voluntary associations, in sociological terms. Such associations are discussed in theoretical terms, examining pros and cons regarding their potential importance. On the basis of an extensive literature review, the internal impact of GAs involves the fostering of social support and mutual helping, stimulation and self-expression, happiness and health, sociopolitical activation, and economic and other outcomes among members. On the downside, some GA activity (eg., in delinquent gangs) can increase individual deviance among members. Externally, GAs often create positive change, enable continuing citizen participation in a democracy and a viable "civil society," provide varied services to nonmembers, help maintain societal cohesion, and can help in disasters. GAs also help support the economic system and stimulate program volunteering, philanthropic giving, and other GA activity. Cumutatively, grassroots associations have a very substantial effect on society and on the lives of its citizens, especially in modern nations like America.

Feminism and the Media: Introduction

I N THIS FORUM, Wendy Kozol, Patrice McDermott, and Deborah Rhode have written persuasive articles on the complex relationships between the contemporary feminist movement and the commercial media. While all three articles point to the relative successes of the feminist movement-indeed, there would not be such obvious struggles if feminist activists had not had an effect-they each focus on the ways that the media continue, despite obvious improvements, to frame and present women's issues and the feminist movement in ways that support antifeminist perspectives. Rhode provides us with the most comprehensive overview of the constraints facing feminism within nonfiction media, from the historical shortage of women in newsrooms to the more complicated issues of how women and women's issues are represented. Analyzing the expanded coverage given to domestic violence in the last twenty years, Kozol asks the important question, Is increased exposure enough? Answering that it is not, she points to the ways in which news and fictional accounts of violence against women both express and moderate the threats such violence poses to our most powerful ideals about gender and nation. McDermott's article focuses on the sustained attack on feminism and women's studies programs and courses mounted by critics like Katie Roiphe, Karen Lehrman, and Christina Hoff Sommers. While these critics often emerge out of the academy, the popular commercial media play a crucial role in disseminating, supporting, and magnifying their antifeminist views. Connecting all three articles is a shared emphasis on the way the popular media have neither the language nor the vision to speak of systemic or cultural problems or solutions. Rather, commercial media focus on individual resistance and individual deviance. Rhode, for instance, recounts the ways that the media described the women's movement, once they began to focus on it at all, as about individual, extremist women like Kate Millett and Betty Friedan. Like American election

A Social Control Perspective on Scientific Misconduct

Scientific misconduct, in recent years, has drawn intense press coverage and substantial policy attention. Various explanations have been advanced to account for its occurrence, ranging from the individual deviance of scientists to the collective transformation of contemporary science, and though each explanation illuminates a facet of the phenomenon, all seem incomplete in some crucial respect and suffer from a dearth of empirical evidence. In this article I briefly review definitions of misconduct and available evidence about its prevalence and critically examine three sorts of explanations: individual psychopathology, anomie, and alienation. Drawing on recent theories of social control, I then suggest a perspective that focuses on the social response to misconduct, not the causes of misconduct itself. I close by outlining some of the implications of this perspective for and policy. Definitions of Scientific Misconduct Are Vague and Unsettled Before a phenomenon can be measured or explained it must first be defined, yet definitions of scientific misconduct are vague, changeable, and disputed [7, 20, 26, 34]. It is difficult to settle on a definition of scientific misconduct because are not well codified or understood, the gradations between proper (even exemplary) technique and misconduct are subtle, and the of settling on a definition is muddled by considerations of the politics and public image of science [10, chap. 5]. Behaviors that scientists may be willing to accept among themselves (concerning, for example, the selection of data for publication or the proper recording and storage of laboratory notes) may be judged unacceptable by laypersons. Even within science, the acceptability of certain behaviors has varied over time, from field to field, and by the state of knowledge within a field [40]. At present the quandary of definition has taken its most pointed form in a dispute between proponents of a quite limited definition of misconduct (as put forth in a recent National Academy of Sciences report [34]) and those who favor a more inclusive definition (as employed by the Public Health Service [12] and the National Science Foundation [7,8]). The Academy report argues that the definition of misconduct in science should be limited to falsification or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reporting research [34, p. 27]. Questionable practices, including failure to retain good records, unwillingness to disclose or share data, improper allocation of credit, and the misrepresentation of speculations as facts are relegated to a category of lesser severity because such behaviors not directly damage the integrity of the process [34, p. 28]. Harassment, misuse of funds, vandalism, gross negligence, and similar misbehaviors are placed by the Academy panel in a third category because remedies exist for these generic forms of misconduct. For the NSF, by comparison, scientific misconduct includes fabrication, falsification, plagiary and other serious deviation from accepted practices [7, p. 647]. This more comprehensive definition is intended to reflect the ethics of the scientific community and to provide a forum for adjudicating a broad range of complaints that actually arise in the process. For example, of the 124 cases considered by NSF during a three-year period, only 10 had to do with data fabrication or misrepresentation, whereas 70 concerned intellectual property rights ranging from plagiary to theft of ideas [and] failure to give credit [7, p. 584]. The inclusive definition has the advantages of clarity and simplicity -- there is only one type of misconduct, not three. By addressing a greater range of behaviors that palpably harm the enterprise, the inclusive definition may better serve the scientific community's need to air and resolve most complaints on its own, thus reinforcing the professional autonomy and self-regulation of scientists. …

Religious participation, Southern University women, and abstinence

Analyses of the influence of religion on deviant behavior have produced conflicting results. Religious participation is found to inhibit individual deviance either in: (1) religious, normatively clear, environments (Stark, Kent, and Doyle, 1982); or (2) secular, normatively ambiguous, contexts (Tittle and Welch, 1983). We argue that publicly supported universities are secular environments characterized by normative ambiguity with regard to alcohol and other drug use. The findings show that southern university women who attend religious services regularly are significantly more likely to abstain and less likely to be dual users of intoxicants than are occasional religious participants. Racial differences in the effect of religious observance on drinking and marijuana use are also found. Support and specification are provided for the Tittle and Welch (1983) contingency model.

The Myth of a Sub-Culture of Corporal Punishment

This paper addresses the question of whether adolescents coming from families using punishment have disciplinary beliefs similar to adolescents coming from families not using punishment. A related question is whether different ethnic groups share similar disciplinary beliefs. Anglo and Hispanic adolescents were asked to judge the appropriateness of certain disciplinary actions for specific teenage misbehaviors and asked if physical punishments were used in their families. Individual response profiles were compared and tested for patterns of clustering indicative of attitudinal sub-cultures. A Cultural Consensus Model was used to create an empirically derived description of community disciplinary standards and to calculate individual deviance from the standard. Results indicated that Hispanic and Anglo adolescents did not differ significantly in their disciplinary attitudes nor in the proportion of each group reporting punishment at home. Rather, a single value system was detec...

Exploring Relations Among Forms of Social Control: The Lynching and Execution of Blacks in North Carolina, 1889–1918

Official and unofficial forms of social control are usually considered substitutable responses to individual acts of deviance. This analysis of the lynching and execution of blacks in North Carolina indicates that these two forms of social control, one official and the other unofficial, served not simply as substitutes, but also as complements during much of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Only after the disenfranchisement of the black population did the relationship between official and unofficial killing begin to imply substitution. This relationship, and its transformation following disenfranchisement, are more easily understood from a social conflict perspective than from an approach that emphasizes social control as a response to individual deviance. These results imply that future inquiries into relations among forms of social control might profit from an increased sensitivity to the dynamics of macrosocial conflict.

Shoulder dislocation in skiing: choice of surgical method depending on the degree of humeral retrotorsion.

Shoulder dislocation is one of the typical upper extremity injuries in skiing, first following a violent accident but quite frequently recurring without new trauma. This article discusses the retrotorsional angle of the humerus as an etiological factor in the occurrence of an initial dislocation and as a triggering element for its recurrence. It focuses on the consequences to be drawn for the surgical treatment of recurrent shoulder dislocation. A technique for exact determination of the humeral angle of retrotorsion by X-ray is presented. In patients with recurrent anterior dislocations of the shoulder joint, the retrotorsional angle of the humerus is pathologically reduced as compared to the control group. The method of surgical therapy is determined by the individual deviance from the average value.

Asbestos and Health: A Case of Informal Social Control

Publicity and Business RegulationThe purpose of this paper is to show that just as informal social control can bemore important than formal social control with petty juvenile misconduct, this canalso be so for the most massive forms of corporate misconduct. Informal socialcontrol may broadly be defined as behavioural restraint by means other than thoseformally directed by a court or administrative agency. Because of the traditionalcriminological preoccupation with formal sanctioning we often neglect informalcontrol mechanisms such as adverse publicity and stigma. Stigma is, of course, amixed blessing when harnessed to control individual deviance- it caneithershametransgressors into compliance with norms or, through the mechanisms of labelling,strengthen deviant patterns by fostering deviant self-conceptions(Becker, 1963).West and Farrington (1977) have provided the most widely cited data in support ofthelabelling hypothesis. However, stigma and the adverse publicity which producesit are more unqualifiedly advantageous when channelled against misconduct bypowerful corporations.Stigma does not push law breaking corporations further and further into acriminal self-conception.While one meets people who have a self-conceptionas athief, a safecracker, a prostitute, a pimp, a drug runner, and even a hit man, howoften does one come across a person or a company with a self-conceptionas acorporate criminal? Corporations and their officers respond to bad publicity withmoral indignation and denials, not with assertions that if you think I'mbad, 1'11really show you how bad I can be, as common delinquents sometimes do.Given the limited efficacy of formal social control against corporate offenders(Stone, 1975; Clinard and Yeager, 1980; Braithwaite, 1980) informal social controlis a11 the more important. The present study of the role of adverse publicity intransformingindustrial healthin the Australian asbestos industry is oneof a numberof such case studies being compiled for a larger work (Fisse and Braithwaite, inpress). The present study does not typify the effect of adverse publicity on largecorporations: at this stage in the development of empirical understanding it isimpossible to typify how social control works against corporate misconduct.Nevertheless, the Australian asbestos scare does illustrate how control throughadverse publicity is possible- notthatsuch controlis.ubiquitous or typical, but thatit is possible.The study was made possible by the cooperation of James Hardie in allowing usto interview a number of employees from the managing-director down at thecompany'sSydney head office and Camellia plant. We are also grateful to the New

Religiosity and Deviance: Toward a Contingency Theory of Constraining Effects

Perspectives on the relationship between individual religiosity and deviance are examined and contextual properties thought to condition the relationship are identified. Hypothesized linkages between these contextual variables and the strength of relationship between religiosity and nine types of deviant behavior are tested. Results indicate the religiosity-deviance relationship varies predictably across sociodemographic contexts, but not always in directions suggested by extant theories. Individual religiosity appears to constrain deviant behavior most effectively in environments characterized by general normative ambiguity, low social integration, generalized perceptions of low peer conformity, and a relatively high proportion of religious nonaffiliates. An integrated interpretation of these counterintuitive findings suggests religious participation can operate as a unique deviance inhibitor only when conformity inducing mechanisms characteristic of religious communities are not reproduced in the larger community. Hence the impact of religious constraints is increased where secular controls are absent or weak.

Self-Concept as a Mediating Factor in Delinquency

Self-reported data from a national panel survey are examined to determine whether self-esteem is a mediating event between evaluative social experiences (school, family and social support) and delinquency. Path analytic procedures are employed to test the most explicit causal paradigm of the self-concept-delinquency relation: the delinquency-as-self-enhancement model. Despite: (1) variations in the types of delinquency analyzed, (2) restrictions placed on the sample in testingfor possible contingent relations, and (3) variations in the time lags used to compute the regression coefficients, no substantial effect of self-esteem on subsequent delinquency was found when the effects of prior causal variables were partialled out. Additionally, no evidence of a self-enhancement effect (i.e., a positive effect of delinquency on subsequent self-concept) was discovered. These results are discussed in relation to prior research and social policy assumptions which focus on self-images as a key variable for reducing delinquency. The self-concept has figured prominently in many explanations of deviance and delinquency, particularly those theories which seek to explain individual deviance as the effects of

Prediction of Retention in Methadone Maintenance in a Contextual Model

This study investigated predictors of drug treatment retention of individual clients in terms of a contextual model. The model involved eight components: 1) socioecological factors, 2) clinic attributes, 3) clinic staffing and services, 4) clinic sociodemographic (aggregate) characteristics, 5) clinic deviance (aggregate) characteristics, 6) individual level client sociodemographic characteristics, 7) individual level client deviance characteristics, and 8) individual level client retention outcomes (time in treatment and quit or expelled termination status). The components were represented in the study by variables developed from census data, and National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) CODAP and NDATUS data bases. This model was analyzed by path analysis for clients in methadone maintenance programs. There was consistent support for the relationships expected among the components of the model. The socioecological variables predicted the types of clients that entered treatment in terms of clinic level (aggregate) variables, and these were found to predict both the corresponding individual level client variables and client outcomes. Clinic attributes were found to predict clinic staffing and services and both of these components were found to be related to client outcomes in several analyses.

The social organization of deviance

The social organization of deviance refers to the structure of the deviant transaction, the pattern of relations among its roles. Deviant transactions can be arrayed along a dimension of complexity. Three forms are distinguished: individual deviance can be carried out by a single actor; deviant exchange requires two deviant actors in reciprocal roles; and deviant exploitation needs an offender and a target Organizational complexity has consequences for deviants and social control agents. As complexity increases, deviants are more likely to be seen as responsible for their actions, those actions are more likely to be defined as serious, the response to deviance is more likely to be punitive, the risks of the deviant's identification and capture become greater, the range of tactics used by deviants expands, and the tactics of social control agents become reactive. The complexity of transactions’ organization has implications for the study of deviant and respectable action.

Urban Schooling and Delinquency: Toward an Integrative Theory

Social deviance theories may be grouped in several ways. Grimshaw (1970), for example, identified four categories of theorists: Psychoanalysts posit individual propensities arising in early childhood (for example, Freud) or later in life cycle (Erickson, Bettelheim); psychologists point to the interaction of the individual and environment (Glaser); psychologists point to attitudes and prejudice manifest in behavior (Allport, McGuire); and sociologists explain deviance in terms of the hierarchy of status and power in the structure (Durkheim). Hirschi (1969), on the other hand, identified three types of theory: strain (or psychological) theory argues that when conformity to conventional behavior does not attain personal ends, deviant behavior ensues; cultural deviance (or anthropological) theory holds that individual deviance from main culture results from conformity in values and behavior to a deviant sub culture; control (or sociological) theory states that when the social bonds holding the individual accountable to conventional morality weaken, he chooses the ends and means only of his own