Who argued that the extent and type of deviance people engage in depends on whether society provides?

Macionis notes on page 176 that when we are talking of deviance, we are mostly talking about "negative instances of rule breaking, such as stealing from a campus bookstore, assaulting a fellow student, or driving a car while intoxicated." However, as he notes, "we also define especially righteous people" as deviant. Understand his examples. Know that, as he points out, "what deviant actions or attitudes, whether negative or positive, have in common is some element of difference that causes us to think of another person as an 'outsider'."

According to Merton, the strain between our culture's emphasis on wealth and the lack of opportunities to get rich may encourage some people, especially the poor, to engage in stealing, drug dealing, or other forms of street crime.

Specifically, the extent and type of deviance people engage in depend on whether a society provides the means (such as schooling and job opportunities) to achieve cultural goals (such as financial success).

Conformity-- lies in pursuing cultural goals through approved means.

Innovation—using unconventional means (street crime) rather than conventional means (hard work at a "straight" job) to achieve a culturally approved goal (wealth).

Ritualism--rigidly stick to the rules (the conventional means) anyway in order to at least feel "respectable."

Retreatism----rejecting both cultural goals and conventional means so that a person in effect "drops out." Some alcoholics, drug addicts, and street people can be described as retreatists.

Rebellion. Like retreatists, rebels such as radical "survivalists" reject both the cultural definition of success and the conventional means of achieving it, but they go one step further by forming a counterculture supporting alternatives to the existing social order.

Retrospective labeling, interpreting someone's past in light of some present deviance (Scheff, 1984). For example, after discovering that a priest has sexually molested a child, others rethink his past, perhaps musing, "He always did want to be around young children." Retrospective labeling, which distorts a person's biography by being highly selective, typically deepens a deviant identity.

Projective labeling of a stigmatized person, using the person's deviant identity to predict future actions. Regarding the priest, people might say, "He's going to keep at it until he gets caught." The more people in someone's social world think such things, the more these definitions affect the individual's self-concept, increasing the chance that they will come true.

Some teenagers, for example, make certain by their clothing, choice of music, and hairstyles that no one misses their rejection of adult norms. Their status among fellow members of a subculture, within which they are almost obsessive conformists, is vastly more important than any status outside it.

He concluded chat outlaw bikers see the world as "hostile, weak, and effeminate." They pride themselves on looking "dirty, mean, and generally undesirable" and take pleasure in provoking shocked reactions to their appearance. Holding the conventional world in contempt, they also pride themselves on getting into trouble, laughing at death, and treating women as lesser beings whose primary value is to provide them with servicesespecially sex. Outlaw bikers also regard themselves as losers, a factor chat becomes woven into their unusual embrace of deviance.

First, because it takes a highly relative view of deviance, labeling theory ignores the fact that some kinds of behavior—such as murder—are condemned just about everywhere. Therefore, labeling theory is most usefully applied to less serious issues, such as sexual promiscuity or mental illness.

Second, research on the consequences of deviant labeling does not clearly show whether deviant labeling produces further deviance or discourages it (Smith & Gartin, 1989; Sherman & Smith, 1992).

Third, not everyone resists being labeled deviant; some people actively seek it out (Vold & Bernard, 1986). For example, people take part in civil disobedience and willingly subject themselves to arrest in order to call attention to social injustice.

Sociologists today typically talk about two types of white-collar crime: occupational crime and corporate crime. The first type, occupational crime, is crime that is committed by a worker at their workplace for their own financial gain. Examples of this would be a banker who embezzles money from the bank where she is employed or a supervisor of a jewelry store stealing a diamond ring from the inventory. The other type of white-collar crime, corporate crime, involves individuals working to improve the profitability of their corporation through some sort of criminal behavior, such as price fixing, false advertising, antitrust violations, knowingly putting faulty products on the market, illegally dumping toxic waste to save money, etc

Robert Merton's strain theory, for example, defines cultural goals in terms of financial success. Traditionally, at least, this goal has had more to do with the lives of men because women have been taught to define success in terms of relationships, particularly marriage and motherhood (Leonard, 1982). A more woman-focused theory might recognize the "strain" that results from the cultural ideal of equality clashing with the reality of gender-based inequality.

According to labeling theory, gender influences how we define deviance because people commonly use different
standards to judge the behavior of females and males. Further, because society puts men in positions of power over women, men often escape direct responsibility for actions that victimize women. In the past, at least, men who sexually harassed or assaulted women were labeled only mildly deviant and sometimes escaped punishment entirely. By contrast, women who are victimized may have to convince others—even members of a jury—that they were not to blame for their own sexual harassment or assault. Research confirms an important truth: Whether people define a situation as deviance—and, if so, who the deviant is—depends on the sex of both the audience and the actors (King & Clayson, 1988). Finally, despite its focus on social inequality, much social-conflict analysis does not address the issue of gender.

First, a Marxist approach implies that laws and other cultural norms are created directly by the rich and powerful. At the very least, this is an oversimplification, as laws also protect workers, consumers, and the environment, sometimes opposing the interests of corporations and the rich. Second, social-conflict analysis argues that criminality springs up only to the extent that a society treats its members unequally. However, as Durkheim noted, deviance exists in all societies, whatever their economic system and their degree of inequality. Finally, keep in mind that, while class, race, and gender still affect the process of defining deviance, our society now treats all categories of people in a more equal manner than was true a century ago.

In December 2015, the most recent year for which we have data, there were over 2.1 million people incarcerated in the United States in state prisons, federal prisons, and local jails. If we include people who were incarcerated in juvenile correctional facilities, military prisons, Indian Country jails, immigration detention centers, civil commitment centers, or prisons in the U.S. territories, the total goes up to close to 2.2 million.

What did Émile Durkheim say about deviance?

Who first defined deviance?

Who decides deviance in a given society?

How does Freud explain deviance?