Why deviance is good

Stealing and incivility are commonly cited as examples of deviant, or harmful, behavior. In their new article in the American Behavioral Scientist, Gretchen Spreitzer, clinical professor of management and organizations, and Ph. In defining positive deviance, Spreitzer and Sonenshein argue for a normative approach, which implies the evaluation of conduct that ought or ought not to occur by a specific body of people a referent group whose expectations determine regular or typical behaviors.

Not everyone has access to institutionalized means , or legitimate ways of achieving success. Strain theory , developed by sociologist Robert Merton , posits that when people are prevented from achieving culturally approved goals through institutional means, they experience strain or frustration that can lead to deviance.

He said that they also experience anomie , or feelings of being disconnected from society, which can occur when people do not have access to the institutionalized means to achieve their goals. Example: In a class of graduating high school seniors, 90 percent of the students have been accepted at various colleges. Five percent do not want to go to college, and the remaining five percent want to go to college but cannot, for any one of a number of reasons.

All of the students want to succeed financially, and attending college is generally accepted as the first step toward that goal. They had the same goals as everyone else but were blocked from the usual means of achieving them. They may act out in a deviant manner. In the s, sociologists Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin theorized that the most difficult task facing industrialized societies is finding and training people to take over the most intellectually demanding jobs from the previous generation.

To progress, society needs a literate, highly trained work force. Cloward and Ohlin argued that if people were dissatisfied with what they had, what they earned, or where they lived, they would be motivated to work harder to improve their circumstances.

In order to compete in the world marketplace, a society must offer institutionalized means of succeeding. For example, societies that value higher education as a way to advance in the workplace must make educational opportunity available to everyone. Deviant behavior—crime in particular—was not just a response to limited institutionalized means of success.

Albert K. This scholarship from the s reflected a growing unrest in post-World War 2 America as the Cold War gained momentum, demonstrating both a fear of ideological dissent from within and a new concern with low income immigrant communities.

The work was also implied a gendered exclusionary focus, negating the agency of females as potential deviant actors. Marvin Wolfgang and Franco Ferracuti published The Subculture of Violence in , which blended criminology, psychology, and sociology in an attempt to theorize the causes of assaultive behavior and homicide. Wolfgang and Ferracuti suggest the value systems in subcultural groups, particularly inner city men, differ from centra l value systems and result in more violence , He identified four types of bonds: attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief.

Say a high school student is trying to decide whether to skip a class to go to the mall with friends. He or she might consider the following:. We can also imagine more serious forms of deviance and consider how attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief might operate in other scenarios. In what ways can this theory help inform prevention strategies, especially for young people? How can we strengthen attachment and commitment, for example? Improve this page Learn More. Skip to main content.

Module 6: Deviance, Crime, and Social Control. Search for:. Functionalism and Deviance Learning Outcomes Explain functionalist views on deviance. Positive Deviance PD refers to a behavioral and social change approach which is premised on the observation that in any context, certain individuals confronting similar challenges, constraints, and resource deprivations to their peers, will nonetheless employ uncommon but successful behaviors or strategies which enable them to find better solutions.

Since its inception in nutrition research in the s, the PD approach has been used extensively by researchers and evaluators in development. In applying the PD approach, an investigator must first obtain an invitation from the community in question requesting their aid in addressing a problem they have collectively identified as important. By identifying successful positive deviants and examining their coping mechanisms, the study was able to isolate a series of promising strategies for promotion of food security among ART users such as urban farming.