"Most 'deviance theory' took it for granted that if you did weird things you were a weird person. Normal people made rules—we’ll crap over here, worship over here, have sex like so—which a few deviants in every society couldn’t keep. They clung together in small bands of misbehavior. Becker’s work set out to show that out-groups weren’t made up of people who couldn’t keep the rules; they were made up of people who kept other kinds of rules. Marijuana smoking, too, was a set of crips, a learned activity and a social game. At a time when the general assumption was that drug use was private and compulsive, Becker argued that you had to learn
how to get high."
From "The Outside Game/How the sociologist Howard Becker studies the conventions of the unconventional," by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker. ("Crips" refers to the jazz music Becker had learned — "short phrases that can be combined in a million ways, subjected to all possible variations.")
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11 comments:
Makes sense, though a very old idea. There is no-one more conventional than a bohemian. This sort of thing was noted way back, early 19th century for sure. There was something on it in Paul Johnson's "Modern Times".
The article is about a sociologist who began publishing works in this vein in 1953.
Defining down deviency. Part of the Long March.
Okay, so weird people kept other kinds of rules. Why does that mean they weren't keeping weird rules?
No one is more rule bound than an obsessive compulsive. They're still a "might bit pee-cu-li-ar" as we would say down South.
The humble beginnings of pro-choice? The issue is not necessarily deviance, but the dysfunction it represents and engenders. Fortunately, there is a psychiatrist, and judge, to force normalization, albeit notably and peculiarly selective.
I keep getting emails about a "rollerskating for all homeschoolers" event, and I keep misreading it as "rollerskating for all homeless."
No emails about any deviants though.
One of my favorite Great Courses is a ahort sociology one about deviance.
The first bit about the email was something I wanted to post in a cafe. But when I couldn't find one, I deviated from the usual posting rules. I probably learned how to do that from the deviants here.
How is this different from the bell curve?
Deviance in sociology terms is behavior that is outside the norm in a society. It's not a judgement on the behavior or an indication of pathology, though much deviance is illegal or castigated in society. The fact that a subculture can form around a deviant behavior is no surprise to sociologists.
(I took a course on "Deviant Behavior" in college when I was double majoring in Physics and Sociology.)
Here's that course: Explaining Social Deviance. Short, fun.
Posting on an old, dead thread. Mildly deviant.
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