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, crime),[1] as well as informal violations of social norms (e.g., rejecting folkways and mores). It is the purview of sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and criminologists to study how these norms are created, how they change over time and how they are enforced.
Contents
1 Deviance as a violation of social norms o 1.1 Deviance as reactive construction 2 Theories 2.1 Structural-functionalism 2.1.1 Durkheim's theory 2.1.2 Merton's strain theory 2.2 Symbolic interaction 2.2.1 Sutherland's differential association 2.2.2 Neutralization theory 2.2.3 Labeling theory 2.2.4 Primary and secondary deviation 2.2.5 Control theory 2.3 Conflict theory 2.3.1 Karl Marx 2.3.2 Michel Foucault 2.3.3 Biological theories of deviance o 2.4 Other theories 3 Functions of deviance 4 Cross-cultural communication as deviance 5 Types of deviance 6 The Criminal Justice System 7 Deviance in literature/film 8 See also 9 References 10 Notes
opposed to another. For example, a deviant act can be committed in one society that breaks a social norm there, but may be normal for another society. Viewing deviance as a violation of social norms, sociologists have characterized it as "any thought, feeling or action that members of a social group judge to be a violation of their values or rules"; [4] "violation of the norms of a society or group";[5] "conduct that violates definitions of appropriate and inappropriate conduct shared by the members of a social system";[6] "the departure of certain types of behavior from the norms of a particular society at a particular time"; [7] and "violation of certain types of group norms [... where] behavior is in a disapproved direction and of sufficient degree to exceed the tolerance limit of the community."[8]