Deviant_Behavior

Deviant Behavior Deviant Behavior Sociologists use the term deviance to refer to any violation of norms- whether the infraction is a minor as shouting, or as serious as murder. This deceptively simple definition takes us to the heart of the sociological perspective of deviance, which sociologist Howard S. Becker identified this way: it is not the act itself, but the reactions to the act, that make something deviant. In other words, people’s behaviors must be viewed from the framework of the culture in which they take place. To be considered deviant, a person may not even have to do anything. Just the way a person or people are can make them deviant. Sociologists use the term stigma to refer to certain attributes that describe people. These attributes include violations of the norms of ability (blindness, deafness, and mental handicaps) and the norms of appearance (a facial birthmark, obesity). They also include involuntary membership in some groups, such as being a certain race or having a peculiar accent. The stigma becomes a person’s master status, defining him or her as deviant. For my deviant behavior project I focused very closely on the irrelevance of the action and the importance of the reaction. The people, deviant, just, group, experiment, table, seemed, way, very, something, room, reactions, quite, notice, norms, itself, first, enough, after, without, term, take, support, subject, stigma, spoke, sociologists, scream, same, said, restaurant, refer, plate, place, person, part