Embracing Civility or Intensifying Deviance….A Dialectic?

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2 Responses

  1. mastaliu says:

    Interesting, thanks. Setting up the contradiction between counter or sub-cultural behavior as “simply” deviant and counter or sub-cultural behavior as identity formation is a bit of a straw man, isn’t it? Deviance isn’t “simply” anything.

    Goffman and Becker’s work on moral careers certainly changed the way “deviance” is interpreted and defined. It can be a label that is powerful enough to change our moral career – our self presentation and our frameworks for judging self and other. It’s always some mash up of structure and agency too. Dissent or resistance is a great place to explore issues between macro-micro (Becker’s work on motivations of the marijuana user is classic). I’ve often been amazed at the regular acts of defiance in places as mundane as the workplace or bureaucratic systems – sort of screwing the system to make it work (from Mark Jacob’s ethnography of case workers in the juvenile justice system). What about Catholic nuns handing out condoms, doing family planning counseling, and HIV testing? What do these transgressions mean for them?

  2. i too, am interested in knowing a pattern of behavior among individuals who are deviant. What personality type is prone to having deviant behavior?

    you see, when we are able to have this as a field of concern in research… we parents can learn from it. In knowing the results, it will give us an idea if our children are prone to doing it.

    thanks.

    liza m. empedrad
    university of saint louis
    tuguegarao city, philippines

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