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In the latter part of 2000, Houston-based Enron Corporation claimed that it had lost more than $500 million and filed for bankruptcy. An investigation revealed that Enron’s accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, had reported artificially inflated earning figures and hidden Enron’s debts, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars. Thousands of Enron workers lost their jobs and millions in retirement savings. Overall responsibility for the financial debacle fell on the shoulders of two people: Andrew Fastow (CFO) and Kenneth Lay (Chairman and CEO).
Fastow and Lay, two wealthy white men who did not commit a violent crime, don’t seem to fit the label deviant. However, Fastow and Lay did violate the norms of society. Sociologists can use these men and their behavior to illustrate how definitions of deviance vary between cultures and between societies—even between communities—and how consequences for deviant behavior can vary depending on many factors.
What Is Deviance?
The word deviance connotes odd or unacceptable behavior, but in the sociological sense of the word, deviance is simply any violation of society’s norms. Deviance can range from something minor, such as a traffic violation, to something major, such as murder.
Each society defines what is deviant and what is not, and definitions of deviance differ widely between societies. For example, some societies have much more stringent rules regarding gender roles than we have in the United States, and still other societies’ rules governing gender roles are less stringent than ours.
Gender and Deviance
In the United States, women who cry in public in response to emotional situations are not generally considered deviant—even women who cry frequently and easily. This view of women has remained relatively constant. Over the past fifty years, however, society’s perception of men who cry has changed. A man who cried publicly in the 1950s would have been considered deviant. Today, men who cry in response to extreme emotional situations are acting within society’s norms. Male politicians cry when announcing defeat, male athletes cry after winning a championship, and male actors cry after winning an award. By today’s standards, none of these men is committing a deviant act.
Relativism and Deviance
Deviance is a relative issue, and standards for deviance change based on a number of factors, including the following:
Location: A person speaking loudly during a church service would probably be considered deviant, whereas a person speaking loudly at a party would not. Society generally regards taking the life of another person to be a deviant act, but during wartime, killing another person is not considered deviant.
Age: A four-year-old can cry in a supermarket without being considered deviant, but an older child or an adult cannot.
Social status: A famous actor can skip to the front of a long line of people waiting to get into a popular club, but a non-famous person would be considered deviant for trying to do the same.
Individual societies: In the United States, customers in department stores do not try to negotiate prices or barter for goods. In some other countries, people understand that one should haggle over the price of an item; not to do so is considered deviant.
Cultural Norms and Deviance
In Japan, there are strict norms involving the exchange of business cards. One person presents their business card with the writing facing the recipient, who looks at it for a moment and asks a question about some of the information on the card. The question may be irrelevant, but it tells the giver that the recipient has read the card and acknowledges the person and their company. A Japanese executive who receives a business card and does not take the time to look at it and ask a question would be considered deviant.
Deviant Traits
A person does not need to act in a deviant manner in order to be considered deviant. Sometimes people are considered deviant because of a trait or a characteristic they possess. Sociologist Erving Goffman used the term stigma to identify deviant characteristics. These include violations of the norms of physical ability or appearance. For example, people who are confined to wheelchairs or who have IQs over 140 are deviant because they do not represent the usual behaviors or characteristics of most people.
