How Does Society Define What Is Deviant?
...upon by the whole of society. It is salient to note that the concept of ‘society’ used in this question is rather homogenous. It assumes that every different section within society, every class, race and gender, has the same definition of deviance which it is the job of this essay to unpick. Instead I will be focusing upon how any definitions of deviance are biased towards the upper class definitions. It is the upper class that have access to the institutions through which any general definitions are determined. It is the upper class that have access to the state law institution, that have the corporate control over the gate keeping media, and have an exuberant presence within the institutions of social definition, the church and the school. Through this essay I will adopt the theories of deviance available and examine the upper class power over institutions to demonstrate that they merely enhance the upper class definitions of deviance rather than any other. It is not a case of how society defines what is deviance, but how the upper class legitimately and successfully determine what is defined as deviance – and this includes many academic theorists on the matter. I will therefore take ‘society’ to mean the upper class.
To examine how society defines what is deviant we need to understand what deviance really is. Deviance is defined in dictionaries as the condition of being abnormal. By interpreting this from an individual’s point of view deviance can be seen as any act or practice that is not performed by yourself as it is not normally done by yourself in your regular habits, routines and practices. When we look at deviance from a society’s point of view it can be viewed similarly as something that is not done normally by the community. From an act like murder to picking ones nose, there are many things that can be looked at as deviant.
From an academic...
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