On the Sociology of Deviance - Deviance & Social Pathology

The Production of Deviance in Capitalist Society Ch. 5, Steven Spitzer

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Deviance within capitalist society  the capitalist mode of production has two key features:  it forms the foundation or infrastructure of society  it contains internal contradictions

 Marxist theory illustrates the relationship between specific contradictions, the problems of capitalist development, and the production of a “deviant class” 2

Infrastructure & Superstructure  superstructure: the ideologies that dominate a particular era, all that "men say, imagine, conceive," including such things as "politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc."  emerges from and reflects the ongoing development of economic forces (infrastructure)  in class societies, the superstructure preserves the hegemony of the ruling class through a system of class controls, which are institutionalized in:  family, church, private associations, media, schools & the state

 key function of the superstructure is the regulation and management of “problem populations” 3

Problem populations become eligible for management as deviant when they disturb, hinder, or call into question:

 capitalist modes of appropriation  social conditions of production  patterns of distribution & consumption  capitalist socialization processes  ideology which supports capitalism 4

problem populations  tend to share social characteristics  most important is the fact that their behavior, personal qualities, and/or position threaten the social relations of production in capitalist societies

 are not synonymous w/deviant populations  some members of problem populations are successfully transformed into supporters it capitalist order; the rest are “candidates for deviance processing” (68) 5

Problem populations are created in 2 ways  directly, as a product of the contradictions of capitalism  by creating a “relative surplus population,” i.e., people who are unemployed and disposable, whose labor is not required for the system

 indirectly, through disturbances in the system of class rule  when institutions, e.g., mass education, fails to promote the values of bourgeois/capitalist society 6

Official social control creates two kinds of problem populations

 social junk  social dynamite

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social junk  a group that fails to participate in the roles supportive of capitalist society  they are viewed as costly yet relatively harmless by the dominant class  e.g., the officially administered aged, the handicapped, the mentally ill and mentally disabled  social control is managed by the therapeutic & welfare state, i.e., programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid 8

social dynamite  a group with the potential to call into question established relationships, esp. relations of production and domination  poses a more acute problem that requires rapid and focused expenditures  tends to be more youthful, alienated, and politically more volatile than social junk  Social control is handled by the legal/criminal justice system 9

Ch. 4: Blowing Smoke: Status Politics and the Shasta County Smoking Ban Ch. 4, Justin L. Tuggle and Malcom D. Holmes, pp. 53-66.

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Is the association of tobacco with lowerstatus persons a factor in the crusade against smoking in public places?  Historically, attempts to control psychoactive substances have linked their use to categories of relatively powerless people:  marijuana & Mexican Americans  opiates & Asians  alcohol & immigrant Catholics

 Recent evidence has shown that occupational status, education, and family income are related negatively to current smoking  Relationship of occupation & education to smoking have become stronger 11

Moral entrepreneurs vs status quo defenders  Moral entrepreneurs crusading for ban argued that secondhand smoke damages public health and that people have a right to a smoke-free environment  Status quo defenders countered that smokers have a constitutional right to indulge wherever and whenever they see fit 12

Differential Punishing of African Americans and Whites Who Possess Drugs: A Just Policy or a Continuation of the Past? Ch. 10, Rudolph Alexander, Jr. and Jacquelyn Gyamerah 13

The origins & course of differential punishing of African Americans  Under slavery in the US, controlling slaves    

required slave owners to subject slaves to sanctions for behaviors that were not offenses if committed by Whites, e.g., leaving the plantation without a pass being out of one’s quarters after curfew being in a group of more than 5 slaves without a White man present owning firearms or animals, buying alcohol, giving medicine to Whites, working in a drugstore, working in a print shop 14

Differential punishing, post-Slavery  Wanting to increase the #s of Africans in prisons in order to control them more effectively, Southern states enacted a series of laws, e.g.,  several states increased penalties for stealing livestock, making it grand larceny

 To counter this trend, Congress passed the 14th Amendment,

specifically, its “equal protection clause”  adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments  Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction  basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Supreme Court decision that precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation in US

 also contains a Citizenship Clause and Due Process Clause

 But differential punishing continued 15