blog #7

Deviance is behavior that does not confirm to basic cultural norms and expectations. An act is defined as deviant when it is marked publicly as deviant by those with enough power to enforce that designation. So we are talking about deviance when we break the norms and act different than the norms required. These are some examples of deviant acts of our everyday life.

The first example is about my first job in New York. Even though I used to work in my country, I never deal with people who insult me and saying disrespectful things to me. The supermarket I worked is located in a bad neighborhood it we usually have some case like that. One day, I wasn’t in a good mood and I almost fought a customer. I knew I was wrong (norms) to talk back to customer but I was just mad. I didn’t get fire but I got a warning and didn’t work for a week.

Another example is about one of my cousin. In my country especially in my family, we do not accept pregnancy without married. That’s the mistake my cousin did and everyone in the family was criticizing her and her father and mother. The worst thing is when child do something wrong, it is the mother’s false and men never get criticized. She almost killed herself and stops everything that she used to do (school...) because she got too much pressure. Also her mother couldn’t go anywhere without getting point out. This is an example of strain theory which emphasizes that strain or pressure on those who lack the means to achieve culturally defined goals leads them to pursue deviant routes to success.

This example is also linked to strain theory because he commits suicide just because he beaks. He was a student in the university and was found cheating during a national exam. The information was publish everywhere in the country. He went to the white house and burned himself.

One day, while my brother was going back to school at Sullivan (upstate New York), there was a young men who was smoking inside the bus. My brother explains that at first they thought it was from the outside because it couldn’t believe something like that. But when the smell fills out the bus, they call the cup and the young men got arrested. This is like a crime because it is again the law, it is a felony to smoke inside a bus especially marijuana in a public bus.

Before in my country when a young men were tight jeans, shirt, bright color… they used got criticized and everywhere they pass, people called them gay even though most of them aren’t. It wasn’t accepted at all. Anyone didn’t want a son, a brother or a sister to dress that way. However, it has because a fashion now and people accepted. This is an example of normalization which is previously deviant behaviors become accepted as conventional.

My last example is about a friend, she is Fulani a very conservative ethnic group. Their marriage is arranged and they married to each other. My friend was going to be forced to marry someone in her family she didn’t like. She was scared but because of me, she got involved and faced her family. She presents them her boyfriend who belongs to another ethnic. They were but didn’t have any choice because she lied that she got pregnant. My friend learns how to be deviant because of me. This is an example of differential association theory.

In “The positive functions of the Undeserving Poor” Gans points out the connection or relation because the undeserving poor and the wealthy. He explains that poverty can be both positive and negative to the poor and wealthy. He describes thirteen of the important functions of the undeserving poor. He can understand throughout this article that poverty is related to crime. When poverty persists and there are more and more poor, crime augments. We can also understand that poor people are stigmatize (which refers to the shame attached to a behavior or status that is considered socially unacceptable or discrediting). Because of stigma we see the inequality undeserving poor are isolated and decimated. They don’t have any type of consideration which leads them to harm others and themselves (strain theory).

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