Sociology of Deviance - Case Study Example

Sociology of Deviance When one looks at deviant behavior from the outside, it will definitely stir a lot of negative feelings toward the perpetrator. This can be quite sensible though considering that the harm it causes the victims makes one want to do the same thing to the aggressor. This kind of reaction especially holds true when the victim is a close family member or the person himself. In this case, it is quite difficult to feel any sense of pity or consideration for the other person who is now seen as the ultimate enemy. . Deviant behavior is typically shown in aggressive activities such as stealing, working illegally, and worst, murder. As such, being a victim of these petty and big crimes can be truly devastating and traumatizing as well. On the other hand, if one tries to set aside angry feelings and desires to get back at the enemy, then he may start to wonder how such a person can do harm to another. The first thing that may come to mind is that the perpetrator is simply a selfish person who will do anything to satisfy himself at the expense of the victim. For people who can go deeper than this thinking, they will start to reflect on the person and what factors could have made him do such a terrible thing. It is always possible that the person may have some form of psychological illness that he is unable to resolve and thus have resulted in a behavior void of any form of guilt or remorse. Aside from this, one may have the thinking that the perpetrator could have experienced some really painful events in his life to make him really angry at the world and does everything to destroy the same environment in order to get back at it. Whatever the reason is behind the deviance is a concept that is very interesting to explore. This time however, the focus will not be in sympathizing with the victim but in trying to get to know the aggressor more deeply and see what is behind the hostility that has driven him to become the person that he probably could not imagine to develop or become. This paper intends to present the hypothesis that deviance is a result of environmental factors that have a major influence in the formation of one’s attitude towards the society but the individual still has the power to imbibe this influence or not. Those who get involved in deviant behavior have done so because it was the society that has taught them to act in this manner in the first place. Each child is born in this world armed with his genetic structure. However, it is not only genetics that plays a major role in this phenomenon. The person that the society tends to discriminate against to the point of exile and incarceration is just actually a victim of the careless ways by which the same society has treated him. At the end of the day however, the amount of negative influence that the society brings can result to a positive perspective and way of life if the same undesirable experiences are used as a motivation to get out of the poor situation. In order to explain this hypothesis well, the movie Slumdog Millionaire is used. Slumdog Millionaire features two Mumbai brothers who grew up in very poor conditions unimaginable for small children like them. The older brother’s name is Salim and the younger one is Jamal. In this movie, the two seem to have experienced the same adversities in life, but their reaction and attitudes towards them have been differently explored and carried out. A third character in the person of Latika, also grew in the slums like them. Latika’s personality as a woman likewise illustrated yet another kind of reaction to life’s adversities. She was the complacent type who felt too weak to fight off anybody who wants to cause her harm. She seems to embody deviance that is born out of perceived weakness and hopelessness. Furthermore, this paper makes use of two theories that are used to attribute the sociology of deviance to real-life situations. The first theory is called the labeling theory while the second one is called cultural transmission theory. Deviance as a concept can be quite confusing (Downes & Rock 4). This is because what may be considered undesirable in one society may not be really the case with others. In the movie for instance, Muslims were killed and ravaged by some Hindu rioters. The Hindu group killed anyone in sight including Jamal, Salim, and Latika’s family. Jamal himself saw how his mother was killed. While this group has done a serious crime considering the whole village massacre, this is something that they may consider as a holy task for themselves. Consequently, if deviance comes from an ideology of moral rules, then it can be very subjective and thus hard to define. In the case stated above, the perpetrators are the Hindus while the victims are the Muslims. No matter what is done to change the Hindu’s thinking that it is wrong to kill fellow human beings, their belief and traditions will always stick to their mind and they will believe as such to righteous and justifiable. Similarly, trying to define deviance would be a perplexing effort (Ben-Yehuda 4). This is mainly because deviance can be so broad that one cannot really pinpoint what it is really all about. Meanwhile, studies that have been conducted about deviance have seemed to focus solely in the smaller issues of prostitution, murder, or drug abuse that the bigger whole seems to have been abandoned. This goes to show that the sociology of deviance have dwelt too much on the problem that is brought by the behavior and not really the root cause of the situation that holds true for each and every individual who commits the negative behavior. In the case of Latika for instance, she grew up with an organized crime group who later trained her to become a prostitute. At first glance, Latika may seem to be the kind of girl who just wants to make easy money by selling her body. But a deeper look at her situation would tell that she has no family to protect her from this kind of oppression. There is also nobody who helped her get out of the situation without ending up dead. This scenario only goes to show that prostitution as deviance is not just some simple isolated case. This situation can hold true for millions of women in the world who have been victims of human trafficking and stay in the same situation to save their very own life. On the other hand, the sociology of deviance seems to acknowledge the creativity by which perpetrators try to solve their problems even when the means to this end are considered illegal (Ruggiero 153). In the movie, the main characters Jamal and Salim lived in very destitute lifestyles. Their whole life, they tried anything and everything just to have something to eat and to survive. Jamal at one point in her youth became a tourist guide at the Taj Mahal even if he didn’t have any idea what it was all about. He never went to school but made use of his creative mind to make his own history of the places in India. While his stories are not true, he was able to gain a lot of income from that. In an effort to explain deviance, the labeling theory has been formulated. The labeling theory supports the assumption that because other people give a particular label to a person, then this encourages him or her to act in the same manner (Hamlin 1). This phenomenon has been shown many times in the movie. First of all, the police who were in constant pursuit of the two brothers seemed to assume that since they are poor there is nothing good that they can do. In fact, the opposite is true when it comes to Jamal and Salim. They were perceived as crooks who should be blamed for every crime that happens in the city even if they have not done anything yet. In specific, when the Hindus attacked the Muslims and burned their bodies and houses down, the police did not do anything to stop them. When Jamal tried to be a tour guide who wanted to make an honest living as much as possible despite their limited means, the police also tried to catch him. Another person who pasted a label on the Jamal and Salim when they were still very young was a crook who used and abused them. When they first met him, the brothers thought that he was a good person who wanted to take care of them. But they made the brothers part of their begging syndicate. What’s worst is that they wanted to push them deeper into the slum life by blinding them and making them into professional beggars. That man had the idea that since they were poor children they had nowhere else to go but to a poor man’s living as well. He told the children that blinding them is like fulfilling their destiny for failure. Fortunately, Salim devised something to help Jamal escape from impending doom. But later it became apparent that the labeling that was given by their previous abuser has entered his mind. Salim involved himself in a serious of heinous crimes. He started having a gun and later killed their abuser. He also joined another organized crime group whose leader made him do more crimes as he demanded. Even Latika was made a sex slave by the gang leader. In the case, of Salim, the labeling theory holds its significance in explaining deviance. However, the labeling theory does not seem to consider other individual’s ability to rise above the labels and still become a good person. This is what happened to Jamal who showed perseverance in his work all throughout his life. He took on different odd jobs while his brother was busy doing illegal and instant money makers. He worked in a restaurant kitchen at a very young age and did not let the labels get the better of him. When he became an adult, he accidentally received an invitation to join a millionaire’s game on television and this happened because he was diligently bringing drinks to some workers. Thus, the labeling theory may be a good basis for explaining deviant behavior when it comes to individuals who choose to accept the negative labels. These individuals seem to be very rebellious that if other people think of them in a negative light then that is what exactly they will do. But for those who would rather take it as a challenge, the labeling theory cannot be applied. Both Jamal and Salim went through the same struggles but the labeling theory is inconsistent in predicting their behavior. Another theory that seems to explain the phenomenon behind the sociology of deviance pertains to the cultural transmission theory. This particular theory works under the assumption that behavior is a result of information that is passed on from one generation to the next and is thus not a result of genetics (Eerkens & Lipo 240). This seems to hold true for the situation of the brothers in the Slumdog Millionaire movie. In particular, Jamal and Malik’s mother was shown in the movie to be a woman who is caring and hardworking. If heredity is to be considered, Malik could have grown to become like her instead of the gangster that he became. This could prove that with Malik, the cultural transmission theory is very much a reality as he was mostly influenced by environmental factors more than his genetic predisposition. Moreover, cultural transmission theory presupposes that the immediate environment of an individual is the one which influences him the most (Eerkens & Lipo 241). In the case of Malik, when he joined the gang, he was in the midst of people who did nothing but kill each other. He knew that the only way to survive was to be the first to fire the gun. He also used firearms to threaten other people because this was what he saw happening when he was a young child. Power was used negatively. This was worsened when he worked for a famous gang man with whom he became a hired gun. This person became the closest and most influential person in his life. Towards the end of the movie however, Malik seem to have overcome the environmental influences as he started to defy and fight off the urge to follow the oppressive ways of his boss. When he saw the intense love that was going on between Jamal and Latika, he let her escape so she can be with Jamal. Even if Malik knew that freeing her would mean his instant death he still offered his life for his brother’s happiness. In this sense, cultural transmissions theory may not be a comprehensive explanation of deviant behavior. In conclusion, the two theories anchored under the sociology of deviance are as unclear as the branch of study that it originates from. While labeling theory and cultural transmissions theory render great attributions to deviant behavior, it has been observed to be inconsistent with different kinds of individuals. This is because labels and outside influences are not the only factors that play a major role in deviance. Other aspects should be considered including the individual’s personality, preferences, willpower, affection to family members, resiliency, and ability to achieve success despite all the odds. Going back to the hypothesis mentioned earlier in this paper, deviance as an interaction between the society and the individual is confirmed to be true. While environmental factors have a significant effect on a particular individual, he still has the choice to follow the same pattern of deviance or to prove himself otherwise. Therefore, human beings have a lot of potential to overcome the desire to involve in deviant behavior. In the case of Malik, it may have come at the latter part of his life, but it has still proven to ring true at the last minute. Works Cited Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. The Politics and Morality of Deviance: Moral Panics, Drug Abuse, Deviant Science, and Reversed Stigmatization. Albany: SUNY Press, 1990. Downes, David and Paul Elliott Rock. Understanding Deviance: A Guide to the Sociology of Crime and Rule-Breaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Eerkens, Jelmer and Carl Lipo. “Cultural Transmission Theory and the Archaeological Record: Providing Context to Understanding Variation.” Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 4 August 2007. 12 April 2009 . Hamlin, John. “Labelling Theory.” University of Maryland. 12 April 2009 . Ruggiero, Vincenzo. Crime in Literature: Sociology of Deviance and Fiction. New York: Verso, 2003. Read More