Deviance and Social Theory - Assignment Example

Social deviances vary from culture to culture as well as from time to time.  An Act that is social deviance in a particular culture may not be a deviance in another. Moreover, an act that is deviant in a particular society today may not be deviant in the future (Monniaux, 2015). A good example is polygamy, which is acceptable in Muslim culture but is deviant in Christian communities.

On the other hand, statistical deviance is a criterion of unusual behaviors that are based on the frequency of occurrence in members of a particular population of a society. Statistically deviant people are people whose behaviors or characteristics are only found among the minority, for instance, people who have various forms of disability such as blind, and physical disability. Most of the statistically deviant people are stigmatized though the majority of these types of people escape their deviant behaviors and thus they are not stigmatized

Deviance can be associated with power since social inequality acts as the basis of the social conflict theory. Thus, the less powerful people in society have a higher likelihood of being defined as deviant for instance, unemployed men in the streets have a higher probability of being labeled deviant than employed men. On the other hand, the more powerful people in society may have deviant behaviors though it may be hard to question their behaviors since they possess resources that resist deviant labels (Monniaux, 2015). For instance, the majority of cooperating executives who get involved in corporate scandals are not arrested, and only a few of them go to jail for their crimes. Moreover, the wealthy use their wealth to get away with the crimes they commit and since the society has widespread belief that laws as well as norms are good and just, their characters are masked and the society is unable to notice their deviance.