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July 2009 
a Brief Speculative Analysis of Convention & Deviance
Posted on Jun 11th, 2008
by 
DuALiTySTrUgGle
DuALiTySTrUgGle
Deviance and convention occur in a largely social and perceptional context. Yet what, if any, roles might objective features play in these central dynamics of society that are not likely mere declarations of individual interpretive dimensions that either coincide or are disjunct? Ingroup boundaries appear as relations of perceived similarity and belonging, and the care that extends among the members bound by such characteristics (e.g., ingroup bias). This type of relation exemplifies boundary conditions for convention - sameness. Deviance is typically understood as defiance of (formal deviance) or distance from (informal deviance) the norms established by social cohesion and ingroup relations - difference. The dichotomy of sameness or identity (a relation where the properties of constituent relata are identical or unified) and difference (a relation where properties of constituent relata are distinguished on some facet) is a crucial and pervasive notion of the philosophical domain (e.g., issues of identity; Deleuzian “Difference and Repetition”), and bears upon convention and deviance in a fundamental way. It can be reasonably asserted that such properties are a necessary quality of not only subjective and social constructions, but also of the world[1], thus making room for some extent of “the way the world is” in convention that is not wholly established by the Berkeleian notion of the way the world is idealistically perceived to be (“to be is to be perceived”; a common attribute of pluralism).
When an entity[2] is the same or repeated it is, within the domain of this relation, distinguished only insofar as it has been multiplied: there is no identifiable difference beyond that of quantity. In the case of convention, this type of repetition serves as the cohesive basis of identity (and thus is necessarily social) while this identity is also found in the contrasts provided by relations external to this (hence Durkheim’s affirmation of deviance as a source of social solidarity (Anderson & Taylor, 2008, 167)). The notion of being integrates all difference - “The scope of [the question of being] is so broad that we can never exceed it... It comes to a halt at no being of any kind whatsoever” (Heidegger, 2000, 2) - and thus, if considered as a normative category, presents itself as a convention exhibited by all that is the case. Being subsumes all relative distinctions of oppositions of tradition, togetherness and belongingness, for nothing can move outside of it. It is, in this way, the absolute category of convention, where status quo is not established or exceeded but remains featureless and nondiscriminatory. Being is an attribute of commonality that cuts across all difference. Yet this conception is insensitive to the relative sphere and so does not bear upon gradations of distinction occurrent within being.
Nevertheless, the notion of being appears to in fact be relevant to the question of norms, for historically it is the case that pluralism (though certainly not without shortcomings) and the postmodern ideals that have accompanied it (e.g., human rights as endowed to one despite superficial idealistic standards imposed by outmoded traditionalist perspectives but in virtue of being human) can be seen to have moved toward an increased resemblance of the encompassing breadth of this notion. This type of movement is one that is closely associated with and can be approached in terms of values[3] in the course of individual moral development (morality and values fall within the same category of what ought to be done). Such a trajectory is exemplified by Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, where “the morally developed individual moves from a selfish concern with rewards and punishments, through a reliance on fixed rules and conventional attitudes, to a position of independent principles judgement” (Kohlberg’s theory, 2007, 517). These stages correspond to progressively inclusive spheres of care as traced by the work of Carol Gilligan: from selfish preoccupation with personal needs to caring for those who are nearest and require care most to a “third stage, [which] unites caring for others and for oneself by emphasizing caring in all human relationships and by denouncing exploitation and violence between people” (Kail & Cavanaugh, 2007, 331).
While values cannot be wholly jettisoned, as one must inhabit the sphere of ought so long as choice is involved (arguably even in times of bondage; e.g., not choosing as a choice), one can indeed question and move away from conventional circumscription of values and their discriminatory attributes. This kind of trend can also be seen in the work of Max Weber: “...values [reached through the process of rationalization] are not given by authority but have to be chosen by the individual himself” (Blum, 1944, 46). Such progression of values thus moves toward being in that it puts into question and sheds distinctions that circumscribe what belongs and ought to be recognized with esteem. Furthermore, this points out a rather paradoxical angle of such motion: as the uniting factor of convention expands, it also moves the individual within whom this extension occurs away from convention. That is to say, if convention is also the norm and the status quo, when it is undermined in being exceeded, it is an instance of deviance just as are shortcomings to its standards. Even within convention, similarity is understood as a relatively malleable feature that occurs among differences. As George Bernard Shaw wrote, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man" (Shaw). This brings us to the consideration of the side difference provides in the notion of deviance - “Deviance is always a matter of difference” (Macionis, 2007, 223).
If deviance exists as an expression of difference, it can take the form of novelty as both pathology (or the distance preceding status quo norms) and prodigy (or the distance exceeding status quo norms). Furthermore, the presence of one can provide the boundary conditions or the other (e.g., as when madness in certain characteristics or areas of one’s life is associated genius in other areas - a sort of “necessary imbalance” criterion that provides latitude for the possible). This is where a major difficulty concerning deviance resides: the difficulty of discriminating between the abnormal as subservient or superior to the patterns of convention outside of which it appears. One way this is understood is through the functional norm-pathology conception, an instance of which has been offered by Emile Durkheim:
...since there cannot be a society in which the individuals do not differ more or less from the collective type, it is also inevitable that, among these divergences, there are some with criminal character. What confers this character upon them is not the intrinsic quality of a given act but that definition which the collective conscience lends them. If the collective conscience is stronger... it will also be more sensitive, more exacting; and, reacting against, the slightest deviations with the energy it otherwise displays only against more considerable infractions.... (Adler, 2006, 60)
This conception can be implemented in understanding different domains of deviance in general. Different thresholds are exhibited in different domains of convention. In the United States, there are less degrees of freedom when it comes to the convention of boundaries established by laws than personal expression that varies without exceeding such boundaries (e.g., when religious belief and ritual does not infringe laws concerning the rights of others, it is generally permitted).
The idea of thresholds in deviance leads to consideration of objective, as opposed to social, functions as they relate to deviance. Deviance is a largely social and perceptually-bound phenomenon in that explicitly it occurs within the realm of abstraction. That is, something that coheres a group while distinguishing it from others, any time it is not differentiated wholly by objectively defined structure (which is usually the case for considered versions of deviance) is necessarily an abstracted characteristic that is embodied by members of the group (e.g., beauty does not exist apart from instances of beauty that realize or approach certain criteria for beauty; such criteria is abstracted and can be idealized) and thus carries a necessary interpretive element. According to Joel Best, “...knowledge is socially constructed; to say that a social problem is socially constructed is not to imply that it does not exist, but rather that it is through social interaction that the problem is assigned particular meanings” (Adler, 2006, 94). Medicalization has been associated to social constructionism, but pathology is not merely located in the way it is interpreted. Objective qualifications of meaning are a foundation of function and its deviance in pathology such that they are informed not by social interactionism but my empirically, objective qualities, even if those qualities are discovered through socially constructed and value-informed methods. Thus, not all disfunction and deviance can be seen as exclusively social. As Ken Wilber points out, “...sociology has, almost from its inception, divided into two huge camps, the interpretive ...[which] investigates culture or cultural meanings, and attempts to get at those meanings from within [e.g., Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Clifford Geertz...], ...and the naturalistic or empirical ...[which] investigates the social system or social structures and functions from without [e.g., August Comte, Talcott Parsons, Nikolas Luhmann, Gerhard Lenski, etc.]” (Wilber, 2000, 138).
Thus, Hilary Putnam maintains, “Meaning is interactional. The environment itself plays a role in determining what a speaker’s words, or a community’s words, refer to” (Goldman, 1993, 612). Both of these aspects - the constructionist (e.g. labeling theory) and the objective, structural/functional - play a crucial role in the dynamics of deviance. Without the objective infrastructure, social construction would have no medium in which to unfold and nothing to inform its unfolding. It is the one who’s being-in-the-world flowers beyond convention and brings something novel into the world that participates in the height of positive deviance, but that deviance is informed by both the societal structures and contexts the individual must move through and reside in as well as the objective social structures that circumscribe the range of possible deviance within those structures. Likewise, pathology and pre-conventional or negative deviance must be understood as existing in both of these equally important dimensions. The differences and similarities that confine, define and direct deviance in various spheres of social and individual life are the very forces that forge these spheres and make their existence possible. Without both of these forces, present in both social-objective structural-functional and cultural-subjective interpretive-constructionist dimensions, being would be indistinguishable from nothingness.
Notes
[1] The world here is treated in general concurrence with the Wittgensteinian conception: “The world is everything that is the case” (Wittgenstein, 2003, 7).
[2] An entity, as here considered, can specify both a whole (e.g., differentiated, individual organism) and an abstracted characteristic (e.g., a given belief set), with the latter being more pertinent.
[3] Oxford dictionary offers the following among its definitions of convention: (1) a general agreement, esp. agreement on social behaviour etc. by implicit consent of the majority. (2) a custom or customary practice, esp. an artificial or formal one (Hanks, 2003, 313). Norms are “the specific cultural expectations for how to act in a given situation” (Anderson & Taylor, 2008, 62). On this account, norms can be viewed as that aspect of convention which provides the modus operandi for existing as a member within it. Values are “the abstract standards in a society or group that define the ideal principles of what is desirable and morally correct” (Anderson & Taylor, 2008, 63). Thus, values constitute the framework of normative structure and follow from convention as a necessary subset.
References
Adler, (2006). Constructions of deviance: Social power, context, and interaction. Belmont, CA: Thomas Wadsworth.
Blum, F. H. (1944).Max Weber's postulate of "freedom" from value judgements. The American Journal of Sociology. 50, 46-52.
Goldman, A. I. (Ed.). (1993). Readings in philosophy and cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Hanks , P. (Ed.). (2003). Oxford english reference dictionary. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.
Heidegger, M. (2000). Introduction to metaphysics (G. Fried & R. Polt, Trans). New Haven, C.T.: Yale Nota Bene book. (Original work published 1953)
Kail R., & Cavanaugh, J. (2007). Human development: A life-span view. Australia: Wadsworth.
Macionis, J. J. (2007). Sociology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
Shaw, G. B. More quotes by george bernard shaw. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from elise.com Web site: http://www.elise.com/quotes/quotes/shawquotes.htm.
VandenBos, G. (Ed.). Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. (2007). In APA Dictionary of Psychology (1st ed.), Washington DC: American Psychological Association.
Wilber, K. (2000). A brief history of everything. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Wittgenstein, L. (2003). Tractatus logico-philosophicus (C.K. Ogden, Trans). New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc. (Original work published 1922)
When an entity[2] is the same or repeated it is, within the domain of this relation, distinguished only insofar as it has been multiplied: there is no identifiable difference beyond that of quantity. In the case of convention, this type of repetition serves as the cohesive basis of identity (and thus is necessarily social) while this identity is also found in the contrasts provided by relations external to this (hence Durkheim’s affirmation of deviance as a source of social solidarity (Anderson & Taylor, 2008, 167)). The notion of being integrates all difference - “The scope of [the question of being] is so broad that we can never exceed it... It comes to a halt at no being of any kind whatsoever” (Heidegger, 2000, 2) - and thus, if considered as a normative category, presents itself as a convention exhibited by all that is the case. Being subsumes all relative distinctions of oppositions of tradition, togetherness and belongingness, for nothing can move outside of it. It is, in this way, the absolute category of convention, where status quo is not established or exceeded but remains featureless and nondiscriminatory. Being is an attribute of commonality that cuts across all difference. Yet this conception is insensitive to the relative sphere and so does not bear upon gradations of distinction occurrent within being.
Nevertheless, the notion of being appears to in fact be relevant to the question of norms, for historically it is the case that pluralism (though certainly not without shortcomings) and the postmodern ideals that have accompanied it (e.g., human rights as endowed to one despite superficial idealistic standards imposed by outmoded traditionalist perspectives but in virtue of being human) can be seen to have moved toward an increased resemblance of the encompassing breadth of this notion. This type of movement is one that is closely associated with and can be approached in terms of values[3] in the course of individual moral development (morality and values fall within the same category of what ought to be done). Such a trajectory is exemplified by Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, where “the morally developed individual moves from a selfish concern with rewards and punishments, through a reliance on fixed rules and conventional attitudes, to a position of independent principles judgement” (Kohlberg’s theory, 2007, 517). These stages correspond to progressively inclusive spheres of care as traced by the work of Carol Gilligan: from selfish preoccupation with personal needs to caring for those who are nearest and require care most to a “third stage, [which] unites caring for others and for oneself by emphasizing caring in all human relationships and by denouncing exploitation and violence between people” (Kail & Cavanaugh, 2007, 331).
While values cannot be wholly jettisoned, as one must inhabit the sphere of ought so long as choice is involved (arguably even in times of bondage; e.g., not choosing as a choice), one can indeed question and move away from conventional circumscription of values and their discriminatory attributes. This kind of trend can also be seen in the work of Max Weber: “...values [reached through the process of rationalization] are not given by authority but have to be chosen by the individual himself” (Blum, 1944, 46). Such progression of values thus moves toward being in that it puts into question and sheds distinctions that circumscribe what belongs and ought to be recognized with esteem. Furthermore, this points out a rather paradoxical angle of such motion: as the uniting factor of convention expands, it also moves the individual within whom this extension occurs away from convention. That is to say, if convention is also the norm and the status quo, when it is undermined in being exceeded, it is an instance of deviance just as are shortcomings to its standards. Even within convention, similarity is understood as a relatively malleable feature that occurs among differences. As George Bernard Shaw wrote, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man" (Shaw). This brings us to the consideration of the side difference provides in the notion of deviance - “Deviance is always a matter of difference” (Macionis, 2007, 223).
If deviance exists as an expression of difference, it can take the form of novelty as both pathology (or the distance preceding status quo norms) and prodigy (or the distance exceeding status quo norms). Furthermore, the presence of one can provide the boundary conditions or the other (e.g., as when madness in certain characteristics or areas of one’s life is associated genius in other areas - a sort of “necessary imbalance” criterion that provides latitude for the possible). This is where a major difficulty concerning deviance resides: the difficulty of discriminating between the abnormal as subservient or superior to the patterns of convention outside of which it appears. One way this is understood is through the functional norm-pathology conception, an instance of which has been offered by Emile Durkheim:
...since there cannot be a society in which the individuals do not differ more or less from the collective type, it is also inevitable that, among these divergences, there are some with criminal character. What confers this character upon them is not the intrinsic quality of a given act but that definition which the collective conscience lends them. If the collective conscience is stronger... it will also be more sensitive, more exacting; and, reacting against, the slightest deviations with the energy it otherwise displays only against more considerable infractions.... (Adler, 2006, 60)
This conception can be implemented in understanding different domains of deviance in general. Different thresholds are exhibited in different domains of convention. In the United States, there are less degrees of freedom when it comes to the convention of boundaries established by laws than personal expression that varies without exceeding such boundaries (e.g., when religious belief and ritual does not infringe laws concerning the rights of others, it is generally permitted).
The idea of thresholds in deviance leads to consideration of objective, as opposed to social, functions as they relate to deviance. Deviance is a largely social and perceptually-bound phenomenon in that explicitly it occurs within the realm of abstraction. That is, something that coheres a group while distinguishing it from others, any time it is not differentiated wholly by objectively defined structure (which is usually the case for considered versions of deviance) is necessarily an abstracted characteristic that is embodied by members of the group (e.g., beauty does not exist apart from instances of beauty that realize or approach certain criteria for beauty; such criteria is abstracted and can be idealized) and thus carries a necessary interpretive element. According to Joel Best, “...knowledge is socially constructed; to say that a social problem is socially constructed is not to imply that it does not exist, but rather that it is through social interaction that the problem is assigned particular meanings” (Adler, 2006, 94). Medicalization has been associated to social constructionism, but pathology is not merely located in the way it is interpreted. Objective qualifications of meaning are a foundation of function and its deviance in pathology such that they are informed not by social interactionism but my empirically, objective qualities, even if those qualities are discovered through socially constructed and value-informed methods. Thus, not all disfunction and deviance can be seen as exclusively social. As Ken Wilber points out, “...sociology has, almost from its inception, divided into two huge camps, the interpretive ...[which] investigates culture or cultural meanings, and attempts to get at those meanings from within [e.g., Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Clifford Geertz...], ...and the naturalistic or empirical ...[which] investigates the social system or social structures and functions from without [e.g., August Comte, Talcott Parsons, Nikolas Luhmann, Gerhard Lenski, etc.]” (Wilber, 2000, 138).
Thus, Hilary Putnam maintains, “Meaning is interactional. The environment itself plays a role in determining what a speaker’s words, or a community’s words, refer to” (Goldman, 1993, 612). Both of these aspects - the constructionist (e.g. labeling theory) and the objective, structural/functional - play a crucial role in the dynamics of deviance. Without the objective infrastructure, social construction would have no medium in which to unfold and nothing to inform its unfolding. It is the one who’s being-in-the-world flowers beyond convention and brings something novel into the world that participates in the height of positive deviance, but that deviance is informed by both the societal structures and contexts the individual must move through and reside in as well as the objective social structures that circumscribe the range of possible deviance within those structures. Likewise, pathology and pre-conventional or negative deviance must be understood as existing in both of these equally important dimensions. The differences and similarities that confine, define and direct deviance in various spheres of social and individual life are the very forces that forge these spheres and make their existence possible. Without both of these forces, present in both social-objective structural-functional and cultural-subjective interpretive-constructionist dimensions, being would be indistinguishable from nothingness.
Notes
[1] The world here is treated in general concurrence with the Wittgensteinian conception: “The world is everything that is the case” (Wittgenstein, 2003, 7).
[2] An entity, as here considered, can specify both a whole (e.g., differentiated, individual organism) and an abstracted characteristic (e.g., a given belief set), with the latter being more pertinent.
[3] Oxford dictionary offers the following among its definitions of convention: (1) a general agreement, esp. agreement on social behaviour etc. by implicit consent of the majority. (2) a custom or customary practice, esp. an artificial or formal one (Hanks, 2003, 313). Norms are “the specific cultural expectations for how to act in a given situation” (Anderson & Taylor, 2008, 62). On this account, norms can be viewed as that aspect of convention which provides the modus operandi for existing as a member within it. Values are “the abstract standards in a society or group that define the ideal principles of what is desirable and morally correct” (Anderson & Taylor, 2008, 63). Thus, values constitute the framework of normative structure and follow from convention as a necessary subset.
References
Adler, (2006). Constructions of deviance: Social power, context, and interaction. Belmont, CA: Thomas Wadsworth.
Blum, F. H. (1944).Max Weber's postulate of "freedom" from value judgements. The American Journal of Sociology. 50, 46-52.
Goldman, A. I. (Ed.). (1993). Readings in philosophy and cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Hanks , P. (Ed.). (2003). Oxford english reference dictionary. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.
Heidegger, M. (2000). Introduction to metaphysics (G. Fried & R. Polt, Trans). New Haven, C.T.: Yale Nota Bene book. (Original work published 1953)
Kail R., & Cavanaugh, J. (2007). Human development: A life-span view. Australia: Wadsworth.
Macionis, J. J. (2007). Sociology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
Shaw, G. B. More quotes by george bernard shaw. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from elise.com Web site: http://www.elise.com/quotes/quotes/shawquotes.htm.
VandenBos, G. (Ed.). Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. (2007). In APA Dictionary of Psychology (1st ed.), Washington DC: American Psychological Association.
Wilber, K. (2000). A brief history of everything. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Wittgenstein, L. (2003). Tractatus logico-philosophicus (C.K. Ogden, Trans). New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc. (Original work published 1922)
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