Sociological Approaches to Deviance

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the various approaches commonly used by sociologists to determine whether or not certain behaviors are indeed deviant or not deviant. The paper explores all six of them and suggests that a combination of the reactive and group evaluation approaches into something known as the synthetic approach (the last of the six approaches delineated in the paper) is the most effective way of determining what is actual deviance.

From the Paper:

"There are a number of means by which sociologists endeavor to determine whether or not certain behaviors are deviant or otherwise. Specifically, there are six of them: statistical, absolutist, legalistic, reactive, group evaluation and synthetic. Of these, the last one, because it combines the worthiest features of both reactive and group evaluation approaches, is the one which comes nearest to accurately determining which acts are deviant and which acts are not. With this in mind, it is to a discussion of this important issue that we now turn. Before proceeding too far, it must be noted each of these approaches to determining whether or not an act is deviant or not deviant has something which to commend itself. For example, statistical approaches to deviance have merit insofar as actions which fall outside what would be done by the majority of the populace are, in a very strict..."

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