Blog Post #6: Dr. King the Deviant

Freedom of speech is the expression of free thought through a vocal medium. To do so without being susceptible to persecution is a natural right. My current ability to write this statement is an expression of the First amendment in and of itself. In the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. was a deviant to American society. Martin Luther King Jr. simply used the power of rhetoric. The act itself is not undesirable or devious. In that era and in some ways today, being of color is deviant within itself. The use of freedom of speech by a colored individual was deemed obscene and socially unacceptable. To white Americans, he was a radical and a menace. To many outside the United States, this wasn’t the case. This is an example of how deviance itself is universal but this particular act was considered deviant in one place but not another.

Blog Post #5: Medicalization

The topic of medicalization is one that is extremely important to me. As an aspiring physician, I hope to one day reduce the amount of individuals that suffer from diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, which are ironically preventable. My focus should be to prolong life and prevent disease from ever emerging at all. However, medicalization has led to a focus on treating diseases (many of which are preventable, as I mentioned). The shift from a style of “solo practice” to a more business, bureaucratic nature of medicine creates a demand for diseases to be treated and problems to be solved. As Conrad and Schneider mention, more and more human conditions are being medicalized as health care becomes more about chasing capital. Above is a trailer of the documentary “Food Matters” which, aside from placing emphasis on the need for nutrition advocacy, delves into the need for medicine to be less profit and politically driven.

Blog Post #4: Society & the Individual

Howard S. Becker’s “Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance”, particularly his writings on marijuana use, touches on some critical points that relate to the “influence of the society on the individual” argument. Groups often have a large impact on individuals and their actions. They have the ability to impact the behaviors (in Becker’s case the behavior is negative) of individuals. Over time, individuals begin to embody the characteristics, thoughts, and desires of those around them that introduce them into the deviant behavior. They share those motivations and essentially become part of that group they once were separated from. Although this process may seem simple, Becker discusses that the individual still has much control over whether he/she chooses to follow through and actually embrace the behavior; specific things must occur in order for this to happen. I consider these things as “checkpoints” of sorts. An example of one these checkpoints that Becker discusses is learning to smoke marijuana correctly. He considers this the first thing that must occur in order for someone to move forward and later become a habitual marijuana smoker.

Blog Post #3: Frank Lucas- A Unique Case of Stigma

Frank Lucas, former drug kingpin, is an interesting example of a stigmatized individual. The biopic “American Gangster”, featuring Denzel Washington, depicted Lucas’ life. It delves into his inner struggles and motivations. The above photo is from one of the more memorable scenes in the film, where Lucas is “schooling” his younger brothers on how to approach life and conduct their businesses. In the midst of doing so, he sees a man that owes him money and he steps out of the coffee shop that they were sitting in, to have a word with him. The man doesn’t Lucas very seriously, and Lucas impatiently shoots him the head in broad daylight in front of everyone in the neighborhood. Lucas, unaffected, then walks back into the coffee shop and continues to educate his brothers on how to live. To those watching the film, Lucas is clearly a criminal and because of this he is stigmatized in our eyes. To those in Lucas’ direct environment, he may not be. This is because he acknowledges that he is stigmatized and compensates for that fact. The first way Lucas avoids being discredited is by using a disidentifier. Lucas’ disidentifier would be his suit and usual dress clothes; he uses his suit as a means to display a false, positive image of himself. In a similar sense, Lucas purchases a multitude of luxurious things to display a certain status. He buys a large mansion and luxury cars. This provides him with a sense of elevated social status; those things would be considered examples of prestige symbols. These are ways in which Lucas attempts to “correct” his stigmas.

Blog Post #2: Gangs & Deviance

While reading “‘Social Junk’ vs ‘Social Dynamite'”, I could not help but to think about gangs. In the United States, gangs arose out of a need, namely a need to protect the interests and rights of those that were marginalized. During that period, those individuals were African-Americans and they were protecting themselves from the government (specifically the police). In the article, the author mentions the Black Panthers and their role. The Black Panther party, a socialist group established in the late 1960s, are indeed the epitome of social dynamite; they served as the precursor for today’s gangs such as the Crips and the Bloods. Although gangs like the Crips and the Bloods are currently considered equivalent to domestic terrorists, they are very much the products social strain. The documentary “Crips and Bloods: Made in America” delves into and dissects this issue. The title itself suggests that gangs were born here and that they are in a sense, America’s fault. As Robert Merton suggests in his strain theory and his modes of adaptation to anomie, that individuals who experience a disconnect between socially prescribed goals and the means to achieving them feel a sense of alienation and often deviate from the norm to compensate for that. This is exactly what happened and continues to happen in the US and is why gangs were indeed born. Gangs today like the Panthers back in the 1960s, are still just protecting their interests.

Blog Post #1: The Purge and Deviance

As I was reading Kai Erikson’s “Notes on the Sociology of Deviance”, particularly the last paragraph, I could not help but think about the various films and books that have been made that include the subject of deviance. I immediately thought of “The Purge”, a movie which was recently released. Although I have yet to actually see the movie, the trailers seem to be loaded with sociological material.
In the movie, individuals are granted one day out of the entire year to commit any crimes that they please; they attribute this “free-pass” to lower crime and a stable economy. This society allows deviance to take place in order to maintain the stability of the system and its norms. It seems that in this society, deviance is very much existent and that this is a means to regulating deviant traffic, as Erikson would argue. Therefore, deviance is very necessary and helps to define the society and how it functions. This too reminds me of Emile Durkheim’s “The Normal and the Pathological”. Durkheim says, “Crime is, then, necessary; it is bound up with the fundamental conditions of all social life, and by that very fact it is useful, because these conditions of which it is a part are themselves indispensable to the normal evolution of morality and law.” Thus, as previously mentioned, the society depicted in “The Purge” needs crime so that it can survive.