Been busy again these few days.

There wasnt wushu on sunday, so I actually called up bowei zhigao and cheuck to hang out and chill, did all my assignments on sat already. So cheuck came for a haircut before we went to see zhigao at tampines swimming complex. He was with tat heng, so after hanging out awhile we went back to my house to enjoy martabaks and played mahjongs and pokers.... awesome simple fun light day~

So there along the way to my house, we saw this happy family playing basketball. Father, mother, 3 children and the maid was playing basketball happily. The father was expectedly dribbling the ball, gliding through and pass them, and they were all having a good time. Smiles that is so mild and gentle, that in within, lies the warmth of a harmonious family, like a tranquil candle flame, luminous yet nondestructive.

Anyway today in sociology we learned about deviance. Deviance is behaviors that violates social norms, social as in current society, regardless or morality and etc. Context, person, or place in which an action is performed affects the judgement of deviance act.

By symbolic interactionist theory, specifically the control theory, our bonds to society through family, friends etc stop us from being deviant, thus it is when the bonds are weakened that we start to deviate. Another way to explain deviance, by differential association is that we learn to follow the lead of the groups we mix with. These 2 ways are rather similar, just that one is that the group tie an individual down to avoid defiance, another is that the group initiates defiance. The labeling theory is then rather interesting, its like a self fulfilling prophecy, whereby firstly society label them as deviant, thus leads to many problems that made deviance happen despite the fact that we could actually prevent it. Examples are yellow ribbon, where society deny them of second chance, thus they revert back to crime.

By functionalist perspective, Robert Merton states in his anomie theory that unequal access to society’s institutionalised means blocked success in achieving societal goal, thus people feel strain and feel anomie and face institutional discrimination. This means some work hard doesnt succeed, some doesnt work hard succeed, resulting in some dispirited, and their reaction to it result in deviance.

SG = Societal Goals (aims that are commonly shared among majority)
IM = Institutional Means (methods that society recognize as acceptable)

Conformity is accept SG, accept IM, meaning that this is not deviance, and is common amongst us like working hard, get a job, aim 5C.. etc...

Innovation is accept SG yet rejects IM, they think that there are other means to achieve the goals, for example drug dealers, they earn by other methods that society deem underhand.

Ritualism is to reject SG yet accepts IM. Although this falls under one of the 4 deviance paths, this might not always result in deviance. This is simply doing things for other abstract goals. In cases where people work hard in things for other reason but to achieve SG, is when they already have attained in other fields, and just do it for interest, to fulfill Self-Actualization in Maslow's Hierachy of Needs, to achieve Ego Integrity by Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development. Thus, we cant say these people are in deviance, even in cases where they simply want to jump stage, they did not really do any harm. However these are deviance because they simply violates the social norms, which means they go against the flow, they lived in their own world, their utopia, their idealism.

Retreatism is simply escapist. They reject SG and reject IM. These are drug addicts, dropouts, etc, that society more or less considered hopeless. However of course there might be hundreds of reason behind their behaviors, or simply not inspired enough.

By conflict perspective, the ones in power set their own definitions of deviance on other groups to protect their own position & privileges in society like using law as an instrument of oppression to punish the crimes of the poor severely while diverting legal attention away from the crimes of the rich.

Food for thoughts:

In war, winning a war is heroic, but to the losing side, the winning side is savager, so to victory side is acceptable, but still the fact is that killing is still inhumanly.

Many times, we have strong reaction to deviance but explaination is not clear cut or irrational.