Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance

 Notes from Kai Erikson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance

 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966)

-- accepts general theories of Emile Durkheim and George Herbert Mead that deviance is necessary to society, that deviance performs necessary social functions.  According to Durkheim, crime and other forms of deviance are "an integral part of all healthy societies"

-- crime/deviance "may actually perform a needed service to society by drawing people together in a common posture of anger and indignation.  The deviant individual violates rules of conduct which the rest of the community holds in high respect; and when these people come together to express their outrage over the offenses and to bear witness against the offender, they develop a tighter bond of solidarity"

--"the deviant act, then, creates a sense of mutuality among the people of a community by supplying a focus for group feeling . . . deviance makes people more alert to the interests they share in common and draws attention to those values which constitute the collective conscience of the community"

--"deviance refers to conduct which the people of a group consider so dangerous or embarrassing or irritating that they bring special sanctions to bear against the persons who exhibit it."  deviance is culturally specific and is defined by the group

Much madness is divinest sense

To a discerning eye,

Much sense, the starkest madness.

'Tis the majority

In this, as all, prevail:

Assent, and you are sane;

Demur, you're straightway dangerous

And handled with a chain.

(Emily Dickinson)

--"it is by no means evident that all acts considered deviant in society are in fact (or even in principle) harmful to group life"

--as a special place, a community is set apart by its occupation of group space--both geographical and cultural.  Communities, then, have geographical and cultural boundaries.

Communities exist by maintaining their boundaries, thus keeping intact a shared identity.

"A human community can be said to maintain boundaries, then, in a sense that its members tend to confine themselves to a particular radius of activity and to regard any conduct which drifts outside that radius as somehow inappropriate or immoral."

--"the only material found in a society for marking boundaries is the behavior of its members--or rather, the networks of interaction which link these members together in regular social relations."

--"the deviant is a person whose activities have moved outside the margins of the group, and when the community calls him [or her] to account for that vagrancy, it is making a statement about the nature and placement of its boundaries."

--"members of a community inform one another about the placement of their boundaries by participating in the confrontations which occur when persons who venture out to the edges of the group are met by policing agents whose special business is to guard the cultural integrity of the community."

--"deviant forms of behavior, by marking the outer edges of group life, give the inner structure its special character and thus supply the framework within which the people of a group develop an orderly sense of their own cultural identity."

societies, then, do not seek to obliterate or erase deviant behavior, but to contain it.  deviants are assigned a role and are required to maintain this role.  Trials, as an elaborate and formal ritual, are necessary in the public assigning of deviant roles.  Deviants are not really expected to change.

--"the deviant and his [her] more conventional counterpart live in much the same world of symbol and meaning, sharing a similar set of interests in the universe around them.  The thief and his [her] victim share a common respect for the value of property; the heretic and the inquisitor speak much the same language and are keyed to the same religious mysteries"

--"the deviant and the conformist, then, are creatures, of the same culture, inventions of the same imagination"

--"if deviation and conformity are so alike, it is not surprising that deviant behavior should seem to appear in a community at exactly those points where it is most feared.  Men [and women] who fear witches soon find themselves surrounded by them; men who become jealous of private property soon encounter eager thieves.  And if it is not always easy to know whether fear creates the deviance or deviance the fear"