Deviance in our lives !!!

This chapter we are talking about Deviance and Social Control. A deviance is   behavior that does not confirm to basic cultural norms and expectations. It basically shapes from society which means that is not going to please everyone all the time. I believe that it is really important since we are all surrounded of deviances and we barely noticed. Sometimes I think we know we are committing a deviance but still do it and others times we just don’t realized it. In the past days I being noticing some deviance that I committed as well as others. Let me share:

 I work in Mexican restaurant in the noho area. Everyone’s knows Spanish and speak it. I realized that is kind of the official language in the restaurant which is a deviance since we supposed to speak English since we are in America. This is a great example of what normalization (shift in which previuosly deviant behaviors become accepted and conventional.)

Last time I was in the subway and started thinking about homeless. I always believed that they are lazy that’s why they end up like that but then I thought about the Labeling Theory (deviance as the result of how others interpret a behavior and that individuals who are labeled deviant often internalize this judgment as part of self-identity) which mad me realized that maybe after losing all they believed that they are lazy and this is why they don’t work hard to get what they want.

At work I have a very close friend she’s 19 and she’s only working not going to school. She will fit in the loner deviance which claims that who commit the deviant act without the support of other participants. Since she decided not to go to school her mom kicker out, but anyway she stayed strong with her decision.

Since her mom kick she out she decides to go a live with her girlfriend. Then we started to talk about the stigma (the shame attached to a behavior or status that’s is consider socially unaccepted or discrediting). She told me that her mom didn’t accepted her being gay because it not good on the eyes of God and that this is why she’s lazy and don’t want to go to school.

Yesterday I was talking with one of my good old friend from Ecuador. We remember all those fun times we had and how we used to get drunk. I remember I start drinking mainly because all of my friends did it. This could be an example of differentia association theory. According to this theory deviance is learned through interaction with other people involved in deviant behavior.

In Ecuador recent new I found out that they are going to abolish the rule of not drinking on Sundays, mainly because everyone wants and drinks on Sundays. This could be called a decriminalization which is the process of making and illegal action legal.

There was this article that I read yesterday called the positive Function of the Underserving Poor: Uses of the Underclass in America by Herbert J Gans which made me reconsider the way I see society and the economic system. The article talked about 13 elements that are based and associated with poor people. Basically it explains that is the way that we see poor people that make them poorer and keep them there. I thought that it is us the ones that are supporting this system, which I think is unfair. So it is good to be deviant in this case? Not thinking as everyone else and not support the system.

It very complicated to fight any system but this is how reformation always starts.