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166
of analogy, locates its source within the individual, thus preventing us from seeing the judgment itself as a
crucial part of the phenomenon.
135     (15) Some sociologists also use a model of deviance based essentially on the medical notions of health
and disease. They look at a society, or some part of a society, and ask whether there are any processes
going on in it that tend to reduce its stability, thus lessening its chance of survival. They label such
140 processes deviant or identify them as symptoms of social disorganization. They discriminate between those
features of society which promote stability (and thus are «functional») and those which disrupt stability
(and thus are «disfunctional»). Such a view has the great virtue of pointing to areas of possible trouble in a
society of which people may not be aware.
145    (16) But it is harder in practice than it appears to be in theory to specify what is functional and what
dysfunctional for a society or social group. The question of what the purpose or goal (function) of a group
150 is and, consequently, what things will help or hinder the achievement of that purpose, is very often a
political question. Factions within the group disagree and maneuver to have their own definition of the
group's function accepted. The function of the group or organization, then, is decided in political conflict,
155 not given in the nature of the organization. If this is true, then it is likewise true that the questions of what
rules are to be enforced, what behavior regarded as deviant, and which people labeled as outsiders must
also be regarded as political. The functional view of deviance, by ignoring the political aspect of the
phenomenon, limits our understanding.
160    (17) Another sociological view is more relativistic. It identifies deviance as the failure to obey group
rules. Once we have described the rules a group enforces on its members, we can say with some precision
whether or not a person has violated them and is thus, on this view, deviant.
165
(18) This view is closest to my own, but it fails to give sufficient weight to the ambiguities that arise in
deciding which rules are to be taken as the yardstick against which behavior is measured and judged
deviant. A society has many groups, each with its own set of rules, and people belong to many-groups
170 simultaneously. A person may break the rules of one group by the very act of abiding by the rules of
another group. Is he, then, deviant? Proponents of this definition may object that while ambiguity may arise
with respect to the rules peculiar to one or another group in society, there are some rules that are very
175 generally agreed to by everyone, in which case the difficulty does not arise. This, of course, is a question of
fact, to be settled by empirical research. I doubt there are many such areas of consensus and think it wiser
to use a definition that allows us to deal with both ambiguous and unambiguous situations.
  Deviance and the Responses of Others 
180
(19) The sociological view I have just discussed defines deviance as the infraction of some agreed-upon
185 rule. It then goes on to ask who breaks rules, and to search for the factors in  their personalities and life
situations that might account for the infractions. This assumes that those who have broken a rule constitute
a homogeneous category, because they have committed the same deviant act.
190    (20) Such an assumption seems to me to ignore the central fact about deviance: it is created by society. I
do not mean this in the way it is ordinarily understood, in which the causes of deviance are located in the
social situation of the deviant or in «social factors» which prompt his action. I mean, rather, that social
195 groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those
rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality
of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions
200 to an «offender». The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is
behavior that people so label.
(21) Since deviance is, among other things, a consequence of the responses of others to a person's act,
205 students of deviance cannot assume that they are dealing with a homogeneous  category when they study
people who have been labeled deviant. That is, they cannot assume that these people have actually
committed a deviant act or broken some rule, because the process of labeling may not be infallible; some
210 people may be labeled deviant who in fact have net broken a rule. Furthermore, they cannot assume that the
category of those labeled deviant will contain all those who actually have broken a rule, for many offenders
may escape apprehension and thus fail to be included in the population of «deviants» they study. Insofar as
215 the category lacks homogeneity and fails to include all the  cases that belong in it, one cannot reasonably
expect to find common factor of personality or life situation that will account for the supposed deviance.
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