Deviant behavior

       Deviant behavior - Socialization not always reaches its results and then the society comes across with the individuals whose behavior is deviant, reclining from the established rules. The break the rules, deny cultural virtues and common sense.

       Deviant behavior is the result of the gap between the society’s cultural aims and socially accepted means of their achievement. For instance, wealth is a generally accepted life goal of the American culture. How to reach it? You have to get a good education, a job in a successful company…It turns out here that the majority of people can use the legal and approved way of being rich. Then some people subdue the fate, lead an honest , law obedient life ( the majority of people); others give up, turn to drinking alcohol, drugs, commit suicides; another part of people look for illegal ways to become rich, turn to crime. The other group challenge the society, its hypocrisy, deny its virtues, rebel, or prepare a revolution. Hippie movement was such a rebellion denying the society virtues.

       Sometimes the borders between deviant and normal behavior are weak. According to the research conducted by the scientists, 99% of the interviewed admitted to having broken the law at least once (not to mention breaking the moral virtues and traditions). That is the society has introduced the social control to provide following the established rules, respecting the values.

       The American scientist Tolkott Parson (1902-1979) defined three types of the social control measures - two types of isolation and rehabilitation. The first type of isolation is when a deviant is isolated from the others- a prison for hard criminals. The second type is when a deviant is limited in contacts with other people, for example, treatment in a psychic clinic. Rehabilitation is an educational work with the deviants, their preparation to life in the society after being released, to being law - obedient.

       All mentioned above are the methods of formal control which is executed by law and order state establishments. But there are also informal control such as social pressure on the deviant. Social opinion has its own measures- public condemn, boycott, break up friendship, refusal of mutual visits and etc.