SOC20020 Deviance Difference & Conformity

Overview of the unit

Unit code: SOC20020
Duration: 1 Teaching Period
Contact hours: Recommended 10 hours of study per week

This unit aims to:

Acquaint students with a range of sociological approaches to ‘deviance’
Equip students in how to use these approaches and to familiarise them with a number of contemporary social problems and controversies over social control
Develop students’ understanding of the ways in which individuals and their actions are defined as socially unacceptable
Analyse major forms of social control – in particular the legal system and social responses to crime and punishment – in addition to analysing the forces that construct notions of social conformity
Familiarise and respond to differential power structures and the relativity of crime and criminal behaviour
Demonstrate the ways in which sociological insights can inform policy formulation and social
engagement in these area.

Traditional sociological explanations of deviance
Sociological evolution of deviance
Rules and the normative dimension: ‘kinds of people’; ‘kinds of rules’, notions of difference
The modern context: the death of deviance
Surveillance: Foucault and the postmodern world of post-deviance
Feminism and deviance
Law and deviance
Crime, punishment and deviance
Bodies and deviance
Sex, sexuality, gender and deviance
Minds and deviance
Institutions: the church and the state and deviance

Deviance, Difference & Conformity