What is “normal?”
What is “true?” What is “good” or “bad?” What is “beautiful?” What is
“success?” What is “moral” or “immoral?”
Everyone seems to have answers for those questions, but how do we know
what we know? Different societies and cultures define their realities
differently as they hold and conform to different beliefs and values.
Individuals who belong to a social group are expected to behave in accordance
to, as Emile Durkheim claimed, a “collective conscience.” Anyone whose
behaviors and even biological characteristics don’t fit categories of what is
judged to be acceptable and desirable are consequently deviant or
non-conformist individuals. A society
categorizes individuals who are or aren’t part of it, their behaviors and their
characteristics. What is the source of that categorization or labeling or who
created it? How does it start and end?
Through
socialization I have developed a sense of self or social identity and learned a
“collective conscience.” I have learned
or been conditioned to feel ashamed or embarrassed about myself when my behaviors
didn’t measure up to social expectations of what is appropriate. I remember
eating in public at a restaurant with my family when I was twelve or thirteen
years old. I was hungry and the food looked so delicious and as soon as the
waiter put the food on the table, I immediately started to put some food on my
plate. My father looked at me with eyes of disapproval and said nothing. The
barbecue meat tasted so delicious and as I was eating so enthusiastically, he
looked at me again and said “the food is not going to run away, where are your
manners? Everyone is looking at you!” He was embarrassed about how I was eating
and I felt pretty embarrassed after he spoke to me as well. What is the source
of shame or embarrassment? Is it social
disapproval? Why do we care so much about what others think about us? What
standards do we use to regulate our behaviors and judge those of others?
“Labeling
Theory” claims that deviance is rooted in how people interpret a behavior and
not in the behavior itself. How we perceive or label and treat an individual
may lead the individual to internalize the judgment and accept it as a self-identity.
Labeling a child or someone can affect and influence how they see and feel
about themselves. The labeling may create a self-fulfilling prophecy or
influence them to behave in accordance to the internalized belief about who
they are and should act like.
In my childhood, I used to
stutter and going to the playground was not often a joyful or fun experience;
the other kids would joke about me and call me a “stutterer.” At school, I
experienced the same conflicts and got into many fights as well. My parents
were called to go to the school or to talk to the neighbors’ parents very
often. My parents always supported me on that matter. They would rather deal
with me beating up the other kids than to be beaten up by them and go home
crying. They knew that my reaction was based on the labeling and the jokes that
the other kids would make about me, but they advised me not to care about what
they were thinking or saying, because I was handsome and smart. I didn't understand the extent that I should care about what others were thinking or saying about me. I practiced judo
and swimming competitively and my parents would praise me in front of others, telling
them that I was a champion. I had excellent grades at school and my parents
often received letters of acknowledgment of my academic performance from the
school as well, which reinforced my belief that I was smart.
My
parents often told me that my stuttering would soon disappear, but decided to
take me to see a speech specialist. The speech specialist said that I didn’t
have any problem and that my difficulty to articulate and transition from one
sound to the other was due to a tension on the muscle of my articulation that
everyone experience during anxiety or nervousness. Why am I sharing that childhood experience?
It is a great example of socialization, labeling, and self-identity. I had supportive parents that praised me and
made me to believe that I was a worthy individual. They influenced me to see
myself in a positive way when compared to others. They taught me to recognize
socially desirable behaviors and characteristics as a way to neutralize the negative
impact of any negative labeling such as “the stutter” label and jokes on my
sense of self. In that way I didn’t isolate myself and was able to interact
with others in socially acceptable ways. As a kid, I wanted to be friends with
the other kids, play with them and to enjoy their company. As I grew older, I
learned to find something about them to label as well instead of using
aggression to gain respect. Sometimes, I would just disregard their jokes and
even laugh about them or make fun others as well, but I never appreciated it. My stuttering today is almost
not-existent, at least exteriorly, because I have learned to control myself as
much as possible to speak deliberately. I
have learned to recognize tension and be aware of my emotions so I can regulate
them as well to express my thoughts and feelings effectively.
The
pressures we all suffer to conform to social standards exert a form of control
over our behaviors. Through
socialization we learn the consequences of not conforming to what is expected
from us. We learn to regulate our own behaviors to fit the categories of what
is acceptable and desirable. For Durkheim, regulating ourselves is necessary
for social functioning and for our own life satisfaction. Therefore, to succeed
within society we must regulate ourselves.
Most individuals have the goal of financial success within a capitalist
society and conform to achieve that goal, but due to lack of resources such as
limited higher education and job opportunities prevent them from accomplishing
it. In “Positive Functions of the
Undeserving Poor; Used of the Under-class in America,” Herbert J. Gans argues
that people who lack economic resources are often categorized as
“undeserving” and consequently not
receive public aid in order to maintain themselves and to improve their life
conditions. He highlights that even though the effect of a lack of jobs is
significantly determined by economic major forces; those people are accused of
being lazy, immoral, unmotivated and judged or labeled to be “undeserving.”
According
to Gans, undeservingness has positive functions, not for those who lack
economic resources, but for people, groups, and institutions which range from a
moderate income to a wealthy one. In other words, the wealthy ones benefit from
the poor or “undeserving” ones. To stigmatize or label individuals may be a
strategy that those who label others use to justify and explain their
privileges. They protect their benefits by establishing a moral inequality
without relevant evidence. The wealthy are the deserving class and the poor are
the undeserving one represents a class hierarchy that serves as “Normative
Function” as Gans claims, that justifies the moral legitimacy of those who hold
the higher status. Deviance depends on a particular social context and the
stratification social system that allows those in positions of power to
arbitrarily label a behavior, status, or individual characteristic as
unacceptable, undesirable, or deviant. Stigmatized individuals often have to
face discrimination, and limited social, economic, and political opportunities.
We
have to be aware of the extent that social norms function to control,
constrain, and inhibit our actions and why. We have to be aware of how social expectations
have conditioned us to think and feel about ourselves and others. A behavior or
characteristic is judged to be good or bad, superior or inferior, acceptable or
unacceptable, or “normal” when compared to a certain standard which is provided
by a culture or dominant ideology. Rational and conscious deviance like disobedience
may also be a powerful force to promote change and innovation.
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