Deviance refers to behaviors, beliefs, or conditions that violate social norms and invite negative social reactions. It is not an intrinsic property of acts but a product of social definition — what counts as deviant varies by culture, context, and historical period. Labeling theory (Becker, Lemert) argues that deviance is created through the social process of labeling: primary deviance is norm violation, but secondary deviance arises when an individual internalizes the deviant label and organizes their identity around it. Social control refers to the mechanisms—formal (law, police, prisons) and informal (gossip, shaming, exclusion)—by which societies enforce conformity and respond to deviance.
Apply labeling theory to the career of a 'deviant' — how does official labeling (arrest, diagnosis, conviction) shape subsequent behavior? Compare the medicalization of deviance (treating social problems as medical conditions) versus criminalization as competing control strategies.
From your study of social norms and values, you know that norms are shared expectations about appropriate behavior and that they vary by culture, context, and historical period. Deviance is defined relative to those norms — it is behavior (or appearance, or belief) that violates them and triggers a negative social reaction. The critical sociological move is to stop asking "what makes someone deviant?" and start asking "who gets labeled deviant, under what conditions, by whom, and with what consequences?" This shift relocates deviance from a property of acts or persons to a property of social processes. An act is not deviant in itself; it becomes deviant when it is so defined by those with the power to apply the label.
Labeling theory, developed by Howard Becker and Edwin Lemert, traces what happens when that label is applied. Becker observed that many people engage in norm violations — minor theft, drug use, rule-bending — without becoming "deviants" in any stable sense. Primary deviance is the initial norm violation, which may be episodic and barely noticed. Secondary deviance is what happens when an official label is applied: once labeled a criminal, a mentally ill person, or a juvenile delinquent, others start treating you differently — job opportunities close, relationships change, surveillance intensifies — and you may begin to organize your identity and behavior around the label itself. The label, initially a response to behavior, becomes a cause of the very behavior it was meant to describe. This is a self-fulfilling social process, not a psychological inevitability.
Your prerequisite concept of power and authority is essential here. Not everyone who violates norms gets labeled, and not everyone who gets labeled actually violated a norm. The application of deviance labels is profoundly unequal — shaped by class, race, gender, age, and social visibility. White-collar crime (fraud, embezzlement, corporate misconduct) causes enormous social harm but is rarely prosecuted as aggressively as street crime. This is not accidental: the legal system, like other institutions, reflects the interests and perspectives of those with power to shape it. Becker's insight that "deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions" is a direct challenge to any view of the criminal justice system as neutral.
Social control encompasses the full range of mechanisms societies use to enforce conformity. Informal controls are diffuse and everyday: gossip, ridicule, social exclusion, expressions of disapproval, and ostracism. They operate without official authority and are often more powerful than formal mechanisms for regulating everyday behavior. Formal controls are institutionalized responses: police, courts, prisons, psychiatric institutions, and regulatory bodies. The expansion of formal control over behaviors that were previously managed informally — or not controlled at all — is a major feature of modern societies. Medicalization, for example, is the process by which behaviors once understood as moral failures or crimes (alcoholism, hyperactivity, compulsive gambling) are redefined as medical conditions requiring treatment. This can be simultaneously humanizing (reducing punishment) and expanding (bringing new behaviors under professional surveillance and management). Whether medicalization is progressive or controlling — or both — depends on the specific case and the power relations involved.
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