What makes a behaviour, identity, or person "deviant"? Who gets to decide what is normal, appropriate, respectable, healthy, dangerous, or unacceptable?
Rather than treating deviance as an inherent characteristic of particular behaviours or groups, this course examines the social processes through which normality and deviance are created, maintained, experienced, governed, and contested.
Drawing on classical and contemporary sociological theory, we will explore how social norms develop, how boundaries are constructed and enforced, how people and behaviours become labelled and stigmatized, and how institutions participate in processes of social regulation and control.
Throughout the semester, theoretical perspectives will be applied to historical and contemporary cases involving areas such as substance use, homelessness, mental health, sexuality, crime and criminalization, health and risk, public space, media, and other contested forms of behaviour and identity.
Particular attention will be paid to the relationships among deviance, stigma, identity, power, inequality, social control, and resistance.
Who gets to define deviance - and with what consequences?
Rather than treating deviance as an inherent characteristic of particular behaviours or groups, this course examines the social processes through which normality and deviance are created, maintained, experienced, governed, and contested.
Drawing on classical and contemporary sociological theory, we will explore how social norms develop, how boundaries are constructed and enforced, how people and behaviours become labelled and stigmatized, and how institutions participate in processes of social regulation and control.
Throughout the semester, theoretical perspectives will be applied to historical and contemporary cases involving areas such as substance use, homelessness, mental health, sexuality, crime and criminalization, health and risk, public space, media, and other contested forms of behaviour and identity.
Particular attention will be paid to the relationships among deviance, stigma, identity, power, inequality, social control, and resistance.
Who gets to define deviance - and with what consequences?
- Teacher: Lilly Nicole