the.com/deviance
Breaking a rule someone else made, usually right before everyone copies you.
means Behavior that strays from what a society or group considers normal, expected, or acceptable.
from From Latin de- ('away, from') plus viare ('to travel'), itself rooted in via ('road, way'). To 'deviate' was literally to leave the road — wander off the established path. The word kept its traveler's logic as it moved into English: deviance is simply going off-route from the way everyone else agreed to walk.
- definition
- Behavior that violates social norms, not laws necessarily
- relativity
- Normal in one culture, deviant in the next
- durkheim's take
- Even saints would invent new sins to punish
- function
- Societies need deviants to define their own boundaries