Functionalist Approach To Deviance Essay

Deviance is when an individual’s behavior is different from the social norms and expectations in society (Schaefer, 2015). According to Fulcher & Scott (2003), “the sociological concept of deviance” is “to judge behavior as deviant is to judge it from the standpoint of the norms of a particular social group.” For example, where I am from in Ohio, I can remember while growing up, a few individuals in my school were homosexual and because it was seen as deviant behavior, and because we lived in a small town, this behavior resulted in them getting beat up by bigots. There are three approaches to deviance are functionalist perspective, interactionist perspective, and lastly conflict perspective.
The functionalist theorist approach towards deviance can be described as creating social stability, displaying normative or non-normative behaviors that could have positive or negative results (Schaefer, 2015). For example, relating to a personal story, when I

For example, I had a good friend in high school that was prone to getting into trouble and occasionally use drugs. After high school I joined the U.S. Navy, moved away, and traveled the world; several years later I went back home and decided to pay him a visit. When I saw him he looked rough and worked a minimum wage job and his drug problem kept him in and out of rehab. While hang out with him he took me to a drug dealers house, which I was not aware of at the moment. Once I saw all the drugs lying around in this house I left the house because I did not want to jeopardize my job with the government. Then I started thinking that if I had not joined the Navy and continued hanging out with this individual it would become normal to be around this type of environment. Therefore, in an interactionist perspective this deviant behavior would have been normalized in my point of