Testing Normativity

Since it first appeared in sociology in the 1950s, deviance has become a central concept in sociological analyses. It is linked to the supremacy of structural functionalism, yet it also maintained a central role in the critical and constructionist perspectives of the 1970s. Since then, the concept seems to have lost its central position in sociological and criminological analyses of social developments and regulation. New concepts appeared in its place such as “risk,” “risk behavior,” “problem behavior,” and “antisocial behaviors.” Starting from the American debate about “the death of deviance,” this paper traces the development of the concept of deviance and criticism about it, and proposes a critical examination of new concepts. This paper hypothesizes that the new concepts have to be analyzed as special forms of deviance and normativity. Of course, one can find new forms of social regulation and of building social order, yet as institutions devoted to dealing with undesirable or disturbing behavior, they must be interpreted in the perspective of normativity and deviance.