Deviance & Social Control
Summer 2020, Asynchronous Course
Course Description
This course explores the social construction of boundaries between "normality/conformity" and "deviance" in American society. It spotlights relationships between individuals and institutions, wherein “deviant behavior” is defined, authorized, managed, and enforced. Of particular concern is the relationship between dominant forms of religious, legal, and medical social control and gendered, racialized and global economic structures of power. The course provides an in-depth examination of theoretical perspectives that have historically been used to explain, study and control deviance, to either the benefit or detriment of American society.
Textbook& Readings
Most readings for this course will be available on Canvas. In addition, you will purchase a copy of Jon Ronson’s: So You’ve been Publicly Shamed. (Any edition)
We will be reading this text alongside our course content. You are welcome to purchase the audiobook if you prefer that to the text. You’ll be asked to reflect on the text, and your participation in discussions about the book will be evaluated, but you will not be asked to produce block text quotations, so an audio format will suffice if this is your preference.
Canvas
Canvas is the Learning Management System (LMS) at Boston College, designed to help faculty and students share ideas, collaborate on assignments, discuss course readings and materials, submit assignments, and much more - all online. As a Boston College student, you should familiarize yourself with this important tool. If you’re unfamiliar with how to use Canvas, please reach out to the instructor in the first week of the semester.
Students will be exposed to a broad spectrum of deviance & social control ideologies throughout Western history, and will have the opportunity to consider contemporary case studies that illuminate the social benefits and the troublesome impacts of these philosophies.
Students will develop their own informed opinions about their culture’s contemporary orientation to deviance and conformity, and will develop a critical appreciation of the influence of these trends on their own lives
Students will become more articulate participants in both formal debates and casual conversation about social control in American political history
Students will discern the relationship between this history of social control in America, and their own vocation.
Course Goals
Students will be exposed to influential, historical ideologies about deviance, conformity, and social control, from each century of American philosophy (16th - 21st).
Students will critically consider these philosophies in their historical context, problematize their intended and unintended consequences, and consider their connection to modern institutions that govern deviant behavior.
Students will become familiar with four historical “sites” of institutionalized social control: the legitimation of demonic possession (16th & 17th cent), the emergence of American prisons (18th century), the medicalization of criminology (19th century), and the theorization of crowd control and propaganda (20th century).
Students will integrate their understanding of this history with an examination of America’s contemporary prison system by developing a midterm advocacy tool in the form of a campaign text, image, or flyer.
Students will cultivate research techniques, critical thinking skills, and audience-aware communication abilities, as they articulate the relationship between course content and a topic of their choice in a final research project.
Students will develop their own informed opinions about their culture’s contemporary orientation to deviance and conformity, and will develop a critical appreciation of the influence of these trends on their own lives through journal reflections and virtual discussion.
Course Objectives
Assignments
In course assignments, students will be scored based on their command of the course material as well as the critical thinking and writing skills they display. This course involves four forms of assessment:
Module Discussion Participation and Guided Journal Reflections (60%, 15% per module)
Within each module, students will be invited to post discussion questions, participate in discussions begun by others, and submit guided journal reflections to the canvas website. These assignments are embedded throughout each of the four modules, and each module has 15 points of these “engagement” points” embedded in it (totaling to 60). Entries should be directly tied to the text, pointing to a specific quote, episode, or passage. But more specific directions are included in the prompts.
Midterm Assignment (20%)
After completing the first two modules, students will complete a midterm assignment in the form of an “advocacy memo.” In the broadest sense, these advocacy memos will be a response to the question: Do prisons improve or degrade communities?
More specifically, each student will imagine themselves as stakeholders in a small city. A developer has proposed the construction of a private prison just inside the city boundary, and because of the resulting zoning changes, a pubic hearing will be held for community members.
Each student will choose which stakeholder perspective they’d like to inhabit. They can represent:
A local racial justice nonprofit
A local law enforcement officer
A member of the city council
An employee with the property developer
An unemployed citizen
A social worker at a nearby parole office
Students will produce an “advocacy memo” on behalf of their organization: a brief, but well researched, 1-page handout that can be distributed to community members at the public hearing. This memo will be a graphically compelling handout (with text, images, and relevant references), and written from one of the perspectives listed above. It must (1) advocate that community members either support or reject the development of the prison, (2) represent the perspective of their chosen stakeholder group, (3) rely on at least 4 peer-reviewed journal articles relating to the social, political, or economic impact of prisons on American communities, and (4) inspire citizens with their clear, visually-compelling, easy to follow message.
Final Project (20%)
For this final assignment, each student will select a practice or a behavior that has transitioned (either across time or context) from "deviant" status to an accepted status, or from an accepted status to a deviant one. In the past students have chosen topics as varied as marijuana possession, streaking, public dancing, and unaccompanied women’s travel.
Each student will accomplish 3 goals:
Provide a short history of the practice and its transition into or out of "deviant" status
Articulate the framework(s) that legitimized that behavior's deviant status (spiritual, classical criminal, pathological, economic, etc.)
Present an educated explanation of how and why that transition occurred in the given time/context, comparing and contrasting it to other similar examples discussed in class
Students will be expected to produce:
An engaging multi-media presentation (recorded via Zoom)
A 1-page, single-spaced history of their chosen topic and the theoretical frames that enabled its transition into or out of "deviant" status
An easy to follow 1-page handout for their peers outlining the basics of their presentation
The grading system is as follows:
A (4.00), A- (3.67) B+ (3.33), B (3.00) B- (2.67) C (2.00) F (.00)
All students can access final grades through Agora after the grading deadline each semester. Transcripts are available through the Office of Student Services.
Grading
Late work will be accepted within a week of the deadline but will lose one half letter grade for each day of lateness following the deadline. Exceptions are made very infrequently and under special circumstances.
Deadlines & Late Work
This class will be taught asynchronously, so “attendance” will not be monitored as such. Students are required, however, to complete each module on time, and to engage with the content via graded discussion boards and graded journal entries, which are clearly identified throughout the modules.
Attendance
The course is made up of four modules, a midterm assignment and a final project.
Each module will address one Deviance Framework: A system of logic that has been widely used at some point in American history to know, identify, understand, or correct "deviant" behavior."
Each Deviance Framework will be examined through its historical origins, its imprint in historical archives, its manifestations in contemporary politics, and its greatest critics in philosophy and the social sciences.
Within each module, students will engage with:
A modular, interactive lecture on a deviance framework, its emergence in history, its identifiable features, and its basic logic
An archival exercise, where students are guided through a close reading of an archival text that relies on the given deviance framework
Graded facilitated discussions on Canvas
Graded journal prompts on the week’s framework
An engagement with Jon Ronson’s book
A Summary of the Unit and Short Debrief