Panel Discussion on "Deviance": Bill Chambliss, Aaron Doyle, and Jimmie Reeves

The foci of this issue, deviance and subculture, are notoriously slippery subjects, and in the course of putting together the issue the coordinating editors had many occasions to discuss just what constitutes "deviance." Hence the idea of inviting a panel of experts to discuss how they define deviance and normalcy and think about the role of media representations of deviance in defining what is considered deviant—and the changes in this definition over time—in their fields (criminology, sociology of law, and media studies). The discussion took place in "real time" in an on-line chat; we hope the on-line chat structure has captured a conversational tone sometimes lost in academic interviews.

Jen Petersen: Sociologically, how do you define deviance, or deviant behavior?

Aaron Doyle: It violates norms in a particular context.

Bill Chambliss: How you define deviance is "in the eyes of the beholder." There is no set, agreed-upon definition. One of the intriguing things about research in this area is how definitions change.

Jen: How the definition of deviance changes is one of the things that really interest us—who has the power to define deviance and who or what helps the definition change over time.

Jimmie Reeves: I think journalists play a key role in producing and reproducing deviance. They do this by the marking of enemies within: Us vs. Them.

Bill: Obviously, legislators and law enforcement agencies are critical in the definition of what constitutes deviance, as are the courts. The Supreme Court decision in the Texas [sodomy law] case just decided is a case in point. Beyond that, however, people's social movements are critical factors. The definition of homosexuality has changed almost entirely because of the gay rights movement.

Aaron: Part of the answer is powerful institutions like the mass media and the criminal justice system, but they are also working with the toolkit provided by the broader culture. They tell some of the same old stories or myths that predate modern media, for example, presenting the criminal as a stranger or outsider who is visibly different, often a "dark" stranger.

Jimmie: The other key players in the production of deviance, at least in modern cultures, are experts. The experts perform a crucial role as seemingly "objective sources" who lend their credibility to news accounts. Journalists, of course, rarely treat these enterprising experts as agents who have vested interests in producing and reproducing "the deviant." Take, for example, the mercenary social scientists who make careers out of perpetuating drug hysteria.

Bill: True, some social scientists have fanned the drug hysteria. But mostly the hysteria has been driven by politicians, starting with Nixon. There are probably more social scientists pushing for drug legalization than there are those supporting the current policies.

Aaron: At the same time, ethnographic audience research tells us that media audiences are often smarter and more critical than we give them credit for. There is a fair bit of research showing today's audiences are more and more cynical about the version of reality they get from mass media and official sources.

Jen: How about fictional film and TV representations—how do they play into changing definitions of deviance? How do these representations relate to the way deviance is defined in the larger institutions (law, education, etc.) you have mentioned?

Aaron: There is increasingly a blurring between factual and fictional realms. Police have long served as paid consultants in fictional entertainment. At the same time, fictional products influence real criminal justice. For example, when the British soap Coronation Street featured someone committing welfare fraud, in real life many more people began turning in people they knew to fraud hotlines.

Afsheen Nomai: Jimmie, could you talk a little bit more about the role of journalismin producing and reproducing deviance; in particular, can you comment on the structure of the industry in this?

Jimmie: The journalists covering the 1980s...