¶ … participation in deviant social structures. What makes people commit to a deviant identity? What makes people adhere to the social structures of deviant groups? Why are members of deviant groups so deeply loyal to each other and to the organization? The paper endeavors to offer insight into these questions and more as part of a quest to understand deviant behaviors, deviant organizations, and the construction of identity.
Exploring the Continuum of Deviant Organizations
For this essay, use Best & Luckenbill's continuum of deviant organizations as outlined in the textbook to explain how a person or group could become increasingly invested in his/her deviance. For example, consider how a youth from a gang-impacted area could move his/her way through from less organized to more organized deviant social organizations and imagine how this would ultimately impact his/her identity formation.
The higher the degree of deviant behavior demonstrated to serve and/or participate in the group, the more desired attention and the more loyalty to the group. Behaviors, deviant or otherwise, bond groups together. A team of soccer players bonds through their shared experiences of tryouts, practices, games, victories, losses, and traveling. Those behaviors are not considered deviant and those behaviors bond the team together through shared experience. The military is one of the most well-known examples of bonding through shared behaviors and experiences, deviant or otherwise. Thus, it stands that young men interested in joining a faction of their local organized crime family bonds through the deviant behaviors committed, as well as the shared experience of the consequences, whether the deviance is perceived as a success or a failure. As newcomers to deviant or normative groups commit additional behaviors so as to join the group or to participate in a group newly joined in, the bonds deepen among all members of the gang or family. After...
This is how an individual's identity formation directly links to participation and association with the group.
Those who are members of gangs and other organized crime groups are readily recognizable to each other as well as to outsiders like civilians and law enforcement. Perhaps only the highest ranking members of the organized crime group do not linger in public as much as other members in the group hierarchy. Consider the difficulty professional athletes or distinguished members of the military have in retiring or ceasing activity. These people often have identity crises as they have been members of specific groups for so long that a great deal of their identities are tied up in the shared behaviors and activities of the group, so much so, that they do not know who they are without the group. The same principle certainly holds true for organized deviant social organizations such as gangs, gangsters, drug dealers, hackers, and more.
Question 2 - Describe how these various levels of social structure could impact one's commitment to a deviant identity.
The impact of commitment to a deviant identity because of various levels of a social structure depends on how motivated the individual in question is. A person who is moderately to seriously committed will absolutely commit whatever deviant behaviors are necessary to advance within the ranks of the deviant social organization hierarchy. People who lack motivation may simply be content to maintain basic affiliation and ties to the group. That may be enough to satisfy some people's needs to belong and/or to express deviant desires. There are those who commit deviant behaviors not out of an interest to belong to a particular group, but because…
