Kai T. Erikson: Social Construction Derived from a Functionalist Perspective

For my readers out there that are not interested in criminological or sociological theory, this might be a post for you to skip.

 

Kai Erikson believes that society creates the deviant in the same way, and for the same purpose, as it creates deviance. And, from a very functionalist perspective, believes that the deviant fills a very necessary role that cannot be filled by anyone else. Essentially, social groups induce deviant behavior much in the same way they induce leadership and scholastic achievement. Why would any society induce deviant behavior? As Erikson states, it is to promote group “equilibrium”. In other words, society needs the deviant, low esteem and low rewards, to balance out the high achiever, high esteem and many rewards. If all achieved everything, then rewards would lose their significance.

In order to induce the deviant, there must be rewards for the deviant as well. These rewards differ greatly from the rewards of the high achiever though. Erikson uses the example of a schizophrenic army “basic trainee”. In the example, the schizophrenic becomes like a mascot for the group, he is protected from authorities by the group and even has others help him with his work allowing him a “wide license to deviate both from the performance and behavior of the group.” Rather than being rejected by the group, the deviant filled a specific role for the group, causing them to strive harder and giving more meaning to the rewards they might have earned. Another example he used, in his study of 17^th century puritans in Massachusetts, was the idea that in societies with a heavy emphasis on ownership of personal property, theft is more likely to occur.

Erikson takes his ideas a step further and claims that every society has a set volume of deviance, an amount of deviance that remains constant over time. He also believed that societies have their own mechanisms of deploying deviance; patterns that will ensure the correct number of deviants exist to sustain the necessary volume of deviance over time. Erikson goes back to Durkheim’s society of saints to explain this, which he uses in his study of Massachusetts Puritans. There were three major crime waves in 17^th century Massachusetts, even though the society saw itself as a society of saints. You may be familiar with the last of these crime waves; we refer to it today as the “Salem Witch Trials”. Erikson explains these crime waves as boundary maintenance, or the maintenance of the boundary between deviance and conformity. In the case of the witch trials, the early accusations of witchcraft were individuals who were marginal to the society, a slave, a beggar, and an individual wrapped up in a sex scandal. As soon as the accusations reached higher and higher rungs of Puritan society, the accounts were gradually dismissed, until eventually all were dismissed.

So why had these accounts of witchcraft been taken to the point they were? Historically, there had been many accounts of witchcraft in the community, and the Puritans had never taken them seriously before. Erikson claims there were a dramatic set of social changes going on in Massachusetts at the time, one of which, they were no longer exclusively Puritan.

There are two points to be stressed here. The first is that we are dealing with socially constructed deviance. There are no witches and there was no plot by the devil, but in creating the scenario, the society created an “us” and “them” mentality. The second goes back to one of Erikson’s original questions, how does society induct its members into deviance? We can all agree that the first accused witches were marginal to Puritan society, Erikson calls these individuals resources, individuals who can be called upon when deviance is needed. The slave who was labeled a witch now had an opportunity to show that she had special powers, and took to that role exceptionally well, creating accounts of her witchcraft and knowledge of the Devil’s plot. It provided her an instance, albeit a short one, to feel as the rest of the society was actually her subordinate, as opposed to the other way around.

LH