Wayward Puritans: A study in the sociology of deviance

1
Wayward Puritans A study in the sociology of
deviance

• Deviance isnt a property inherent in any
  behavior, its conferred upon a behavior.
• Why does a community assign this behavior to the
  deviance category?
• Deviance exists to define boundaries.
• Deviants patrol these borders, and policing
  agents monitor the deviants.
• Statutes are often informal, if ever articulated.
• Morality and immorality meet at the public
  scaffold
• Expectations constrain and also shape behavior.
• Both variety and similarity are products of the
  same society its a division of labor.
• The deviant and the conformist, then, are
  creatures of the same culture, inventions of the
  same imagination (p. 21)
• Boundaries are never fixed, and as borders
  expand new forms of deviance and conformity
  need to be defined.
• These definitions occur in public formal
  ceremonies.
• There are few rites of passage that denote
  leaving a deviant status, and some of those are
  equally suspect.

2
The Puritans

• Part of the US mythic heritage.
• The Puritans emerged in the English battle for
  theocratic power between the Catholic Church
  (pomp circumstance, connection to deity via
  intermediaries) and the Church of England (less
  pomp, more informal connection).
• Saw only one way to the true word, they knew it,
  and needed therefore to go where they could just
  be their own austere, humorless, intolerant
  selves.
• When they left England, they uprooted themselves
  from the known world of social control away
  from familiar norms and values.
• Reality originated in the imagination of Gd
  (but there was no more revelation) so it would
  be even harder to know what is.

3
Puritan Paradoxes

• Identifying causes of deviance-definitions may
  mean looking for cultural paradoxes.
• Puritans were both austere as medievalists, and
  rejecting of pomp as the newer forms.
• Were both prideful and of a sort of low spiritual
  self-esteem. Had the only way and yet very
  worried about sin.
• Doubt their own perception but be darn sure about
  their fundamental precepts. .
• if a persuasive argument should jar a Puritans
  certitudehe had every right to suspect devilish
  mischief
• Their challenge was to bring it all together.
• But these beginnings also set the foundation for
  the American paradoxical identity of
  individualism and suspicion of differences.

4
Law and Order

• They had no clear legal code.
• Magistrates (clergy) settled legal disputes.
• Non-magistrates (business and shareholders)
  wanted stable definitions more than a power play
  but a core understanding of the Puritan
  experience.
• Codifying a law revealed the inner
  inconsistencies.
• One of the surest ways to confirm an identify for
  communities as well as individuals is to find
  some way of measuring what one is not.
• And so, we had the crime waves of New England.

5
Antinomianism - The crisis of Hutchinsonism

• Individualism versus conformity to established
  leadership hierarchy.
• Who had authority to determine true conversion
  and state of grace?
• They needed to create their society, they werent
  English anymore, but what were they? Who could
  define if they were a community of saints in the
  howling wilderness, or individual entrepreneurs
  in the pursuit of spirituality?
• The followers pushed too many buttons though, and
  provoked censure.
• Plus, Mrs. Hutchinson was a woman.
• But the theological case against her was largely
  political (another American tradition)
• How do you do the right thing if you know its
  not what the authority tells you is right, and if
  enough reject this authority, then you need a new
  authority, or a new social/political structure.
• Or, if rejection and individualism earns
  sainthood, how can the same things earn the
  opposite? (Covenant of grace was an individual
  experience, but it was seen through conformist
  behavior).
• Logic doesnt work in these kinds of crime waves.
• In the end, Mrs. H. provoked the magistrates so
  much that they had no room to move except to
  censure her.

6
The Quaker Crisis

• The Quakers came in and challenged the Puritans
  by minor differences. Hats, thee and thou,
  their own style of meetings. Also, they were
  missionizing, although its not clear to what.
• These differences were enough to provoke fear and
  then violent outrage.
• Quakers asked for subjective freedom, and
  tolerance.
• The Quakers symbolized change and leaving behind
  the past and it freaked out the Puritan colonists
  (after all, the Puritans came to be themselves,
  and so did the Quakers).
• they indicate very clearly how small tokens and
  insignia can come to mean a great deal when a
  community begins to label its deviant members.
  (p.127).
• In the end, the Us and Them reference changed
  for the Puritans. It wasnt Us vs England it
  was Us, whatever we are against Other
  Americans, whoever they are.
• (p.128) seeking inner reliance can turn into
  seeking inner possession

7
All hell breaks loose The Witches of Salem

• Occurred in a time of political uncertainty
  future of the colony and its rule was at stake,
  and the certainty of earlier years was now eroded
  by societal change and relative diversity.
• Their city on the hill in the howling
  wilderness was replaced by a city in civilization
  with everyone else, and so the best enemies were
  those of their imagination.
• With their moral universe and its definition
  preoccupying their minds, the appearance of evil
  spirits flew out of their nightmarish concerns.
• Thus
• Girls acting weird (collective hysteria)
• Beyond medical understanding so it must be of
  religious cause (what would it be now?)
• Black slave from the Caribbean with voodoo roots?
• Girls got power from the reactions, and were
  rewarded for it.
• Got out of hand, accused so many that finally,
  the evidence had to be evaluated by those still
  standing, and the evidence was found to be
  faulty, and that was that.
• No one who confessed was executed.

8
Cultural Wars Symbolic Crusades

• Conflict Theory Status Conflicts
• Class socioeconomic
• Prestige value, having more cultural worth and
  being able to define what is valuable
• Often has economic power, but not necessarily.
• So when threats to status occur, there are
  reactions
• Status politics hostility to others,
  ultra-dogmatism, extremist attacks on democratic
  process. (more common in growth)
• Class politics arguing about allocation and
  access to resources (more common in recession)
• When values become challenged, then the dominant
  class may lash out by deviantizing the
  challengers, and do so by symbolizing their fears
  in something the challengers does, says, or
  professes.

9
Symbolic Crusades

• Gusfields argument is useful in many contexts.
• Immigration in late 1800s and early 1900s
  introduced many eastern european and
  mediterranean peoples, who tended to be Catholic
  (or Jewish) and were more liberal with drinking.
• This influx of labor occurred also during the
  emancipation, and also during a solidification of
  the old middle class around temperance, which
  was seen as a symbol of prestige. Eventually,
  because these movements go extreme, became
  Prohibition. (see the note on status politics
  previous slide). However, Prohibition, Abolition
  and Nativism were all part of the Republican
  Party ideas in the earlier 1800s.
• And Alcohol is a socially controlled substance,
  with problematic properties (addictive,
  drunkenness) and thus an ideal symbol for
  deviance.
• With Temperance movement, US sought to redefine
  itself as a moral Christian climate. (even
  though both teetotalling and heavy drinking
  behavior is more common in Protestant groups than
  in Catholics).
• Lyman Beecher activist preacher stated that
  upper classes needed to impose moral restraint on
  themselves, and on the lower classes as well.

10
Symbolic Crusades

• But values have economic links(Rumbargers
  Power, Politics and Prohibition)
• Remember we also have the movement from farming
  to industrialization (and from beer to coffee).
• Industrialists wanted to control Labor.
• Disgruntled labor sat in saloons and schemed
  unionization, hence the anti-saloon movement
  espoused by industrialists. (misery is caused by
  strong drink, strikes and communism.) Henry Ford
  wanted workers to dream the American dream as he
  dreamed it.
• Industry had few safeguards for workers, so
  focusing on the drinking problem was a way to
  avoid focusing on the high rate of death and
  injury in the workplace.