CHAPTER 8
CONSTRUCTING DIFFERENCE: SOCIAL DEVIANCE

Macro-Micro Connections

Drug Trade and Global Deviance

As social life becomes more global, certain forms of deviance begin to take on a more international flavor. Recent global trends like the growing diversity of populations, higher immigration rates, realignment of national borders, deteriorating economic conditions, democratization of governments, and improving computerization and communication technology have all helped to create major international organized crime networks. Major crime rings from Colombia, China, Italy, Korea, Jamaica, Russia, Japan, and Southeast Asia do business in the United States today.1

Except for military expenditures, the global illegal drug trade is the largest industry in the world.2 International criminal organizations (ICOs) can threaten the stability of governments, hinder economic development, and even challenge a superpower.3

In the early 1990s, for instance, the Medellin drug cartel launched a full-scale terrorist assault in Colombia. Public facilities and newspaper offices were bombed. Members of leading families were kidnapped. A leading candidate for the presidency was assassinated. Hundreds of police officers were murdered. A national airline flight was blown up in midair. The cartel's aim was to force the government to share power with the drug traffickers.

ICOs don't rely on violence alone to influence governments. The fantastic sums of money generated by illegal activities, especially drug production, give ICOs the ability to employ bribery to achieve their goals. In 1994 the president of Colombia was accused of accepting $6 million from drug dealers to help him win the election. He was eventually acquitted of all charges, but many in Colombia and elsewhere remained highly skeptical of his innocence.

In 1997, Mexican court files revealed a history of collusion between a prominent drug baron and high-ranking military officersóincluding four generalsówho had been enlisted by the Mexican and U.S. governments to lead the fight against drug production and trafficking.4

The global connections established by ICOs allow them to create whole new drug markets. The introduction of "crack" in the United States in the mid-1980s revolutionized the cocaine market here.

International networks also enable ICOs to adapt quickly to law enforcement efforts. When U.S. agencies shut off the flow of heroin from Turkey, new sources quickly developed in Southeast and Southwest Asia. When enforcement efforts were increased in Florida and the Caribbean, cocaine was simply routed through Central America and Mexico. Mexican organized crime was enlisted to run the network of local landing strips, safe houses, and corrupt government officials necessary to sustain the operation. The Colombian cartels have explored similar contacts with the Sicilian Mafia in hopes of expanding the European drug market.5 ICOs even establish connections with terrorist groups, which provide armed protection for landing fields, production facilities, and operations in exchange for cash.

Unlike the more traditional criminal groups, such as the American Mafia or ethnic street gangs, ICOs are massive business enterprises, often with transnational political and financial connections. The Colombian drug cartels, for example, have tens of thousands of specialized employees and associated businesses worldwide. Although the more traditional crime organizations may also develop international ties and suppliers, ICOs are organized for the express purpose of engaging in large-scale criminal activities across international borders.6

The profits earned by ICOs dwarf those of traditional crime organizations:

The Colombian cartels alone probably make more in a week than the American Mafia does in a year. The Colombian cartels now outperform most Fortune 500 companies. A conservative estimate of illegal drug sales at the retail, or user, level in the United States alone is $50 billion. [The] cartels are estimated to make a profit of about $20 billion annually from these revenues. . . . The combined budgets of the governments of Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru is only about $9 billion annually.7

Furthermore, although traditional, nationally based criminal organizations may pose a variety of threats to society, they are in no position to challenge the sovereignty and integrity of an entire government. But where governments are unable to deliver needed social services and economies are deteriorating, the appeal of powerful international crime organizations can overwhelm respect for the law. In some areasólike small villages in the Peruvian AndesóICOs are the only form of authority many people have ever known. In fact, in circumstances where government authority is weak, powerful ICOs may see themselves as the legitimate political authority.

In sum, these crime organizations are powerful enough to challenge, destabilize, and perhaps someday completely control small countries. Hence they represent a threat to international security that no single country can control alone.

1 Godson, R., & Olson, W. J. 1995. "International organized crime." Society, 32, 18-29. See also Stephens, G. 1994. "The global crime wave." The Futurist, 28, 22-28.
2 United Nations Research Institute, 1995. States of disarray: The social effects of globalization. London: UNRISD.
3 Godson, R., & Olson, W. J. 1995. "International organized crime." Society, 32, 18-29.
4 Dillon, S., & Pyes, C. 1997. "Court files say drug baron used Mexican military." New York Times, May 24.
5 Godson, R., & Olson, W. J. 1995. "International organized crime." Society, 32, 18-29.
6 Godson, R., & Olson, W. J. 1995. "International organized crime." Society, 32, 18-29.
7 Godson, R., & Olson, W. J. 1995. "International organized crime." Society, 32, 23.

Power, Deviance, and Insanity

The conflict perspective, which is concerned in large part with the way that power influences social life, can help us understand how societies came to favor institutionalizing the "insane."

Prior to the 17th century, people who were "insane" were not necessarily separated from the general population.

Like poor people and other "undesirables," they freely roamed the countryside. Responsibility for their care rested with the family or the local community. Madness at the time was a public matter, out in the open and part of everyday life. As long as mentally ill people weren't dangerous, they weren't considered particularly troublesome.

As cities began to grow, so did the population of roaming vagrants and mad people. Their presence and visibility became increasingly bothersome to the rest of the population. In 1657 King Louis XIII of France issued a royal decree forbidding all people from begging on the streets of Paris.

It wasn't long before the French army began to hunt down street people and herd them into an institution euphemistically called the "Hopital General." 1 There, mad people were confined with beggars, vagabonds, street thieves, the poor, the unemployed, and anybody else who could not support himself or herself. At its peak the hospital held an estimated 1% of the entire population of Paris.2

The General Hospital wasn't the kind of hospital we have today. It had no medical treatments, doctors, nurses, or medical equipment. It was more like a pauper's prison that symbolically represented society's distaste for idleness and laziness.

More important, the General Hospital served the interests of the growing ruling class of landowners, merchants, and businesspeople. In periods of economic prosperity, the inhabitants of the hospital provided a limitless pool of cheap labor. In slow economic times, the hospital reabsorbed these individuals so they wouldn't be a nuisance to the more affluent citizens.

As capitalism began to flourish and the need for a competent workforce increased, the ruling class thought it best to separate the hospital inhabitants who could work from those who couldn't (that is, the insane). A more specialized institution, the madhouse, was established to house only the insane. This separation occurred not to provide the insane with more effective psychiatric treatment but to protect others from the "contagion" of madness.3 Their presence disrupted the reserve labor pool, so they had to be segregated.

The madhouse quickly grew in popularity, evolving into the more humanitarian insane asylum of the 19th century and the more therapeutic mental hospital of the 20th century. Thus, a new deviant category (the insane) and a new way of dealing with them (confinement in specialized institutions) were created by the state, primarily for economic and social reasons.4

1 Foucault, M. 1965. Madness and civilization. New York: Vintage.
2 Conrad, P., & Schneider, J. W. 1980. Deviance and medicalization: From badness to sickness. St. Louis: C. V. Mosby.
3 Foucault, M. 1965. Madness and civilization. New York: Vintage.
4 Chambliss, W. 1974. ÒThe state, the law and the definition of behavior as criminal or delinquent.Ó In D. Glaser (Ed.), The handbook of criminology. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Social Control Through Medicine

To become a physician, one must undergo years of rigorous training and be licensed by the profession's governing body. We assume that admission into the ranks of physicians is so carefully controlled because special expertise is acquired to treat human beings. However, we could also assume that the medical profession carefully controls entry in order to maintain its social power.

Physicians enjoy a tremendously high status in American society. "Plumber's orders," "accountant's orders," or even "sociologist's orders" do not carry the same influence and authority that "doctor's orders" carry. Because of their status, physicians are able to claim jurisdiction over the label of illness and anything to which the label can be attached, regardless of whether or not they can deal with it effectively.1

Decisions regarding diagnosis and treatment of a host of problems are almost completely controlled by the medical profession. No other profession has such extensive access to a person's body or mind as physical and psychiatric medicine.2

The consequences of medical professionals' decisions reach far beyond the health and well-being of an individual patient. Plastic surgeons have helped define or at least perpetuate cultural standards of beauty. Any psychiatrist who prescribes drugs for a person's emotional suffering alters our cultural conceptions of what conditions we need not tolerate. Organ transplants have redefined our notions of death and dying.3

The more behaviors that are defined as illnesses, the larger the legitimate domain of the profession:

The increasing acceptance of technical [medical] solutions . . . results in the withdrawal of more and more areas of human experience from the realm of public discussion. For when drunkenness, juvenile delinquency . . . and extreme political beliefs are seen as symptoms of an underlying illness or biological defect the merits of such behaviors or beliefs need not be evaluated.4

Defining a problem as medical removes it from the public arena and places it where only medical people with medical expertise can talk about it. 5

In addition, medicalizing deviance justifies certain intrusive procedures to be performed on individuals not only in the name of "treatment" but also in the interests of the common good. When health professionals attempt to eradicate a disease or a bothersome social behavior, we all supposedly benefit.

According to one critic, however, a larger, more sinister motive may also be behind the use of medical techniques to shape and control the behavior of deviants:

[A]uthorities have moved beyond clubs, bullets, and eavesdropping devices and are resorting to such things as electroshock, mind-destroying drugs, and psychosurgery. Since the established powers presume that the present social system is virtuous, then those who are prone to violent or disruptive behavior, or who show themselves to be manifestly disturbed about the conditions under which they live, must be suffering from inner malfunctions that can best be treated by various mind controls.6

Thus medical treatment goes beyond "curing" problems and toward social control, attempting to alleviate behavior defined by powerful groups as dangerous.

1 Friedson, E. 1970. Profession of medicine. New York: Dodd, Mead.
2 Conrad, P. 1975. "The discovery of hyperkinesis: Notes on the medicalization of deviant behavior." Social Problems, 23, 12-21.
3 Zola, I. 1986. "Medicine as an institution of social control." In P. Conrad & R. Kern (Eds.), The sociology of health and illness. New York: St. Martin's Press.
4 Reynolds, J. M. 1973. "The medical institution." In L. T. Reynolds & J. M. Henslin (Eds.), American society: A critical analysis. New York: David McKay, p. 200.
5 Conrad, P. 1975. "The discovery of hyperkinesis: Notes on the medicalization of deviant behavior." Social Problems, 23, 12-21.
6 Parenti, M. 1988. Democracy for the few. New York: St. Martin's Press, pp. 150-151.