Social Deviance and the Society

Description

Gas flaring, marginalization and its offshoots in the social structure of the people of Niger Delta in Nigeria.

Sociological Interpretation

The term deviance as "socially defined and constructed is any social behaviour which violates institutionalized expectations, that is, expectations which are shared and recognised as legitimate within a social system" (Knuttila, 351).

In this picture we see a society whose people have continually been marginalized by their political leaders and foreign operators of their natural resources. They control most especially the trade of their natural resource, crude oil and with the help of the oil companies owned by the so called "developed" societies pollute their land; and amass wealth at the expense of the people's poverty. In most part of the "developed" nations of the world, gas flaring has been discontinued owing to its hazardous effects to the environment particularly the ozone layer; it accounts tremendously for the depletion of the ozone layer and incessant increase of global warming which is responsible in part for skin cancer and other dreaded diseases. But in the so called "underdeveloped" and "developing" regions of the world these inhumane acts are still practiced without a prick of conscience.

The oppressed social actors of this society have in time past demonstrated non-violently for their emancipation and stop to the degradation of their environment. But for greed and taste of power amongst the ruling class their voices have always been daunted. The social structure of a people is the creator of their characteristics. From the sociological works of Robert K. Merton and others we understand that deviant behaviours are the offshoots of some social structural norms and values, (Knuttila, 359,360) unlike the claims of Cessare Lombroso and others that criminality and deviant behaviours are innate and as such biologically determined (Knuttila, 351,352).

Marginalization, the social process of relegating or confining an individual or a group of people to the edge in a social structure has thereby caused the oppressed social actors of this society to develop deviant behaviours in other to revolt against the continued oppression, subjugation and cruelty of their leaders towards them. Today the social structure have experienced a paradigm shift wherein the people have drifted from the usual peaceful dialogue to the use of arms and other forms of violence to speak incessantly for their right.

This insurgency has therefore become inherent in the social structure and as such the social structure is in a state of anomie as described by Emile Durkheim in The Rules of Sociological Method.