Overview
In social analyses, “deviance” refers to actions or characteristics outside of a society’s standards and norms.
Commentary
A 2023 publication in the Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior journal argues, as the title says, Substance Use Disorder is the Outcome of Deviant Socialization: A Prospective Investigation Spanning Childhood to Adulthood:
“it is theorized herein that a social environment facilitating the inculcation of attitudes and behaviors which are discordant with mores and laws comprises an especially important contextual influence on the progression of disinhibitory behavior to SUD. Specifically, non-adherence with societal norms and rules in tandem with poor self-control is hypothesized to bias motivation toward using substances (an illegal behavior during adolescence) as one facet of deviant socialization. In adulthood, substance use is theorized to manifest as antisocial personality that segues to SUD.” 1
Variations of this argument have existed in some form or the other ever since the compulsions to use substances or processes could be observed as disruptive to social norms and harmony. This necessarily means that “deviance” is a social construct that isn’t going to appear uniformly across time, places, and peoples. From a 1999 paper by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime:
“The temptation to reify categories like drugs, addiction and dependence can be understood in reference to the biological process involved. Whenever a phenomenon can be ascribed to nature, it appears to gain in objectivity, reality and transparency and therefore exclude historical and cultural relativity. The concept of deviance, which apparently is more remote from a biological cause, has been attached to heredity. During the nineteenth century, deviance was thought to originate in a person’s genes. Subsequently, but on the same level of analysis, that of the individual, deviance was explained by the characteristics of the person and his or her personality, cognitive abilities or behavioural skills. It was only in the 1960s that sociologists from the Chicago School argued that deviance was not part of an individual’s actions but is defined by society and the person who internalized it. Deviance is co-constructed by society and the individual whether he or she accepts or refuses the label. The normal and the stigmatized are not absolutes but viewpoints [26-28]. From the perspective of the excluded, one observes a recomposition of the social fabric with different norms, forming alternative worlds to society. The task of the researcher is to understand the viewpoints of this otherness which are often invisible from the outside. The war on drugs and, more surreptitiously, on users seems to be based on the absolute paradigm of the outsider. Drugs have been systematically linked to the unwanted foreigner and urban poor ghetto dweller who are considered a threat to society.”
To summarize: the notion of social deviance is rooted in demarcating distinctions between in-group and out-group identities that sort people rather than any physiological condition that biomedical institutions can sufficiently address, with the devastating atrocities of the eugenics movements as proof of the aftermath.