hat is considered deviant in the society in which they live. Some towns may look at someone as a deviant if they cuss under their breath. Yet, in another society, someone could yell and curse and be looked at as the norm. Another example of this on a more deviant-lawful comparison could be running yellow lights or speeding. In a small town if someone did this with a police car around, you would probably be pulled over in a second with a ticket. In a big city however, with everyone doing it “the norm”, the police car either has to pull over the entire city, or change with the times. There are also several differences. Structural Functionalist Perspective focuses more on particular societies whereas Ecological looks more on how things are set up. A clearer illustration of this is that Structural Functionalist Perspective looks at the people in the society, it talks about their values and the norms, and how this makes up deviant behavior. Ecological Perspective looks at how where people live affect what is considered deviant. It says that people don’t necessarily make individuals deviant, the major contributing factors are the location and society ecologically.The movie we watched, “Trading Places” was a great example that took a bit of both of these perspectives and showed how different factors can affect deviant behavior. Eddie Murphy plays a poor criminal and Dan Akroyd plays a wealthy business man. Ecologically they are both from the same city in almost the same part of town. Eddie Murphy actually visits Dan’s workplace. But at the same time they live separate lives both ecologically and structurally. Though they are from the same part of town, Eddie lives on the streets and Dan lives in a high class apartment-type building. Structurally, Eddie deals with poor deviant people and he himself is a deviant. To him it is the norm to be deviant. People see him as a deviant both from the ...
