Positive Deviance, Edgework, and Wilderness Survival more

POSITIVE DEVIANCE, EDGEWORK, AND WILDERNESS SURVIVAL DANIEL M. HARRISON1 2008© This work is copyrighted by the author. All rights reserved. LANDER UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT This paper addresses the sociology of positive deviance, edgework and wilderness survival. Positive deviance has emerged over the last three decades as a viable, if contentious, research paradigm. This paper attempts to make positive deviance more intellectually robust, in part by relating the concept to the notion of edgework. It claims that we should speak of positive deviance when, and only when, people engage in risky, rare, positive action that exceeds social expectations. The utility of the argument is demonstrated by examining studies of wilderness survivors and the conditions under which they may be viewed as positive deviants. KEYWORDS: deviance, positive deviance, edgework, wilderness, survival, risk 1 Address correspondence to: Dr. Daniel M. Harrison, Lander University. 320 Stanley Ave. Greenwood, SC 29649. dharrison@lander.edu 1 POSITIVE DEVIANCE, EDGEWORK, AND WILDERNESS SURVIVAL This paper addresses the concept of positive deviance (Dodge 1985; Heckert 1989; Nichols 1989; Ben-Yehuda 1990; Heckert and Heckert 2002) and edgework (Lyng 1990; 2005). It begins by examining the concept of positive deviance, and briefly reviews key scholarship associated with this field. It then moves on to discuss edgework, make some theoretical linkages to positive deviance, and describes how the positive deviance tradition has minimized issues of risk. POSITIVE DEVIANCE If the sociology of deviance is a marginal enterprise within sociology, the study of positive deviance – “approved deviation” (Heckert [1998] 2000: 30), is almost entirely off the page. Although one could make the argument that people have been reflecting upon positive deviance ever since there have been humans observing others “turning from the straight road” – what the Latin word deviatus literally means and from where we get the word deviance – in socially acceptable ways, it has only been recently that sociology has begun to seriously investigate positive variation in its many forms. A good way to begin a discussion of positive deviance is with Druanna Heckert‟s ([1998] 2000) article on the subject. In that essay Heckert claims that sociologists and social analysts have been getting a limited picture of the world by just focusing on negative forms of deviance and she suggests we should also focus on positive or approved types of deviance. Heckert provides an admirable synopsis of how positive deviance has been framed within sociology, and highlights in particular the work of Sorokin (1950) and Lemert (1951) as central to the evolution 2 of the “positive deviance” approach to understanding social life. Heckert‟s article culminates in a “classificatory model, developed from examples … cited in the literature on positive deviance” (Heckert [1998] 2000: 29). She suggests there are six main types of positive deviants: altruists, charismatics, innovators, supra-conformists, people born with extraordinary gifts, and exdeviants. Heckert‟s article is important for clearly presenting its case in favor of positive deviance, for providing a persuasive intellectual history of positive deviance, and for highlighting in a useful way the processes through which society deems what is valuable and good from what is harmful and wrong. Heckert argues that sometimes what appears to be positive is sometimes not so (e.g. athletes who abuse their bodies for their sport). While making no claim that the more traditional subject matters of deviance are no longer unimportant, Heckert‟s point is that sociology should also investigate, say, the social dynamics that produce the sociology of “geniuses, reformers, and religious leaders” (Heckert [1998] 2000: 30). In the mid-1980s and early 1990s there was a flurry of scholarship on positive deviance (see Kooistra 1990), mainly stimulated by articles by Dodge (1985) and Ewald and Jiobu (1985). Dodge‟s argument – much like Heckert‟s (1989) four years later – was that sociologists should pay more attention to the positive dimensions to social life because, in failing to do so, they are getting an incomplete picture of the world. Ewald and Jiobu‟s (1985) study of how runners and bodybuilders interpret their exercise activities, stimulated sociologists of sport, such as Hughes and Coakley (1991) to take the concept of positive deviance seriously. A few years after Dodge‟s programmatic article appeared, Sagarin (1989) issued an articulate yet highly critical response, claiming that the entire positive deviance approach was misguided, riddled with problems, and bad for sociology. Sagarin forcefully argued that 3 deviance only has to do with negative subject matter, and to suggest otherwise would be oxymoronic. He cited evidence from experts in the field of deviance who claim that deviance is that which causes indignation in others. As positive deviants do not generate such indignation, Sagarin claims that it is inappropriate, if not entirely false, to refer to them as deviant. The next year, Nachman Ben-Yehuda (1990) chimed in on the debate, and essentially came to the rescue of Dodge and Heckert. Ben-Yehuda (1990: 223) stressed that intellectual surveys of positive deviance provided by these researchers “can not be denied and twisted.” Contrary to Sagarin, Ben-Yehuda (1990: 223) argued that “there is nothing in the concept of deviance . . . which implies anything negative” and suggested openness to studying human variation in all its forms. He wrote that “sociologists of deviance can broaden their view and break new ground,” and nominates positive deviance as “one possible and inspiring route” (BenYehuda 1990: 235). Quick on the heels of Ben-Yehuda‟s essay came an article by Goode (1991). His piece summarized most of the existing research on positive deviance, and, in similar fashion to Sagarin, argued against the idea. Goode claims that it doesn‟t make sense to speak of positive deviance, because deviance must in some way always be linked with crime. Goode (1991: 304) writes, that “if you cannot have positive crime, you cannot have positive deviance. No amount of mental gymnastics…can change that.” Yet, it does not take many mental gymnastics to see that this assertion is actually not as straightforward as it appears. It is in fact possible to have cases of positive crime. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, there were a number of cases of people who violated the law while acting in positive ways. For example, people broke windows and doors at Walgreens and other stores to get food and water for residents who were too dehydrated to move and when these 4 services were not being provided by the FEMA or other officials. The Coast Guard broke the law by not following the dictates of Homeland Security. Another example of positive crime is provided by a young man named Jabar Gibson. He was the 21 year old who managed to steal a school bus and load it up with evacuees. His was the first bus to make it to the Astrodome in Houston (IKH 2005). Like deviance, crime in and of itself is neither good nor bad, positive nor negative – it all depends on the context. Ferrell (2001), for example, would argue vociferously that skateboarding, graffiti painting, BASE jumping, and busking without a license are all forms of “positive” crimes. So are things are simple as Goode seems to make it? As Ben-Yehuda (1990) has already noted, if you look up the word deviance in an unabridged dictionary, the definition you will find there will not mention crime. Goode, following Sagarin‟s lead, wants the sociology of deviance to keep its focus on the negative, stigmatizing, and criminal elements in society. After Goode‟s article was published, the debate about positive deviance went silent and there was very little written about it for some time. This is unfortunate, because at the end of his article, after castigating much of positive deviance, Goode actually suggests that positive deviance researchers should be applauded for “expand[ing] the subjects we investigate,” and he says that in this regard he “heartily support[s] the arguments of the „mavericks‟ [i.e. advocates of positive deviance]” (Goode 1991: 307). Despite this apparent olive branch, when you consult Goode‟s (2002) more recent work, it is obvious that he does not feel that the subject matter of positive deviance is worthy of much attention. In spite of saying we should expand the subject matter of deviance, Goode does not include in his anthology any mention of positive deviance or examples of its research. Such exclusions seem to justify Heckert and Heckert‟s (2004) 5 conclusion that “positive deviance [has remained] a stigmatized concept within the substantive area of deviance” (Heckert and Heckert 2004: 75). Even so, since the late 1990s there has once again been a resurgence of interest in the concept of positive deviance (Irwin 2003; Spreitzer and Sonenshien 2004). Although the amount of research on positive deviance is certainly not huge, there is enough of it to indicate that at least some researchers are still interested in the concept and believe in its vitality. When one reads the scholarship on positive deviance from fifteen or twenty years ago, it seems most of the debate was on the question of whether positive deviance should exist at all. This is no longer the argument that people seem to be making. Instead, people are using the concept of positive deviance to develop various research agendas. Irwin‟s (2003) work, for example, studies elite tattoo artists and collectors and elaborates what she claims are two new types of positive deviants: “high culture icon” and “popular celebrity” (Irwin 2003: 27) positive deviants. In a different vein, business scholars Spreitzer and Sonenshien (2004) suggest that the concept of positive deviance can be useful for corporate management. They claim that businesses and formal organizations need to be engaging in more positive deviance, thereby engaging the “positive organizational studies (POS) movement” (Spreitzer and Sonenshien 2004: 828). They define positive deviance as individual or organizational behavior which is “honorable, voluntary, and a departure from norms” (Spreitzer and Sonenshein 2004: 840). They also propose an index with which to measure positive deviance. Heckert and Heckert (2002; 2004) have been trying to refine the concept of positive deviance at the theoretical level, with mixed results. Their efforts to generate a “new typology of deviance” (Heckert and Heckert 2002) by synthesizing accounts of both negative and positive 6 deviance should be applauded. Their typology relates “social reactions and collective evaluations” of actions and behavior with actor‟s “normative expectations.” Heckert and Heckert suggest that we have situations of “negative deviance” (e.g. smoking, not working, and so on), when social actors under conform or fail to conform to social rules. People who over conform, but do so in a way that generates negative evaluations, leads to what Heckert and Heckert describe as “rate-busting” which occurs mainly in “work and educational settings” (Heckert and Heckert 2002: 460). The third type, “deviance admiration,” Heckert and Heckert claim happens when people under conform or don‟t conform to the dictates of society but who nonetheless are viewed positively by some people in society, (e.g. teenagers who look up to rappers with a criminal record, people who admire Wilt Chamberlin‟s claim of having slept with ten thousand women, etc.). Finally, and for our purposes, most importantly, Heckert and Heckert suggest that the term “positive deviance” should be used in cases of “over conformity that is positively valued.” They also attempt a more elaborate definition of positive deviance and claim that positive deviance is “any type of behavior or condition that exceeds the normative standards or achieves an idealized standard and that evokes a collective response of a positive type” (Heckert and Heckert 2002: 467). Although Heckert and Heckert‟s typology is a splendid attempt to make sense of this rather sticky terrain, their more recent attempt to relate positive deviance to Robert K. Merton‟s theory of structural strain and his five modes of adaptation is less appealing as, to this reader at least, their resultant typologies (Heckert and Heckert 2004: 81, 82, 84) seem rather unsatisfactory and confusing. While certainly it is right for sociologists of positive deviance to pay attention to patterns of goals and institutionalized means of goal attainment, Merton‟s theory is complicated enough as it is and trying to make his model fit into the framework of positive deviance is just 7 not the way to go. In their attempt to situate positive deviance on a stronger theoretical foundation, it seems that Heckert and Heckert (2004) actually lose ground here and obfuscate core issues. More generally, Heckert and Heckert‟s approach to positive deviance is problematic for the following reasons: “over conformity” and exceeding “normative standards” are not the same thing; Heckert and Heckert ignore the element of risk (edgework) which is present, at least according to this author, in all evaluations of positive deviants, and Heckert and Heckert also seem to play down the element of agency which also is key to the construction of positive deviance. Rather than following Heckert and Heckert‟s lead, it may bolster the intellectual legitimacy of positive deviance if scholars think deeply about what the concept means and under what conditions it emerges, and adopt stricter definitional criteria, accordingly. Such an attempt appears below. REFINING THE CONCEPT OF POSITIVE DEVIANCE The concept of positive deviance is intuitively compelling and its meaning can be grasped easily by sociologists and non-sociologists alike. Yet, it seems that positive deviance is still in need of little fine tuning. Although there is much to take issue with much in Goode‟s (1991) polemic against positive deviance, it is true, as he says, that sometimes positive deviance does seem like a “sponge word” and that “an extremely miscellaneous and theoretically inconsistent jumble of phenomena [are] included under its penumbra” (Goode 1991: 300). Hughes and Coakley (1991: 315) are also correct in their assessment that the positive deviance “debate is confusing because the sociology of deviance as a whole is characterized by theoretical chaos.” There are many scholars out there for whom positive deviance just rubs them the wrong way which indicates that 8 there is still some work to do in making the case for positive deviance. In this subfield, over the last few years it seems as if there has been a situation of détente -- the positive deviant advocates have been wedded to their foundation, while the critics of positive deviance have stayed wedded to theirs. Not much headway has been made, and the discussion keeps going round in circles. Although this paper does not pretend to rid the sociology of deviance of its chaotic elements nor end the controversy over positive deviance, it is hoped that it might bring a bit more clarity to the debate. A new definition of positive deviance is needed. It is proposed that scholars and analysts should speak of positive deviance when, and only when, people engage in risky, rare, positive action that exceeds social expectations and is positively evaluated. What has been largely missing from the positive deviance literature up until now is recognition of the fact that, if positive deviance, if it is to be true to its name, simply must have an element of risk to it – it must involve some sort of edgework (Lyng 1990, 2005) to it. I suggest scholars who are interested in studying positive deviance to view their subjects as edgeworkers. As the edgework literature may be foreign to some readers, the following section spells out this intellectual terrain in some detail. In a recent volume, Stephen Lyng (2005) – the key figure in the edgework movement – and his contributors present some reflections on this approach to sociological research. Lyng (2005: 4) writes that the edgework approach envisions risk taking as a form of boundary negotiation – the exploration of “edges,” as it were. These edges can be defined in various ways: the boundary between sanity and insanity, consciousness and unconsciousness, and the most consequential one, the line separating life and death. Conceptualizing voluntary risk taking in these terms directs attention to 9 the most analytically relevant features of the risk taking experience: the skillful practices and powerful sensations that risk takers value so highly. It is interesting to consider the extent to which edgework might bring its insights to bear on positive deviance, and vice versa. In other words, to what extent might positive deviance and edgework cover similar or comparable terrain? In what ways are they different? Although Lyng attempts to dress up edgework and his sociology of risk taking in respectable looking, scholarly clothes, he acknowledges that at root, edgework has a rebellious, outlaw aspect to it. Fellow edge worker Jeff Ferrell provides an illuminating back-story on how the edgework movement came to be. He writes: Years ago…in Austin, my friend Steve Lyng and I were deep into what we might call an integrated culture of extreme risk. Steve and I were riding and racing stripped-down Harley-Davidsons as part of a loosely organized, generally intoxicated group known as the Maddogs…Steve and I were also in graduate school, reading Hunter S. Thompson and Paul Feyerabend and Michael Bakunin…We knew that, somehow, these near-death confrontations were also affirmations of life, were attempts to negotiate some boundary between chaos and order, creativity and destruction, and so we stole Thompson‟s notion of “edgework” and begin to apply it to ourselves and our friends. Eventually, Steve would develop this notion into a full-blown theory of „voluntary risk taking.‟ (Ferrell 2001: 80) From these remarks, it seems clear that edgework is undoubtedly a deviant activity, but can it count as positive deviance? Certainly, to its practitioners many forms of edgework are undoubtedly quite positive. Ferrell argues that edgework “functions as a form of experiential resistance precisely because its 10 practitioners – outlaw motorcycle riders, graffiti writers, BASE jumpers – are so adept at subverting the meaning and experience of social control, at translating their own criminalization intro enhanced excitement and richer rushes of adrenaline and pleasure” (Ferrell 2001: 84). Yet, it seems that edgework would not seem particularly positive to some observers of these activities, i.e. agents of law enforcement, family members whose loved ones lost their lives, members of the public, and so on. Ferrell and Lyng‟s remarks not withstanding, it is reasonable to say that, not all edgework is positive, and some (e.g. hard-core drug use or dangerous sexual practices), may be not really be “positive” at all. On the other hand, it seems reasonable that the edgework concept can help bolster conceptions of positive deviance. Edgework is important for social analysis of human variation not only because it brings into the picture an important phenomenological (Bentz and Shapiro 1998: 96) dimension to social inquiry which seems to be missing in much literature on positive deviance, but edgework is also good on the question of agency as it stresses individual will, initiative and action. More importantly, edgework should be built into a definition of positive deviance because, upon close reflection, it seems that all deviants who are indeed positively valued by society are so because they engage in some sort of positive risk taking behavior. Positive deviance, therefore, must by definition involve some element of risk. It should be clear that such a categorization does not include Heckert and Heckert‟s (2002) “rate busters” and their equivalents, such as “nerds,” “dweebs”, and misers, as such people operate more from a position of safety than one of risk. But if one considers some of the more agreed upon examples of positive deviance, it seems fairly obvious that in most, if not all cases, an element of risk is involved. For example, such a notion of risk is implicit in Heckert and Heckert‟s (2002) description of positive deviance as involving heroic action. With them, it 11 seems plausible to assert that Mother Theresa was indeed a positive deviant, but mainly because she was also an edge worker; her work quite literally involved helping people on the edges of society. Another person who is often described as a positive deviant is Martin Luther King, Jr. and who also can be described as an edge worker in that he took the Civil Rights Movements to places in America which were truly on the edge of human civilization. Lance Armstrong (of the “live strong” bracelet), can also be described as a positive deviant, given his brush with cancer and subsequent Tour de France victories. Having been so close to the edge (of death) is what makes him different, than say, a Pete Sampras in tennis. Although Sampras was a solid player and won a comparable number of tournaments as Armstrong has bike races, Sampras was never really an edge worker – he never took many risks and was more of an athletic “rate-buster” than positive deviant. WILDERNESS SURVIVORS AS POSITIVE DEVIANTS In an attempt to better flesh out my definition of positive deviance and the conditions under which it applies, it is instructive to draw upon some case studies of wilderness survivors – people who set out intentionally in attempts to engage the wilderness (e.g. wilderness explorers or adventurers) and also people who accidentally found themselves in wilderness situations. Can wilderness explorers be classified as positive deviants? By definition, they certainly appear to be a deviant lot, and have indeed quite literally “turned from the straight road” to experience something most people will never attempt. As Simon Yates (2001: 215) comments, Many of us plan the same long-term adventure; to find a partner, to make a home and to raise children. We can almost take these things for granted, as if it is a certainty. Those that aspire to things outside this norm are often considered eccentric, or weird, while 12 those who want to pursue the peaks of mountains, the bottoms of oceans or the depths of caves, and are willing to risk their lives to do so, are sometimes considered totally mad. As well as being thoroughly deviant, it is also clear that wilderness explorers are also obviously edge workers (Simon 2005). They are known for traveling to the very edges of the earth, and the wilderness by definition represents a penultimate edgework environment. In a statement which echoes that sentiments described by Ferrell and Lyng, adventurer Joe Simpson explicitly mentions how mountaineering can be described as a form of edgework. Simpson describes in compelling detail “that fine line between extinction and life” (Simpson 1993: 118). As Simpson puts it: “You create the potential for death by going to the mountains and taking the risks, and yet you do not want to die. It seems to make no sense. It makes no sense until you have stepped too close to the edge. Then you understand why you went there and perceive that you have enhanced your life, affirmed what it is to be alive by realizing what it would be like to die” (Simpson 1993: 232). It is important to remember however, that despite all wilderness explorers being edge workers, it is only in certain situations, that they become viewed by society as positive deviants. Yates discusses the different ways society perceives his profession in the following: “There are only small numbers of adventurers like myself. To some we are inspirational figures who show that anything can be achieved, and to others we are dangerous lunatics who should be banned from practicing our pastime” (Yates 2001: 216). The shift in meaning that happens when people cease to be “dangerous lunatics” and become “inspirational figures who show that anything can be achieved” is exactly the shift from what Heckert and Heckert describe as “deviance admiration” or “negative deviance” to situations of “positive deviance.” It does not happen all the time and nor does it happen to anyone who goes into the wilderness. It was argued above 13 that positive deviance only occurs when people engage in risky, rare, and positive action that exceeds social expectations. The behavior of most edge workers and most wilderness adventurers typically never meets these standards. When it does so, however, society takes notice, and the positive deviants can become cultural icons or folk heroes. One excellent example of what I am talking about may be seen in the case of Ernest Shackleton‟s Antarctic expedition with the Endurance (Alexander 2000). This legendary tale, involving a crew of British explorers who went, inter alia, 497 days without setting foot on dry land, seven of them “in open boats in the South Atlantic at the beginning of an Artic winter,” and “170 days drifting on a floe of ice with inadequate food and shelter” (Alexander 2001: 129) seems to me a text-book case of positive deviance. POSITIVE DEVIANCE AS EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS AND TAKING ACTION People get labeled as positive deviants when they truly exceed the social expectations of others by taking some really serious risk and succeeding, or overcoming some very serious or substantial obstacle that no one expects them to be able to surmount. For example, an accomplished sailor circumnavigating the globe would probably not be viewed by many as a positively deviant. Such an individual would have simply confirmed their ability as sailor, not surpassed their social role. However, sailing around the world by oneself or being the first woman to do so, as XXX did in XXXX would count as an example of positive deviance. To further illustrate the meaning of positive deviance, one may examine the narratives found in work by adventure writer Jon Krakauer. Of the people chronicled in Krakauer‟s (1990) Into Thin Air I would argue that only Beck Weathers and perhaps Krakauer himself could be considered positive deviants. In the case of Beck Weathers, it is so because he came so close to 14 the edge of death – he was left to die by his expedition companions – and rather than succumbing to the elements, he fought heroically to survive, and sacrificed much of his body in the process. In another book, Into the Wild (1997) Krakauer describes the adventures of Chris McCandless, a college student who drops everything to go and live in Alaska‟s wilderness, survives for a few months, but ultimately fails to make it through the winter. Although McCandless can certainly be described as an edge-worker, it does not seem that he meets the standards as a positive deviant. At some fundamental level, it seems that society mainly views positive deviants as those who manage to survive their ordeal or who die a heroic death. Typically, if people don‟t live to tell the tale, they won‟t get the positive approval and will not be remembered by history. In Simpson‟s (2004), Touching the Void, we find two exemplars of positive deviance in Joe Simpson and Simon Yates. These two men were rock climbing a treacherous mountain in Peru, and Simpson broke his leg while descending from the summit. In the process of being lowered by Yates down the mountain on a rope, Simpson slipped over a cliff and was dangling over a huge, icy crevasse. Stuck in the middle of a blizzard, fearing for his own life, and after much reflection and consternation, Yates ended up cutting the rope, sending Simpson into the crevasse to almost certain death. Yet both men ended up surviving. What makes this story so compelling, and has brought both of them to near celebrity status, is that they both exceeded all expectations (even they had of themselves) and managed to go beyond the roles society had placed upon them. In the Meadian sense, they went beyond their “me”, to each become an “I” (Calhoun 2002: 251). To paraphrase Harrison White‟s (1992) phrasing, they established identity because they emerged triumphant through some sort of identity conflict or chaos (Cf. Harrison 2001). 15 What emerges from these examples and explains why survival narratives constitute their own literary genre and why people find them so compelling is that the subjects in these stories took some sort of extraordinary positive action to save themselves. They took to heart advice given by survival expert John Wiseman, former instructor for the British Special Air Service, who writes: “When facing a disaster it is easy to let yourself go, to collapse and be consumed in self-pity. But it is no use giving up or burying your head in the sand, and hoping that this is a bad dream that will soon pass. It won‟t, and with that kind of attitude it will rapidly become much worse. Only positive action can save you” (Wiseman 2004: 38, emphasis added). Positive action is an important theme in Ghinsberg‟s ([1985] 2006) account of being trapped in the Bolivian jungle, on the Shackleton expedition (Alexander 2000: 101) mentioned earlier, and in accounts given by Simpson (1993; 2004), Yates (2001) and Ralston (2004). To survive in the wilderness is to take things one step at a time, but to take them nonetheless. Mitchell (1984: 17), for example, writes that the “joy of mountaineering” is to be found in the “moment-by-moment accomplishments” and “small successes along the way – picking a better route for the next few feet above, completing a difficult move, safely reaching the next ledge.” The importance of positive action to positive deviance is not limited to wilderness explorers and adventurers. People do not revere Mother Theresa simply because she was an inherently good person, but because she undertook positive action. The same can be said of positive deviants such as Martin Luther King, the heroes of 9/11, and resilient children “who survive and even thrive in the toughest of social environments” (Heckert and Heckert 2002: 473). DISCUSSION 16 The argument in this paper has been that positive deviance should not simply be conceptualized as over-conformists “carrying a good thing to far” (Ewald and Jiobu 1985: 144), but rather viewed in terms of people who manage to exceed cultural expectations by taking positive action in risky situations. It has suggested that scholars of positive deviance may want to look at wilderness survivors as a way to clarify the debate. Such individuals are often welcomed back to their communities as heroes. Society is interested in them and views them positively because they just survived an ordeal which, statistically, few of us will ever face, confronted risks most people could never imagine, and managed to use the skills at their disposal to act and to survive. At times, wilderness survivors exceed our wildest expectations. We find their stories moving and compelling (i.e. positive) because their accounts allow us to think about just how we might have fared (or failed to perform) under such circumstances. Their narrative provides a point of reference for understanding the potential of human behavior and shows us what can be done even in the bleakest of initial circumstances. We get a glimpse, by way of natural experiment, about what people are like in their true core of cores, at the limits of human endurance, and gain precious insight into human willpower and the ingenuity it takes to survive. Making the conceptual definition of positive deviance more intellectually robust has consequences both for existing scholarship in positive deviance and also for future research. One consequence is that some examples of what has previously been conceptualized as positive deviance do not meet these new, stricter criteria. For example, using this new definition, it would seem that Heckert and Heckert‟s (2002) example of beautiful people, i.e. people who exceed the norms of physical attractiveness, would not count as positive deviants. This is because overly attractive people generally do not do anything particularly risky, are obviously part of the mainstream, do not typically take any sort of positive action because of their looks, 17 and they do not typically exceed the expectations associated with the social roles they play. More generally, one could argue that it is a mistake to refer to positive deviance as an ascriptive thing, a “condition” (Heckert and Heckert 2002: 466). Rather, being a positive deviant requires a good deal of agency. Positive deviance can and should be differentiated from scholarship on organizational “excellence” and “intentional behaviors that depart from the norms of a referent group in honorable ways” (Spreitzer and Sonenshein 2003: 830). Instead of positive deviance, it would be better to classify the type of behaviors discussed by these researchers not as positive deviance but as “rate busting” (Heckert and Heckert 2002). The sorts of actions classified by Spreitzer and Sonenshein should not be considered positive deviance from my perspective because the activities involved are really not that deviant – they are part and parcel of the normal operating procedure of working in corporate environments. Certainly such corporate actions are positively evaluated by some, but there is little, if any, risk involved, and no sense that these actors have surpassed the expectations social observers would have of them. The definition of positive deviance proposed here would also not count Irwin‟s (2003) “high culture icon and popular celebrity” social types as exemplars of positive deviance. To take the example of elite tattoo collectors, although they meet the edgework requirement in that they operate on the margins of society, and although their behavior could be considered positive by some social groups, they fail to meet other criteria in the definition. They have not exceeded the expectations associated with their social role, and they fail to meet the positive action criteria. A similar argument could be made regarding Irwin‟s notion of “popular celebrity” positive deviants, i.e. famous “actors, athletes and rock stars” who not only “rise above normal society…but also break more norms than „normal‟ people” (Irwin 2003: 46). Simply put, this is 18 a misuse of the concept of positive deviance because although being a celebrity is obviously rare, they live their lives not on the margins of society but in a bubble right in the midst of it, most celebrities have been groomed for stardom from a very early age (so what they become is a fairly predictable outcome), and although there are some exceptions, the sort of action celebrities engage in is can only rarely be described as particularly “positive.” Generally speaking, the conception of positive deviance articulated in this essay differs from those who have used the term in conjunction with the sociology of sport, e.g. Ewald and Jiobu (1985); Hughes and Coakley (1991). Ewald and Jiobu‟s (1985: 145) examples of positive deviants, e.g. “speed kings,” “grinds,” “workaholics,” (cf. Nichols 1989: 337) and “hackers” would not meet the definition for reasons already provided above. The present formulation of positive deviance would also take issue with Hughes and Coakley‟s (1991: 311) suggestion that “through positive deviance people do harmful things to themselves and perhaps others through a sense of duty and honor.” Although it is true that questions of “duty and honor” are often motivations for positive deviants, and sometimes positive deviants may incidentally bring about harm to themselves and to others, in the opinion of this author it makes little sense to build the doing of “harmful things” into the definition of positive deviance itself. For example, one of the reasons Shackleton‟s story is held in such high regard and with so much awe is that all of his men ended up surviving the ordeal. To make this point through another illustration, one would be hard pressed to say that Martin Luther King‟s actions involved the doing of “harmful things.” Certainly King‟s life ended tragically, and thus in a very harmful way, but most of his actions, most notably nonviolent civil disobedience, generally tried to avoid all type of harm (Lemert 2004: 344), to members of the civil rights movement as well as its detractors. 19 CONCLUSION Despite attempts to squelch or kill the concept of positive deviance (Sagarin 1989; Goode 1991), it seems to be doing at least some intellectual work in social science today. Despite significant differences in the way scholars employ the concept, there does seem to be evidence that positive deviance, even if it is not gaining ground, it is not losing much of it either. Unlike twenty years ago, it seems harder today to “deny the existence of the concept” (Heckert 1989: 132) of positive deviance. It seems that arguing against positive deviance today is sort of like arguing against concepts like “alienation” or “role strain” – certainly it is possible, but just what is the benefit that comes from doing so? With Heckert this paper has agued that “that the idea of positive deviance is valid and important” (Heckert 1989: 132). Ultimately, sociologists need to study the ways human beings interact with their environments in all their manifest diversity. However not all variations are equally interesting or worthy of study. Following the logic of this essay, future research on positive deviance might focus on people who are positively viewed by society because they took risks, exceeded social expectations and engaged in positive action. In the last few pages of Stigma, Erving Goffman (1963) offered his perspective on the field of deviance. Although he chose not to use the concept of deviance in that study (he felt it was a loaded term), at the end of the book he did offer a few remarks on the concept. These statements are important and can help us think through the positive deviance debate. Goffman writes that, “if there is to be a field of inquiry called „deviance‟” included in its subject matter would be, “prostitutes, drugs addicts, delinquents, criminals, jazz musicians, bohemians, gypsies, carnival workers, hobos, winos, show people, full time gamblers, beach dwellers, homosexuals and the urban unrepentant poor” (Goffman 1963: 143). These deviants should be at the 20 discipline‟s core, according to Goffman, because they “are the folk who are considered to be engaged in some kind of collective denial of the social order” (Goffman 1963: 144). Given this litany of research subjects, just what would Goffman have to say about “positive deviants”? Would he go along with people such as Sagarin and Goode who would claim that such individuals really “don‟t count” as deviants and are therefore not worthy of our study and attention, or would he rather have us read about, talk to, and try to understand them? From the perspective of this author at least, it seems that Goffman‟s remarks indicate a certain openness to positive deviance. Indeed, he goes on to write that, “there are deviant communities whose members, especially when away from their milieux, are not particularly concerned about . . . [and] can hardly be analyzed by reference to stigma management.” Goffman mentions the “warm beaches of America where can be found those aging young people who are not yet ready to become contaminated by work and who voluntarily devote themselves to various forms of riding the waves” (Goffman 1963: 146). 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