Social variance as it exists between conformity and deviance: Following some advice from Ogburn

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to introduce social variance as the "stuff" that exists between conformitv and deviance in modern sociology. We often over-emphasize the either-or qualities of conformity and deviance, presuming that nothing lies between them. A foot-long ruler is not intended to look at 0 or 12 on a stick. so why do we do that very thing? By borrowing generously from novels, distance measurements, and art, social variance represents aberrations from conformity and from deviance as a new subject in a discipline which has been dedicuted to traditional definitions, dualisms, and labeling theory.