Social norm is the name given to a standard of behavior whereby people are expected to behave in a certain way. Significantly, it does not refer to the way people might actually believe. Pfohl makes reference to "a given order of roles, rules, and regulations" and the view that society has goals that "inform[] its members about how they must behave if the system is to be reproduced" (222). Social norms have varying degrees of seriousness. Obeying traffic signals is one version of social norming, as is the expectation that a person with a radio on the street will not play it excessively loud. But so is the expectation that everybody heil the Fuhrer in exactly the same way.
Problems with using social norms as measures of deviance include the fact that the norms may be too strong, forcing mass conformity, or too weak, with social actors "too weakly joined to accomplish basic tasks needed to assure [their] own survival" (223-4). Further, as Durkheim points out, deviance from bad social norms can help a society adapt, modernize, and progress (Pfohl 225). Pfohl describes Dr. King as "exemplif[ying] the deviant as an innovator" (225).
Good functionalist analysis, according to Merton, does five things: (1) describes how social units interact, whether they are deviant or under social control; (2) shows the context in which deviant or controlling interaction takes place; (3) evaluates what the deviant or social control activity means to those who are engaged in it; (4) identifies the motives for deviating or conforming; and (5) describes "patterns not recognized by participants but which appear to have consequences" for either the persons involved or society in general (Pfohl 231-2). Functional theorists seem careful to point out that describing social norms and deviance is not the same as endorsing the norms; however, functionalism arose in a climate of disorder, as sociologists analyzed what went wrong with the world in the Great Depress...