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What defines the cultural norm? It is interesting to look into various readings or tellings of stories that define what the public deems as current state of society. James P. Spradley and Dirk Jamison present not opposing but different views on society and with different techniques.

Spradley questions the cultural myth of the American "melting pot" in “You Owe Yourself a Drunk.” He argues that instead of being "seen as a patchwork quilt," we are not taking advantage of our differences and rather, "coming apart at the seams." I enjoy his image of the ripping quilt because it paints a realistic image of deviance in the world as he sees it. I feel that his interpretation of deviance is less bias than the one represented in Jamison’s account of his father because he represents the facts as raw data left for free interpretation. In his correspondences with Mr. William R. Tanner, he straightforwardly presents a viewpoint on drunkenness that deviates from the cultural norm. Tanner describes the prison reform system in such a way to open one’s eyes to the perspectives from the other side of the bars.

Jamison narrates a description of his father and his life as an urban nomad. His father’s views are different to say the least. As he dumpster dives and digs for “treasures,” a strain is put on the relationship between the father and his mother, who represents the cultural norm, or common thinking in society. In Jamison’s example with his sister being embarrassed of her lifestyle when she runs into a crush, he portrays the father as the good parent, trying to be encouraging and optimistic. This deviates from what I would expect parents to do because I would expect my parents to react the same way his mother had done by providing comfort foods and kind words instead of encouraging her to defy the normal lifestyle even more.

In both Spradley’s account of urban nomads and drunkenness and Jamison’s childhood memories, we see different perspectives on urban nomads and deviance from the everyday lifestyle. Spradley portrays men like Tanner by reporting unedited, whole texts of his letters with Tanner. Jamison relays his father’s story by recounting memories such as the episode with his sister’s humiliation as examples of how his father and mother differed from each other.

As a construction of contemporary society, the idea that 'urban nomads' are deviants of our social structure allows our ethnocentricty to really shine through. Contemporary American society follows a materialistic path in which money is everything, and in order to have money, we must work our lives away. One fully recognizable phrase of 'everyone deserves a piece of the pie' that is in essence the much-sought after American lifestyle of living in surburbia with a white-picket fence and jogging suits, influences us to think that cultures that differ from our own are beneath us. Both Spradley and Bukowski describe different and yet similar ideas of urban nomads. Yet despite the difference of each author's characters, both conform to Spradley's idea that our institutions, while set up to better society instead 'perpetrate injustice.'

Interestingly, while Spradley's William Tanner is constantly being thrown into jail for public drunkenness, he at least attempts to better himself by entering a treatment facility. Although to the reader, and even to Tanner himself, this might be seen as simply a way to be sheltered, clothed, and fed better than one would be in the jail system, it almost seems like a sub-conscious effort to obtain treatment for his alcoholism. What the judge who rules over Tanner's case does not understand is that although he has been given the opportunity to change his lifestyle and perhaps finally stay out of jail, he has buried himself deep within that world and cannot find a way out of the injustice of the legal system in that they do not provide those exiting the treatment center an alcohol-free environment and so they continue to fall in the same pattern of public drunkenness.

Bukowski's Cass on the other hand, is seen as a sort of lost soul that fell through the cracks of other institutions, orphanages and foster care. Her childhood is made up of choices which are not her own; her life has been mapped out by the institutions in which she is a part of. The problem in such institutions-the orphanage and the nunnery- is something that Spradley asks us to consider changing. He appeals to the reader of his ethnography to read and accept such cases as happening because our supposedly good institutions our creating appalling environments in which people can never escape and that we as outsiders of these subcultures need to do our part in bettering the way these institutions work and that we need to accept that we cannot create lemmings but must adapt the way we think to accept these subcultures as fully human, just different. What I find sad in Bukowski's tale is that despite the fact he apparently loves 'the most beautiful woman in town,' Cass, he does not attempt whatsoever to pull her out of the world she has been living in. Perhaps that is my own ethnocentric ideas trying to adapt to another culture in that I would not accept the fact that the person I love does not care about their own existence because of the way they have been brought up by the very institutions we create in order to stop such things from happening.

In fact, both Spradley and Bukowski represent characters that observe and interact with the people in their writings but do not try to interfere with the way they are living, perhaps the true function of an anthropologist. But, both authors do appeal for us to change the future lives of similar characters, which is interesting as they do not know the people that have yet to be affected by our wronged institutions but reach out to them more than those whose lives they are affected by.

The theme of deviance is very prevalent in today's society, even if people are unaware of its presence. Spradley defines deviance as being "socially alienated and culturally seperated." This definition can be applied to both the stories of the father dumpster diving and in "You Owe Yourself a Drunk." The father is seperate from his family because he feels freedom through deviating from society's norm and rummaging through trash to feed his family. To the father, the "smiling half-wit" hobo displayed the ultimate freedom through doing something that is not culturally accepted. He felt that "trash made money obsolete." This form of deviance is not negative to the father. He feels that doing something not culturally accepted actually frees him, rather than alienating him from society. The kind of deviance presented in "You Owe Yourself a Drunk" is displayed in the man who is constantly incarcerated for public intoxication. In this case, the institutions are responsible for these men remaining deviants because they simply lock them up for a weekend, or fine them, and send them on their way without correcting the problem. In Spradley’s piece, the incarcerated man feels that in these institutions “humanism is being back-seated..money is what’s respected!” These two different types of deviance presented in the lives of urban nomads are similar because they are both fighting stereo-types. The father is deviating from the path of social norm through his dumpster diving and seen as deviant because of his failure to conform to society and play the stereotypical role of the father working to provide for his family. Similarly, the incarcerated man is labeled a deviant, because he is an alcoholic, which is not culturally accepted, but offered no help to change from the institutions, and is therefore not completely responsible for his deviance.

I remember when I worked at Popeyes Chicken my senior year of high school. One of the unfavorable tasks that I had to do was, empty the trash from the lobby and take it to the dumpster behind the building. This process was never a complicated one for me and would usually only take five minutes to complete, but on one particular night it took longer. I came face to face with a homeless man who was going through the garbage trying to find something to eat, while changing clothes as well. Prior to this, my repeatedly beat into my head that it was the persons' fault they were homeless and if they wanted to change they could. In this aspect they were being "deviant" and not wanting to participate in our American society. A society in which everyone has the same opportunities to do what they wanted and succeed in life. I had a conversation with this man and not only learned more about him, but about myself as well.

We are all deviant. We all, in some way, go against what it may mean to be "American". For example, in the radio show excerpt we listened to, the father was being deviant from what we see as being successful and happy. Too many, having a good job, with a nice house and family, should free you of thoughts of being unhappy, but many times it goes deeper than that. The father was being deviant in relation to the social norms that are expected of us, by picking food from the garbage. One can also point to the selfishness he presents through much of the excerpt as a form of deviance from the American ideal of giving to others.

In Spradleys' essay, deviance comes in the form of what most would call a "drunk". William Tanner reminded me of the nameless homeless man I met that night at Popeyes. When growing up we all have dreams that we want to see come to fruition, but sometimes there are speed bumps along the way. With American Society, everyone is believed to have the same resources to succeed and if one does not, society labels them as not wanting to. It's like they're violating some kind of code of what it means to be accepted into this group we know as American society. They are being deviant against what our country was founded on. The land of prosperity. A place in which everyone is given the tools to succeed in life and the measure of success in based in the amount of material possessions we have.

I have realized that in all of the aforementioned cases, "the distance between most Americans and urban nomads cannot be measured in miles... [but] by cultural distance." Society deems what is accepted and what is not based on how deviant or how far we stray away from our ideas of American culture, but we don't realize that in some way everyone is deviant. In certain situations we are the homeless man at Popeyes. Or the father who loves to "dumpster dive". We may not "sift thru garbage" like others we see, but that does not excuse how deviant we can become in other ways. Society has yet to realize that while we are "repulsed because of the way they violate American values of cleanliness, steady employment, material possessions, and a commitment to home and family", someone is repulsed at our selfishness, greediness, laziness, carelessness, or anything they feel we are "deviant" of.

One contrast I found interesting between the Spradley piece and the excerpt from "This American Life" was the way that choice played a role in an individual's form of deviance. In the radio excerpt, the father undeniably chose to live a life of deviance when he decided to quit his job and contribute to the family by dumpster diving. The son's story about that choice emphasized the family's reaction to that choice. He focused specifically on the mother's rejection of that choice and how she went about trying to maintain a lifestyle that fit in with the American norm in spite of her husband's deviance.

In "You Owe Yourself a Drunk", Spradley emphasizes how American society rejects the urban nomads' form of deviance, but unlike the father in the radio excerpt, these "tramps" have not necessarily chosen their lifestyle. Spradely points out that "some men enter this way of life by choice" but not all do. Some become nomads because they are "alienated from the rest of society" by society itself due to their alcoholism, and once they have been jailed for drunkenness, he cannot escape this new lifestyle because he is "thrust to its center by repeated incarceration".

The repeated incarcerations are a form of initiation into the world of urban nomads and parallel the initiation the father goes through as he sees the man in the dumpster. The difference is that the father’s initiation was a choice that lead to perceived freedom and that he could have recanted at any point in his life. The urban nomad, once initiated, can never go back to a normal life. The initiation into the brotherhood of tramps is in reality the result of society’s rejection of the individual man. This is a reversal of the cause and effect relationship shown in the radio excerpt where the mother’s rejection of the father’s action results from his chosen initiation into an alternative lifestyle.

The traditions of a society originate to accomplish the goals of its creators, but eventually subsequent generations merely accept the customs as social norms and swallow them whole. Often times, we build false barriers and walls around ourselves that prevent us from exploration and discovery. We sacrifice our own goals and desires to abide by the prescribed rules of our society. However, a select few abstain from losing sight of their needs and are referred to as social deviants. They are the people that realize what they want and will not be halted by the illusionary walls instilled by society to attain it.

The construction of social norms has created a false ethical system that determines what is right or wrong based on what others have previously done. Both Dirk Jamison, from the radio show excerpt, and Spradley question these fictional constraints in their works. Jamison recounts how his father decided to stray from the usual American lifestyle and dumpster dive to make a living. His mother strictly holds to the current social traditions, and she cannot accept her husband’s new decision. I doubt if she ever really questioned her emotions or if it was merely her preconceived notions of that’s not how people normally act therefore it is wrong. Eventually his mother is extremely frustrated while his father is completely content, which leads you to question if social norms are the true means to a happy life. In Spradley’s work, he questions the American social ideal of the cultural melting pot. He mentions, “Americans do not simply belong to different generations, classes, racial or ethnic groups. They have also acquired distinct values, goals, and life styles - they come from different subcultures.” We have tried to create a delusion that immigrants feed into this country everyday and merely acclimate to American values. The truth is they retain some beliefs, and we should respect all differences instead of claiming their practitioners to be deviants. Spradley poses questions about the current social structure: “Can we create a society which recognizes the dignity of diverse culture patterns? Can we renew our institutions so they are truly human with the full realization that there are a variety of ways to be human?”

I believe social norms have caused us to neglect the idea that “there are a variety of ways to be human.” Jamison’s dad and other social deviants have just recognized this basic truth and enjoyed life exponentially more because of it. They attain their aspirations by choosing a path that has been blindly deemed disgraceful by social traditions without regard for the arrogant judgments of others.

Deviance is unavoidable and many exhibit deviance more than they think. If we think about it closely, deviance has existed since the time of cavemen. In the scurry of hunting animals, the natural instinct was to fight one another to get the food no matter who had retrieved it. And as is obvious, there was a caveman who must of deviated from the normal cultural habit of fighting because human life would not be as advanced as it is today. This caveman created a deviated culture because he found new ways to hunt for food by making different weapons and build homes rather than living in caves. While this is a broad example of deviation, it shows that not only urban nomads of today encounter deviance whether they want to or not, but the aspiration of finding new ways to live is the epitome of deviance.
The example of the cavemen is also a way to consider why so many subcultures exist. According to Spradley, especially "Americans do not simply belong to differnt generations, classes, racial or ethnic groups. They have also acquired distinct values, goals, and life styles-they come from different subcultures. America is faced, not simply with an urban crisis, but with a grand experiment in human community; can we create a society which recognizes the dignity of diverse culture patterns?" At this point, one of the only things we can do is accept deviance whether people bring it upon the themselves or it is involuntarily encountered. But just as Spardley mentions "A unity based on the suppression of differences and the belief in homogeneity is not realistic. Our society is pluralistic and we have hardly begun to discover the depths of this pluralism." What he means by the word "pluralistic" is that this society is already a place of many distinct cultures and beliefs which make up the "melting pot." While urban nomads are the common example of deviance in both the story we heard in class and in Spradley's representation of an alcoholic's journal, it must still be known that deviance exists in every subculture of the society. Therefore, deviance will always exist because there are always going to be those who desire cultural distance. In the end, they will still fall into the mixture of the melting pot and another square of the "patchwork quilt."
Because deviance is apart of all subcultures, who is to say what the exact idea of "cultural norm" is? Deviance definitely exists because of the power that comes with freedom of belief, speech etc. Jamison's father, from the story we heard, chose to start a new life. While his beliefs did not necessarily have the best consequences for his wife and kids, we blame him for his deviance because it was his choice. In his case, he did not want or understand why the cultural standard had to be his miserable way of making money. There is definitely something admirable in his new way of living, but we would mostly all agree that in today's society, that lifestyle is not the most efficient way to survive. He made deviation a choice. Not everyone gets even that much freedom, because it is simply somthing that cannot be helped according to the alcoholic in Spradley's "You Owe Yourself a Drunk." So deviation is an inevitable factor in society, in which people will measure its impact with different opinions. But we ultimately cannot deny that no matter who encounters it, it has both positive and negative effects, that America at least will always exhibit.

In the way our societies are structured, deviance carries a negative connotation. These authors represent deviance in two different circumstances. One of the texts brings about compassion by suggesting that individuals’ deviance is a product of a failed societal system or institution. The other begs scorn from the reader by blaming the victim. “Blaming the victim” means that an individual is at fault for their own deviant behavior and ignores social constraints.
From "You owe yourself a drunk" by James P. Spradely there is a passage that clearly describes the compassion that we should have for this kind of deviants.
"It is intended as a study which mines a narrow but central vein in the life experiences of these men more deeply than has ever been done in order to show the institutions affect the lives of these men. It emphasizes the cultural dimension of a very complex human situation and shows how repeated arrest and incarceration changes identities, facilities the assimilation patterns of this culture, and motivates these men to take up the life style of urban nomads. This description stresses social and cultural determinants of behavior, the ways in which law enforcement institutions function to create and sustain this culture."
-Spradely
In this case the institutions are the ones whose behavior and attitudes differ from standards of what is accepted in a society. They are helping these men to remain deviants due to their unaccepted actions. Instead of helping them to recover, they are sinking them more and more in this rejected culture. Therefore, people who are informed of these cases should feel compassion for these men who are not been helped correctly.
Passages from “Notes of a dirty man” by Charles Bukowski give audience a feeling of rejection towards deviants. In the story he talks about a person whose behavior is repulsive to others. The passages show that this person has never tried to be helped. Therefore, the reader is going to develop a feeling of rejection towards this individual whose behavior is unacceptable.

Deviation from the ‘cultural norm’ is represented in the two passages by Spradley and Bukowski. Spradley defines deviance as “socially alienated and culturally separated.” The urban nomads in the Spradley piece invoke a sense of helplessness. The call to rid America’s institutions is due to the alienation that is created by such places. The Bukowski text excerpt’s central focus was his father, who deviated from society’s norm by dumpster diving. This father idealizes freedom in this way, showing what he sees as the best way of enjoying life, free from work and similar responsibilities to spend time with his family.

The descriptive diction in “You Owe Yourself a Drunk” enforces certain turmoil to a ‘bum’ lifestyle. When describing the American quilt of cultures, he says the fabric “has been torn apart” and society is “wrenching, segmenting, and polarizing…” (3). The accounts of these nomads in this text contradict all social norms of safety, freedom, and the knowledge of what may happen from day to day.

The piece from Bukowski on the other hand, shows this deviant behavior in an idealistic light, through the eyes of his father. The mother represents what is culturally acceptable: getting a job, paying bills, supporting family, etc. The father, opposite the mother in this aspect, views his behavior as being truly free. His freedom comes from his extra time spent with his family, and enjoying the best of life. Case and point, for example, is when he eats the heart of the watermelon. His freedom has no monetary price tag as the mother’s does.

Both texts show deviance in a similar manner, the personal accounts from the urban nomad. The difference is how those accounts viewed the situation, which this behavior of deviation from the cultural norm provided freedom, versus the literal removal of it, and placed in jail for public drunkenness.

To be deviant, as defined in the Webster’s dictionary, is to stray especially from a standard or principle or to depart from an established course or norm. We can all identify with knowing people who are just a little strange, or kind of different, either by the way they act or look. These people have either chosen their path of oddity or perhaps had no choice in the matter. Whatever the case may be, we see them as being different, but the important question is why they are seen as being deviant.
In the portion of the radio program we heard, I was struck with the motives behind the father’s choice to become a dumpster digger. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was almost like he viewed his former job as a waste of time that would turn into a waste of his life. Most people, while they may not enjoy their work that much, they most certainly do not see it as a waste of time because they value the compensation of their work, which is money. Jamison’s father however, did not find money of any importance because he saw that he could get what he wanted without it. He also wanted to use his time in the way that he chose. The father preferred this deviant lifestyle because he felt it offered more freedom. And he wanted freedom to do exactly what he wanted, even though it was sometimes the opposite of society’s norm.
In Spradley’s reports of men who have deviant lifestyles, I see a slightly different hue of significance. Most of the words we read are from Mr. Tanner who wrote of his own experiences and those of others he observed in jail for public drunkenness. It seems to me that once these men are addicted to alcohol, they don’t have a choice in their deviant lifestyles. I feel sympathy for the people mentioned, while sometimes, they received the easy way out, there were other times when they were not treated with humane respect. The conditions they lived in were unhealthy. “Some of those tramps were sick and going into DT’s and the bulls just ignored them—sometimes as long as thirty minutes. I don’t know if they are lazy or just too mean to help a sick man.” Mr. Tanner had also been taken advantage of by the officers. “In my carreer I’ve been robbed exactly six times—twice by guys I toasted and aided, the others by the police in Oakland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. A drunk is always a pidgeon to all who trade on his weakness.” Why would people put themselves in these situations if they didn’t have to? In some cases, I don’t feel like they were able to choose not to be deviant once they had given into the practice of alcoholism long enough. People like Mr. Tanner are viewed as deviant perhaps because they exercise less self-control than others. Or perhaps we call them deviant because they seem like they are lazy and make bad choices. But the main reason they are seen as deviant is because the pattern of the habits in their lives leads them in a spiral downward and no one seems to be sincerely trying to help them back up.
In analyzing different styles of deviance in the lives of deviant people known as urban nomads, it is hard to come up with stereotypes because almost each case is different. That is one of the reasons why I find anthropology so difficult, time-consuming, and unscientific. In the case of Jamison’s father, I do not admire his choice of deviance because of the problems that must have arisen but were not talked about directly. The father seemed to have ignored these problems while the burden of reality fell to the mother. He was seen as deviant because he was not accepting the responsibility that would seem normal and necessary in our society. Alcoholics are viewed as deviant because of their addictions. But the main difference I see is that many alcoholics cannot help themselves and they need assistance from others but they aren’t getting it, which is the main reason why they are deviant and may not have a choice in being otherwise.

The sociology of deviance contains a number of theories that seek to describe patterns that lie within social deviance to help better understand societal behavior. In Spradley’s “A world of Strangers Who are Friends” shows perfect examples how self-deviance is in this world today. He questions that “The self- reliance which inhibits begging by most American must be altered to allow for this way of earning a living: values placed upon honesty, pride of accomplishment, and the virtue of hard work must all be transformed to pave the way for junking, boosting, conning, and peddling.”
Through these cultural behaviors Spradley recognizes that “In order to be a successful urban nomad it is necessary to learn the strategies for survival in this culture.” That these men/ women go through the harsh times daily not because of their choice, but because of the limitations that they have let themselves have that limit them from society and exclude them for the working world. They are learning things not in the same fashion that a normal working person is. They are learning from the streets, from inside of jails, under highways that the only people that understand them is the people just like them. So their social surroundings move from place to place, but end up being with the same type of people just at a different place with no action of having a deviant career. The only choice of skills they have to better themselves are the ones they have learned to just survive in the streets, not in the office. “Their culture is “characterized by mobility, alienation, poverty, and a unique set of survival strategies,” that make who and what they are.
In the passage that we heard in class the father makes a distinct decision to act and exert his actions on his own self-betrayal. He is the opposite of the men/ women in the paragraph above because he is coming from something to want nothing to do with what we call “normal cultural society.” With the father being the “hero” in the story he shows self-deviance by exerting freedom in his life and allowing himself to stop following the cultural norms and live life like he wants to. By showing this behavior the kids start to pick up that life is meant to be enjoyed while the mother is still bewildered that these actions are even going on through her eyes. In the same breath you could almost compare the father’s actions with the homeless with his course of deviant behavior, by living as he wants to and putting himself first before anyone else.
From both passages you sense a struggle of freedom that they are trying to get through acting a certain way using their own strategies from experience. Just different people have different experiences to find their way of living a free life through their deviant behavior.

The world has many different views on the urban nomads. Some people feel sorry for them and want to help them, others feel that they should be removed from view, and others feel anger towards the establishments we have in place. While there are exceptions to all general statements, it seems that the "deviance" exhibited by these people is in most cases merely laziness.

Some people have mental disabilities which prevent them from performing jobs and fitting into a normal society, and these people are unfortunate, but there are also cases of people who just do not care to strive toward a better society for everyone. A perfect example of this is the father in the radio show that we listened to. He decides that he simply does not enjoy working, so he decides to live by dumpster diving. A wonderful example of how his mind works is given by the description of when the family has a watermelon, and the father always eats the best part. The mother, who kept her job and worked hard to support the family, tried to explain to the father that it was better to allow everyone to share the best part, but the father refused to listen.

Another author who has written about the urban nomads is James Spradley. He wrote down one man's personal account of how the prison system in Washington has treated him and about his day to day life. At one point in the account, he is giving his account of being let out of jail after being arrested for public drunkenness. He says "First you must hustle pad, food, minus carfare - too late to seek work ... rough. It's always easy to spear drink or promote a jug of apple wine." This statement seems to be the source of deviance. It is easier to just get drunk than to try to live a clean, healthy life.

The prison system we have in place may not be beneficial for drunks who get thrown in jail repeatedly, and we may never understand the mindset of the urban nomads completely. Despite those things, it seems that persons of healthy mind should be able to muster the drive to live a good life and not just be lazy, which seems to be the major source of deviance.

While examining how deviants are perceived and how deviants act are worthwhile considerations, and both are issues that Spradley and Bukowski address, it is perhaps more interesting to ask the question how are deviants made. I think we would all agree that one is not born a deviant – so how does somebody become a deviant? Spradley and Bukowski have different opinions on this subject. Spradley seems to think that deviants are a result of a system, of a societal construct, whereas Bukowski indicates that deviants are the products of negative relationships with other human beings.

Spradley represents deviants as a product of a system – a result of a legal system that perpetuates their deviance, an unseen hand forcing a continuous repeat of arrest, jailing, and release. His study shows “the ways in which law enforcement institutions function to create and sustain this culture” (pg. 20). In the course of Spradley’s argument, he speaks out against “the value placed upon self-reliance” and efforts to make the individual “adapt to the dominant culture” (pg. 20). This line of reasoning sets up the deviant as an almost tragic figure who has little to no chance of breaking the cycle, forced to remain a deviant by an inhumane legal system.

Bukowski, in “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town”, paints the deviant as a product of relationships with other humans, as a result of interactions with real live people instead of an omnipotent legal system. At one point Cass says “I thought they were interested in me, not just my body”, highlighting that one of the reasons for her deviant behavior is the actions of other people. According to Bukowski, Cass is not a deviant because of some legal system but because of the interactions she has had with other human beings.

Spradley and Bukowski both represent deviance as, at least partially, the result of factors outside the control of the deviant individual themselves. The difference between the two is what that outside factor is. Spradley represents deviance as a product of a legal system that does not allow the deviant individual a chance to escape but rather keeps the individual locked in a vicious cycle. Bukowski, on the other hand, is representing deviance as the result of negative interactions with other human beings.

A broad but wholly interesting subject for me that can be tackled within both stories is not so much the idea of deviance and how it is perceived and achieved, but also the concept of freedom that arises with it. In “The Tao of the Dumpster,” the deviance against cultural norms brought about by the father’s hero figure, in his practice of scavenging and salvaging things that are discarded, brings about opposing ideas of freedom resulting from his deviance.
While Jamison states his father was somewhat comfortable in his job and supporting his children in his job, he felt enslaved by the work and its demands. He was able to get everything he and his kids needed and wanted, but little of what he wanted. In may mentionings, Jamison’s father seems to determine freedom by happiness, describing a homeless person he encounters as a “euphoric halfwit,” and stating he was “the happiest person he’d seen in years.” The father seems to translate that that happiness in fact comes from his deviance and rejection of the typical “9 to 5” life.
The mother is disgusted at the father’s admiration. “Freedom meant choices,” she says, “and that old guy had none. But Dad had plenty and should be making something of his life instead of thinking low-class thoughts.” The mother’s (or mainstream society’s) rejection of the father’s choices seems to stick with him is his contradictory thoughts, such as when he refers to a dumpster as “half foxhole, half gold mine), but ultimately decides “to be himself, even if his wife didn’t want him to,” and decides on freedom as being “less work, more time, and more life.”
Ultimately the story plays back into the title, “Something for Nothing,” and its introduction by Ira Glass of This American Life. The father’s idea of freedom is gaining all one can without any personal sacrifice or cost (in his case, meaning monetarily and time-wise), but like Ira Glass says, “as everybody knows, you usually pay a price.” He reaches Mammoth Mountain, CA and for a while seems to appear to be more free life with fishing, skiing, and entertaining his children, but ultimately loses his wife and trades the respect of his children for their and his own happiness. As the mothers puts it, “he has less freedom than any man, I’ve ever known. He can’t who where he wants cause he can’t spent anything to get what he wants.” In the mother’s eyes, and a view I’m inclined to agree with, freedom, no matter how it may appear, is not truly freedom unless gained from personal sacrifice. The father simply traded one cost: his time and money, for that of another: his family, to gain his very specific and personal idea of freedom.
Spradley seems to view deviance in a similar way, describing the “urban nomad,” which the father strives to be, or at least idolizes, as someone who violates “values of cleaniliness, steady employments, material possessions, and a commitment to home and family.”Spradley in one model defines the deviants as by their “popular identity,” and plays around with popular definitions of words like “tramp,” “bum,” and “hobo,” but seems to suggest in his studies that many view their positions as voluntary, that they are on the streets because they have rejected livess working jobs, and view incarceration as much a departure from freedom as the rest of us would, even though they more easily gain shelter, water, and food. Like Jamison’s father, Spradley’s deviants seem to view freedom not by creature comforts, security, or even health, but by the time and immediate choices they are afforded, unaware or uncaring of long-term consequences.

How nauseating to think that I might have once been perceived (certainly by my parents) as a lover of deviance, someone who opposes the norm just to get a rise out of those who embrace it. Looking back on my actions, though, that seems like a fair interpretation. When my mom begged me to stay in at least one AP class, I dropped them all. When my dad urged me to think about the future, I wrapped myself up in the immediate present. I stayed out too late in bad parts of town, acquired some unhealthy habits, and kept some unsavory company. No matter what it looked like, though, I wasn’t trying to shock anyone. I never intended to worry my parents or become some kind of shiftless night-crawler. Really, my own deviance was a product of fear and dissatisfaction. The world that my parents lived in wasn’t thrilling enough for me. I didn’t want to be pushing fifty in a cubicle. I wanted to see things. I wanted to have stories to tell. In my mind at the time, to take a path other than deviance would have been to risk mediocrity and unhappiness.

I think my teenage interpretation of deviance is something close to the father’s in “The Tao of the Dumpster,” in which deviance is seen as a means of escaping the frustrations and drudgery of mainstream, day-to-day life. It’s the only logical way to “live life to the fullest.” Take the title, “The Tao of the Dumpster,” for instance. Anyone even vaguely familiar with Taoism can grasp the importance of such a title. Taoism is a philosophy which stresses harmony, inner peace, and tranquility by becoming one with “the way” of nature. With his title, the author implies that this tranquility and oneness can be found in an unlikely place—the dumpster. He goes on to emphasize this idea with the rest of his story. The father is described as a man fed up with “empty labor.” He becomes consumed by the idea that he is wasting his days, that he has forced himself to adopt an unnatural and unbearable routine that does nothing for him but drain his life of meaning and joy. So, after being inspired by a dirty and toothless, yet happy, old man, the father decides to salvage what life he has left via deviance; he gets himself fired. With all the spare time that unemployment affords him, he spends his days scavenging. He hangs out behind grocery stores, picking through trash and salvaging perfectly good food that he will take home to feed his family. Even though his wife disapproves of his deviant actions, he is fueled by the excitement of the hunt itself, and satisfied with his spoils. A transformation takes place within the father. His deviance--his discovery of “The Tao of the Dumpster”--has reinvigorated him and renewed his near-dead soul. He has recovered an inner-peace that he hasn’t known in years.

Deviance is presented in an altogether different way in the Spradley piece. “The American city is convulsed in pain,” Spradley writes. “People suffer from hunger, death, loneliness, and inequality.” The enlightenment and tranquility of the dumpster are nowhere to be found on the streets of Seattle. In “You Owe Yourself a Drunk,” deviancy brings about victimization and perpetuates unhealthy behavior, not because deviance itself is an inherently negative thing, but because society stigmatizes and culturally marginalizes seemingly deviant people. “Their style of life is not only strange but also abhorrent to most Americans. They are socially alienated and culturally separated from us but still they are in our very midst!” Spradley says. Spradley does not mean to imply that deviance in Seattle can not possibly provide a path to enlightenment as it does in the “Tao of the Dumpster.” He is only saying that society stands on that path as a dark, looming roadblock. Spradley does not touch on the positive possibilities created by deviance because he has a very specific purpose in writing this ethnography: institutional reform. He points out that the legal system’s punishments for public drunkenness actually encourage such behavior. “This book…is intended for those of us who are not affected by these [institutions] but who have the power to change them.” So Spradley is attempting to encourage lawmakers, law enforcement, voters, and politicians to acknowledge the injustice of the current system and work together to make the necessary changes. In order to achieve this end, Spradley must portray urban nomads (i.e. deviants) as victimized and oppressed individuals. With his goals in mind, it would not be logical for Spradley to make deviancy out to be the positive exercise in soul-searching that it is in “The Tao of the Dumpster.” Most people don’t feel the need to reach out and help individuals who seem to have reached a great degree of inner peace. Sickness, agony, and injustice are much more powerful calls to action.