Although the war in Syria begun over 6 years ago, it continues to fill the headlines of news reports around the world. This civil war, a conflict between citizens of the same country, started in 2011. Syrian citizens took to the streets, demanding democracy and opening showing their disapproval of the government and president, Bashar al-Assad.
The Assad family has held power in Syria for generations, many citizens blamed them for their lack of freedom, high unemployment rates, and economic woes. When President Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father in 2011, the citizens of Syria started a peaceful uprising to show their discontent and insisted on change. Their protests and demonstrations quickly turned violent. Assad’s government used deadly …show more content…
Deviance is behavior that is outside the realm of the social “norm”. Before the start of the war, the social norm was to obey to the government and to not question it. The citizens of Syria showed deviant behavior when they began the opposition against President Assad in search of democracy and freedom. With this being said, the “rebels” did not start out their protests with violent or criminal behaviors. Their peaceful protests and rallies were considered deviant because it was not acceptable to question their government. The class-dominant theory elaborates more on this perspective of deviance. It proposes that deviant or criminal behavior punishment is determined by those of higher class. With the higher class in this situation being the Syrian government, they chose not to listen to their people and retaliated by calling them criminals and that their cause must be eliminated (Charles & Eglitis, …show more content…
The first form of social control that started at the beginning of the tension in Syria is informal social control. Informal social control is an unofficial mean that makes deviant behavior discouraged in everyday life. Informal social controls lead people to conform to societal norms and away from deviant behavior. Although the protests were not unlawful in the beginning, they were frowned upon by the government and President, who expected their citizens to accept their way of running the country. By using informal controls, they try to keep deviance in check. As the war continued to progress it began a series of formal control. Formal controls are official attempts to discourage behaviors and visibly punish others (Charles & Eglitis, 2015). This goes back to talking about war crimes in Syria. People, especially those with the opposition, have been arrested, punished, and even publicly executed as an example to other citizens not to try and challenge the President and the terrorist groups that have gotten involved in the civil war, such as IS. These examples of the actions in Syria can be considered as a part of the more extreme cases of social control, but still a very important sociological aspect to keep in