flight 227

In Sociology we were talking about deviance and flight 227. Flight 227 was a case in which a group of people were trapped on an air plane that crashed in the mountains. While they were trapped on the air plane the people were forced to commit cannibalism and eat their dead friends and other teammates. In class we were discussing whether or not this would be considered deviant. I said that it wouldn't because they did it out of desperation, they didn't want to, and they did not kill anyone. As a whole we decided that it depended which society you were taking a look at. If you were talking about the society where the people on the plane came from we said that it would be considered deviant because in that society it would have been looked down upon to eat someone else. However, because while the people were on the plane they were no longer considered part of their former society and actually part of their own society in which in was completely acceptable and necessary to eat other people in order to survive.