2. Interactionism and labelling theory Flashcards
The social construction of crime
Interested in how and why certain acts come to be defined or labelled as criminal.
No act is inherently criminal
It is not the nature of the act that makes it deviant , but the nature of society’s reaction to the act.
Becker (1963) - labelling theory
Becker (1963) - ‘social groups create deviance by creating the rules whose information constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling themselves outsiders’.
Becker believes what constitutes a crime and deviance is based on subjective decisions made by ‘moral entrepreneurs’ - the people who lea a moral ‘crusade’ to change the law
This law has 2 effects:
- Creation of new group of ‘outsiders’ those deviants who break the new rules
- Creation of expansion of a social control agency to enforce the rule and impose label on offenders.
Police and courts have the power to define or label behaviour
Social construction of crime stats
Interactionists see crime stats as socially constructed
Labels attached to individual suspects affect the outcomes
Stats therefore only tell us about the activities of the police and prosecutors, not the crime that is out there in society or who commits it
Stats are counts of the decisions made by control agents at ‘decision gates’
Dark figure of crime - difference between official stats and the ‘real’ rate of crime
Alternative status - victim surveys are used to gain a more accurate view of the amount of crime
Jock Young: Drugtakers and police - amplification spiral Case Study (Used on essay on DEVIANCE)
Young’s study shows how the interactions between a group of hippies and the police produce more crimes rather than less.
Although the hippies’ drug-taking is initially low, media pressure leads the police to target them.
This gradually makes the hippies more secretive about their activities and drug-taking becomes a more important part of their identity. The hippies and the police become increasingly distrustful of each other, and the hippies’ deviance becomes amplified until the statistics become a ‘crime wave’.
The effects of Labelling - Lemert - Primary and secondary deviance
Lemert - distinguishes between primary and secondary deviance
Primary deviance refers to deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled
Lemert argues that it is pointless to seek the causes of primary deviance, since it is so widespread that it is unlikely to have a single cause and in any case it is often trivial, e.g., fare dodging, mostly goes uncaught.
In short, primary deviants don’t generally see themselves as deviant.
Master status
Master status - some deviance is labelled. Secondary deviance is the result of societal reaction - that is, of labelling. Being caught and publicly labelled as a criminal can involve being stigmatised, shamed, humiliated or excluded from normal society. Once an individual is labelled, others may come to see them only in terms of the label. This becomes their master status/controlling identity, overriding all others
This can provide a crisis for the individuals sense of identity. The individual can accept the label but this may led to a SFP
Lemert refers to the further deviance that results from acting out the label as secondary deviance.
Deviant career
Deviant career - Secondary deviance is likely to provoke further hostile reactions from society and reinforcing the deviant’s ‘outsider’ status.
This in term may lead to more deviance and deviant career. E.g., ex-convicts find it hard to go straight in as no one will employ them, so they seek out other outsiders for support
This may involve joining a deviant subculture that offers deviant subculture and role models, rewards deviant behaviour and confirms their deviant identity.
Deviance Amplification Spiral
Used to describe the processes in which the attempt to control deviance leads to and increase in the level of deviance. This leads to greater efforts to control it and in turn this produces higher levels of deviance still
More control = more deviance in an escalating spiral
Braithwaite - 2 types of shaming (negative labelling)
Disintegrative shaming - where not only the crime, but also the criminal, is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society.
Reintegrative shaming - by contrast, labels the act but not the actor - as if to say, ‘they have done a bad thing’, rather than ‘they are a bad person’.
Reintegrative shaming encourages others to forgive the person. The wrongdoer is encouraged to re enter society. Braithwaite says crime sales are lower in societies that encourage reintegrative shaming.
Stan Cohen (1972) - Folk Devils and Moral Panics
Cohen researched the fights, which took place mainly in English seaside resorts on bank holidays, between 2 youth subcultures: the mods and rockers.
Cohen was influenced by Becker and labelling theory and so was interested in the response to the events rather than the events themselves. He was especially interested in the media response.
His study was a mixture of observation, content analysis and interviews.
Folk Devils
Cohen argued that when the media reports on deviant behaviour they construct a narrative which features a clear villain: the folk devil. In his study, the folk devils were the violent youth subcultures, “mods and rockers”. The creation of folk devils can kickstart a moral panic.
Moral Panics
The term can be applied to any sensationalist, or over-the-top, reaction to an issue that appears to relate to morality: to right and wrong. Other moral panics that have been of interest to sociologists have been e.g., the 2011 London Riots.
The implication, in the term ‘moral panic’, is that the reaction is out of proportion to the act and indeed that the reaction might, in a real scene, create the phenomenon itself.
Cohen found that while there were some minor scuffles when the different subcultures met on a bank holiday, the media created a story out of these turning it into a much more significant phenomenon. The reaction meant that the police responded to future conflict more forcefully and thus created further conflicts.
People involved had read stories about themselves in the media and started to play the parts that were written for them.
Other people wanted to join in: to have their ‘5 mins of fame’.
Example of how societal reaction to deviance can amplify that deviance.
Interactionism of the Sociology of Deviance - Suicide
Evaluation of Durkheim’s theory of Suicide as a ‘social fact’ - Positivism
Douglas:
1. Statistics are socially constructed
2. Label ‘suicide’ depends on relatives, doctors etc.
3. Stats tell us nothing about causes. Need qualitative methods to investigate
Atkinson:
1. Role of Coroner
2. Coroners use taken for granted assumptions ‘The typical suicide’
3. Suicide is therefore just a label applied by the coroner
Interactionism of the Sociology of Deviance - Mental Illness
Interactionists reject OS on mental illness because they regard them as social constitutes. Stats are not OS
Goffman:
1. Inmate undergoes a ‘mortification of the self’ old identity is killed. Study on asylums
2. Achieved by ‘degradation rituals’ such as confiscation of personal effects. Unable to re-adjust to new world, become institutionalised etc.
Lemert:
1. Paranoia is a SFP. People just don’t fit in and then came to be labelled as odd and then they are excluded.
2. Secondary labelling leads to further exclusion
3. This leads to psychiatric intervention
Evaluation of Labelling Theory
- Tends to be deterministic, implying that once someone is labelled, a deviant career is inevitable.
- Its emphasis on the negative effects of labelling gives the offenders a kind of victim status. Realist sociologists argue that this ignores the real victims of crime.
- Tends to focus on less serious crimes such as drug-taking
- Fails to explain why people commit primary deviance in the first place, before they are labelled
- By assuming that offenders are passive victims of labelling, it ignores the fact that individuals may actively choose deviance.
