CHAPTER 13 (test #3) Flashcards
What do interactionist theories focus on? What is the central concept?
Focus on the smaller details of social life and the interchanges between people and the meanings of these interchanges
Central concept = The Deviant Career
- interactionism centres on what happens to criminals once their deviant activities commence
What is interactionist theory based on? What are the three basic premises of it?
Based on the broader Symbolic Interactionism theory
Three basic premises:
1. People act according to objects in their lives and the meanings those objects have for them
2. These meanings emerge from interactions among people
3. Meanings are applied and occasionally modified
What is The Deviant Career? What’s the key observation?
Refers to stages of a persons involvement in criminal activity, like stages in an occupational career
- careers are influenced by contingencies and turning points encountered at each stage (ex. youth crime career may be prolonged by early delinquency, drug use, and lack of a job)
- perception of increasing opportunities and increased sophistication/recognition by peers
**interactionist theories examine how these careers develop (short lived or long? what types of crime? how committed will they be to a deviant identity?)
Key observation: some groups or individuals have enough power to force the label of deviant on less powerful groups or individuals
What is primary deviation and secondary deviation? (Lamert)
*within labelling theory
Primary:
- early in the career, the offender commits deviant acts infrequently and does not self-identify as a deviant (no commitment)
Secondary:
- *deviance results from the imposition of the label
- deviance becomes a way of life and individual accepts the label of deviant - their behaviour has substantially modified their ways of living
- the individual has an affinity (innate or acquired) for the intended deviant act
What is meant by Drift (Primary Deviation)
A psychological state of weak normative attachment to either deviant or conventional ways
- people who are willing to engage in deviance have a weak commitment to conventional norms and identities
What is a precondition of deviance?
Precondition = the willingness to engage in deviance - an individual must have an affinity for the intended act
Explain Matza’s ideas about the young offender (primary devience)
Examined the lives of young offenders and found that they were firmly attached to certain marginal, masculine, subterranean traditions or ways of life involving drinking, smoking, and renouncing work.
- Honour in these groups is based on demonstrating a commitment to subterranean traditions (= deviant patterns of behaviour)
- The young offender subculture is comprised of moral rhetorics (set of claims and assertions deviant make to justify their deviant behaviour) that are used to neutralize the stigma associated with deviance
(later, young offenders use instrumental rhetoric to justify their acts)
What are agents of social control?
The members of society who help check deviant behaviour - include police, judges, lawmakers, parole officers, etc.
What are moral entrepreneurs?
Someone who defines new rules and laws or who advocates stricter enforcement of existing laws
- often have financial or organizational interests
- often crusaders for particular causes (ex. mothers against drunk driving)
- to create an effective crusade, moral entrepreneurs often rely on quasi-theories that may lack empirical evidence and are often overly simplistic
- certain ethnic groups are targeted by moral entrepreneurs (more likely to be labelled deviant successfully and face some kind of community reaction to their misdeeds)
What links primary deviance and secondary deviance?
primary deviance –> societal reaction –> secondary deviance
**The existence of moral rules and the stigma that arises when society believes those rules have been violated sets the stage for secondary deviation
How do some individuals cope with the problems associated with their deviance?
Some become part of a deviant group and learn from them about how to cope - makes being a deviant easier
- acquires rationalizations for his or her values, attitudes, and behaviour
- some don’t become members of a group and reject the label of deviant during certain phases of their career
What is career contingency?
What is a prominent contingency in secondary deviation?
An unintended event or situation that can affect the movement of an individual along a deviant career (beyond the control of the person)
- ex. an interaction with an agent of social control
- underlies the significance of interaction between suspected deviants and social control agents in the deviant’s career
- a prominent contingency in secondary deviation is continuance commitment (costs of leaving are greater than benefits)
What is a Continuance Commitment?
What are the two kinds of societal penalties?
Refers to the awareness of the impossibility of choosing a non-criminal identity, because of penalties (societal reactions) in making the switch (unattractiveness or unavailability of alternative lifestyles)
ex. inability to get a job
Penalties may be:
Structural (flow from the social structure of the community)
Personal (flow from the preson’s attitudes and sense of self)
What is Self-enhancing commitment and Self-degrading commitment (reactions to commitment)
Self-enhancing = some are attached to their deviant activities; they enjoy what they do and are not motivated to leave their lifestyle
**commitment leading to a better opinion of oneself
Self-degrading = less attachment to the deviant lifestyle
**commitment leading to a poorer opinion of oneself
What is Master Status?
A status overriding all others in perceived importance
ex. “criminal”
- Society’s tendency to treat someone’s criminality as their master status is a major factor that leads to secondary deviation
What is the Differential Association theory?
(who developed it?)
Developed by Sutherland:
- argues that crime, like any social behaviour, is learned in association with others
- If individuals regularly associate with criminals in relative isolation from law-abiding citizens, they are more likely to engage in crime –> They learn relevant skills for committing crime and ideas for justifying and normalizing it
- highlights the importance of ties to deviant peers in establishing criminal careers
- emphasizes the fact that skills for committing certain crimes have to be learned
- criminal behaviour is an expression of the same general needs and values as non-criminal behaviour
What are the strengths and critiques of Differential Association Theory?
Strengths:
- points out the importance of learning criminal behaviour, motives, attitudes, and techniques
- highlights the importance of ties to deviant peers
- represents one of the most important theoretical traditions in criminology (one of the strongest correlates of crime is association with delinquent peers)
Critiques:
- deviant motives and meanings are often gradually learned and tentatively applied - they are also modified over time in interactions with both deviants AND non-deviants
- expressive reasons for committing crime (thrill and enjoyment) are ignored
- key concepts are hard to operationalize/test (ex. intensity and frequency of criminal associations)
What are criminal identities? What are the two sides to the process of labelling?
Criminal identity is a social category into which deviants are placed by others and into which they may place themselves - this labelling often furthers individual criminality and the concept is similar to that of master status
Two sides:
1. People are viewed as a particular kind of criminal based on a variety of criteria (appearance, actions, associates, location, etc.)
- Community identification of people tends to be highly persuasive, even for deviants themselves
What’s the main criticism / limitation of interactionist theories?
They are not a complete explanation for crime
What are the Neo-Marxist Critiques of Interactionist theories?
- fails to relate crime and other forms of deviance to the larger society
- fails to account for historical and contemporary economic interests
- fail to go as far as they could in linking power to concepts such as labelling, deviant career, and agent of social control
What are the 3 Empiricist critiques of interactionist theories?
- only examines labelled deviants
- labelling as a cause for deviance is inadequately conceptualized
- labelling theory lacks testable propositions
What is the ethno-methodological critique of interactionist theories?
- says it neglects the question: “how do ppl make sense of their social world?”
- labelling theorists do not examine how labels are created - instead they rely on official definitions of who is labelled
What are the implications of Interactionist theories?
- exposes the moral enterprise involved in deviance
- highlights the damaging effects of the deviant label and how it makes re-entry into the community problematic
- note that the deviant label is especially damaging when applied to youth, and consequently the juvenile courts should be used for only serious cases
- calls attention to the deviant career as a process that helps explain deviance beyond its initial causes - people should have opportunities to build strong paths in “respectable” pursuits
What are the 2 process theories within interactionist theories?
Differential association
Labeling Theory
What are some techniques of neutralization (ways of justifying crime)?
- denial of responsibility
- denial of injury
- blame victim
- condemn condemners
- appeal to higher loyalty
What is the main idea of labelling theory?
- deviance is not a quality of the act, but a result of the social definition of the act
- everyone commits deviant acts, but only some are singled out and labelled
*criminal and noncriminals don’t differ in any meaningful ways
What are the 3 elements of the looking-glass self?
- the imagination of our appearance to the other person
- the imagination of the other person’s judgment of that appearance
- some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification
What are the contributions and criticisms of labelling theory?
Contributions: theory led to a focus on the consequences of labeling
- decriminalization
- diversion
-due process
Criticisms:
- the label doesn’t create the behaviour in the first place - it may be the consequence of the act, not its cause
- actor doesn’t just passively accept the label - groups can organize to fight the effects of the label (ex. trump resisting many bad labels)
- label may prevent future deviance? ex. AA groups require people to recognize their problem before helping
What is the moral entrepreneurs typical pattern of trying to crusade a reform?
What’s an example of this from California?
- Assert the existence of a particular condition or state of affairs
- Define this condition as harmful or undesirable
- try to arouse support of the public
California 3 strikes law:
- father of murder victim lobbied for a tough sentencing law –> politicians were afraid to oppose to avoid being labelled as ‘soft on crime’
The Law: double sentence for a second felony and a mandatory 25 yrs to life sentence for a third felony even if it’s minor (eventually changed to require the third felony to be serious/violent)
