Deviance Non-Positivist Perspectives Flashcards
Labelling Theories: Frank Tannenbaum
- Tagging: “deviant” or “evil” label is applied to particular act
- Dramatization of evil: label is applied to the whole person rather than just the act
This process results in changes to the person’s self-image and identity, whereby the identity becomes built around the label and behaviours that correspond to the label and new identity
Labelling Theories: Howard Becker
Deviance is a master status (characteristic by which others identify you and overrides other characteristics you may have)
A person with a deviant master status becomes an outsider
- Life opportunities will be blocked, and conforming world will be less accepting.
- Results in feelings of being an “outsider”
Changes in identity and lifestyle
- Process of exclusion from conforming world and acceptance in the deviant world = lifestyle built around deviance (also known as secondary deviance according to Lemert)
Erving Goffman: Stigma
Reinforce our notions of self and derive notions of self-value through interaction rituals
- Theory of dramaturgy: Makes sense of the divide between identities we enact in public, and our internal thought processes
- Social scripts: conduct expectations we abide by while interacting with others
- Impression management: Process of assessing our own performance against the standards of what we assume others expect
Stigma:
The process through which members of mainstream society symbolically designate as abnormal those who might not abide by social scripts:
- Stigma associated with physical/biological abnormalities
- Stigma associated with practices of living that contradict dominant notions of normality
- Tribal stigma: Applied to people of alternative ethnic groups, nationality, or religion
We may be stigmatized for a variety of reasons
- Physical stigma → e.g., appearance; illness
- Moral stigma → e.g., sex work; financial problems
- Group stigma → e.g., gender identity; religion
- Courtesy stigma or stigma by association = stigmatized for the actions of others
e. g., mothers of school shooters
Erving Goffman: Dramaturgical approach
The differences between our front-stage self and back-stage self
- Front-stage self: play our assigned roles in certain ways -> control the images that we present and the messages we convey to others
- Spoiled identity: If the role we have assumed is one that incurs stigmas, managing how people perceive is is much more difficult = risking a spoiled identity
- Back-stage self: leaving the view of others to place where we step out of that role (at least temporarily), parts of self we suppress come out and we can relax but must also prepare for upcoming performances. Back-stage associated with one role may be front stage for another role.
If the role we have assumed is stigmatized, we engage in stigma management on the front stage
Implications for management strategies:
- upfront about stigma and attempt to educate other = expose self to discrimination
- Hide stigma through secrecy = developing feelings of shame
- Withdraw from social interactions = isolated from potential social support networks
Acts that manage stigma in front of one audience may cause stigma with other audiences
The Deviant Career: Progressing Through Deviance
Deviance is an interpretive experience based in social interaction.
- Deviance emerges, progresses, and changes over time, there are stages to involved in deviance just like stages in development of a career.
- Progression through deviance = progression through a career (entrance phases, management phases, or exit phases)
- Stages: beginner user, the occasional user, and the regular user.
- Career contingencies: significant turning points which influence the directions that people take at various points in the deviant career.
Limitations of Interpretive Theorizing
- Failure to address the social structure and its role in the processes surrounding deviance and normality
- Failure to address long-term effects of labelling
Responses to critiques → address structural variables and long-term effects
e.g., educational attainment of young offenders in the US versus Korea
Critical Theorizing: Power Relations and Social Justice
These theories are both theoretical and practical in nature
- Theoretical level: analyze the centrality of structures and processes of power in the creation of societal expectations and rules, and people’s everyday experiences within them.
- Practical level: emancipatory interest -> interest in working toward social justice for society’s powerless
Conflict Theorist Karl Marx stated that: social scientists have a responsibility to use their work in pursuit of practical, emancipatory goals = praxis
- Only by revealing the structures and processes of power at work that they can be dismantled and positive social change made possible
Three Premises of Conflict Theories:
- Social rules emerge out of conflict and serve the interests of the most influential groups in society
- Members of powerful groups are less likely to break the rules because they serve their interests
- Members of less powerful groups are more likely to act in ways that violate the social rules either because of their sense or oppression and alienate causing them to act out in rule-breaking ways or social rules have defined the acts of the powerless as deviant in the first place
Conflict Theories
All conflict theorists integrate propositions about the structures of societal inequality with views about the ideologies that are used to maintain the status quo and reproduce the existing structures of inequality
- Many forms of conflict theory
- In a democracy, the powerful cannot only coerce the powerless
- Must convince the powerless that the rules are “logical” -> hegemony and false consciousness
Hegemony and False Consciousness
The elite class manipulates the ideas, knowledge, and morals of the working public to make them believe that the system is working in their best interest and that it does so in a fair and legitimate way - The powerful control society’s institutions have allows their ideology to be taught as “common sense” through their institutions = achieve hegemony (becoming the dominant way of seeing and understanding the world)
- Hegomony later grew out of the conflict perspective and became false consciousness (society’s masses have been duped by interests and needs of the powerful through society’s institutions)
Goal of theory and action is to enlighten society’s masses, so they become aware of ideology, false consciousness, or hegemony. Then hierarchical structures of power can be changed to create social justice.
Origins of Conflict Theory
Karl Marx
- Proposed that society consists of a small group of powerful people at the top and a large group of powerless people at the bottom
- Power differentials caused by economic factors
- Bourgeoisie: society’s powerful, those who own the means of production
- Proletariat: society’s powerless, the wage earners who work for the people who own the means of production
- Sense of alienation experienced by proletariat: because of their working conditions, which give rise to deviant behaviour among some people
Instrumentalist Marxism:
- Institutionalized social rules are created by the powerful to serve the interests of the powerful -> the owners of the means of production.
- Deviant label is an instrument used to control the proletariat and maintain the existing distribution of power.
