Deviant Career Flashcards
How does a deviant career start? (Example)
Secondary deviance leading to further deviance. E.g. an ex-convict may find it hard to not be deviant because no one will employ him.
What does a deviant subculture offer?
Deviant career opportunities and role models, rewards deviant behaviour, and confirms their identity.
Young’s study of hippies.
Initially, drugs were peripheral to the hippies’ lifestyles, being a primary deviance. However, persecution and labelling by the control culture led to hippies to increasingly see themselves as outsiders. They retreated into closed groups where they began to develop a deviant subculture, wearing longer hair and more ‘way out’ clothes. Drug use became a central activity, attracting further attention from the police and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What does Lemert argue that creates secondary deviance?
Not the act itself, but the hostile reaction to it.
What have labelling theorist been accused of?
Being too deterministic.
Although a deviant career is a common outcome of labelling, what do labelling theorists point out?
It is not inevitable.
What does Downes and Rock note that we cannot predict?
Whether someone who has been labelled will follow a deviant career, because they are always free to choose not to deviate further.
