Interactionism and Labelling Flashcards
Becker
Social groups create deviance by creating rules and labels that make something deviant.
Creation of new laws has 2 effects:
- creates a new group of deviant ppl
- creates a control agency to reinforce it
Moral Entrepreneurs
People who lead a ‘moral crusade’ to try to change a law or policy
Basically bunch of nonces that
Is Cohen a Subculturalist or a strain theoriest
Subculturalist
Pillivan and Briar
Police arresting youths was based on their appearance, from which they made judgements of character, decisions were also influenced by race and gender etc.
Cicourel
Negotiation of Justice -
Officers typifications led them to concentrate certain groups, this caused a class bias. This meant a crackdown on w/c which then reinforced sterotypes.
Due to typifications m/c are less likely to be punished because they don’t meet sterotypes and their m/c status means they can negotiate themselves.
Because of typifications and class, justice and punishment is up for negotiation
Cicourels implications on statistics
shows that biased creates a false picture of crime as reports certain groups too much
Dark figure of crime
number between stats and real rate of crime
Alternative statistics
Victim surveys and self report studies
C - people exaggerate or conceal crimes/victims
Lemert
Primary and Secondary Deviance -
P - Deviance not labelled, e.g. dodging fares
S - Being caught and publicly labelled, gives a master status
Young
Weed in nottinghill, police crack down on users and label them, they then find more and more users because they are cracking down, casues a moral panic and also a deviant career as users get a master status, must now turn to drugs for money and their criminal career.
Downes and Rock
We can never say if someone will have a deviant career because of a label as people all have free will.
Deviance Amplification Spiral
Seen in Young’s study of drug use in nottinghill.
Cohens - Mods and rockers
Press exaggerated mods and rockers, casued moral panic and a call for a crackdown, then crackdown find more and more ‘deviance’ cos you uncover it.
As you find more and more people get scared and call for more crackdown, causing a deviance amplification spiral.
Treating them like this marginalises them further and makes them more deviant
Lemert concludes…
Social control causes deviance
Triplett
CJS has relabelled status offences as crimes, e.g. truancy.
As predicted by Lemert, this causes an increase in deviance.
Braithwaite
2 types of shaming:
- Disintergrative (label and shame man)
- Reintergrative (Shame the crime not the man, rejoins society)
Reintergrative shaming is good as it lowers crime as people don’t have a master status and therefore don’t have to turn to more crime
Douglas - Meaning of suicide
Suicide depends on the negotiations between people.
if relatives don’t want it labelled as suicide or coroner thinks its a sin, they will call it something else.
Atkinson - Coroners Commonsense Knowledge
We only have opinions of the world nothing is fact.
Focuses on the ‘taken for granted’ assumptions coroners make when they reach a verdict.
Coroners idea of a ‘typical suicide’ is important.
Counter Atkinson
If everything is opinion, we have no reason to believe he is correct.
YOU’RE TALKING BOLLOX
Rosenhan
Researchers said they heard voices and were then diagnosed as Schirzophrenic, once admitted to an Asylum, they acted normally.
Depsite acting normal, they were still labelled as mental, this shows that master status overrules
Goffman
In Asylums, people are stripped of their identity and institutionalised, some people accept this and some resist.
Braiginski Et Al
Inmates of asylum seekers manipulated their symptoms to be seen as ‘too ill to leave’ but ‘not ill enough to be confined, this gives them free access around the hospital.
Evaluation of labelling theory
- ignores white collar crime
- ignores crime committed for no reason
- ignores effects on victims
- assums people cant refrute their label
