Interactionism and labelling theory Flashcards
What are labelling theorists interested in?
How and why certain acts come to be defined or labelled as criminal in the first place - no act is inherently criminal or deviant in itself in all situations and at all times.
How does Becker explain the labelling of deviance?
Social groups create deviance by creating the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders.
How does Becker define moral entrepreneurs?
People who lead a moral crusade to change the law.
What two effects do new laws create according to becker?
The creation of a new group of outsiders - outlaws and deviants who break the new rule. The creation or expansion of a social control agency to enforce the rule and impose labels on offenders.
Why was juvenile delinquency created according to Platt?
Resulted from a campaign by upper class victorian moral entrepreneurs aimed at protecting young people at risk. Enabled the state to extend its own powers beyond criminal offences involving the young where their behaviour is only an offence due to their age - status offences.
Explain Becker’s example of when social control agencies campaign for laws that increase their own power
The US federal bureau of narcotics successfully campaigned for the passing of marijuana tax act in 1937 to outlaw marijuana use. This was on the grounds of the ill effects on young people but Becker argues it was really to extend the bureau’s sphere of influence.
What factors affect whether a person is arrested, charged and convicted?
Their interactions with agencies of social control, their appearance background and personal biography and the situation / circumstances of the offence.
Explain cicourel’s theory of the negotiation of justice
Officer’s typifications - their commonsense theories or stereotypes of what the typical delinquent is like - led them to concentrate on certain types. Probation officers held the common sense theory that juvenile delinquency is due to broken homes. When an m/c youth was arrested, they would be less likely to be charged because they did not fit the idea of the typical delinquent.
Explain ‘topic vs resource’
Cicourel - statistics do not give us a valid picture of the patterns of crime and cannot be used as a resource. Instead, we should investigate the processes used to create them which will shed light on the activities of the control agencies and how they process and label certain types of people as criminals.
What is the dark figure of crime?
The difference between the official statistics and the real rate of crime is sometimes called the dark figure because we do not know for certain how much crime goes undetected, unreported and unrecorded.
What are alternative statistics?
Some sociologists use victim surveys or self report studies to gain a more accurate view of the amount of crime. These can add to our picture of crime.
What is primary deviance?
Lemert - Primary deviance - deviant acts that have not been publically labelled. It is pointless to seek the causes as it is so widespread that it is unlikely to have a single cause.
What is secondary deviance?
Lemert - result of societal reaction - labelling. Being caught and publically labelled can result in being stigmatised and excluded from normal society. This becomes their master status overriding all others. This can provoke a crisis for the individual’s self-concept or sense of identity and may lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy resulting in acting out the label as secondary deviance.
How can secondary deviance lead to a deviant career?
Secondary deviance is likely to provoke further hostile reactions from society and reinforce the deviant’s outsider status. Again, this in turn may lead to more deviance and a deviant career. For example, this may lead to joining a deviant subculture.
Explain Young’s study of Hippy Majuana users in Notting Hill.
Initially, drugs were peripheral to the hippies’ lifestyle - an example of primary deviance. However, persecution and labelling by the the control culture (the police) led the hippies increasingly see themselves as outsiders leading to them retreating into closed groups where they began to develop a deviant subculture. Drugs became a central activity.
What does the work of Lemert and Young show?
The idea that it is not the act itself but societal reaction to it that creates serious deviance.
What is the deviance amplification spiral?
Term used by labelling theorists to explain the process in which the attempt to control deviance leads to an increase in the level of deviance leading to greater attempts to control it and, again, higher levels of deviance.
Explain Cohen’s folk devils and moral panics.
Press exaggeration and distorted reporting of the events of the mods and rockers disturbances began a moral panic with moral entrepreneurs calling for a crackdown. The police arrested more youths while the courts enforced harsher penalties seeming to confirm the truth of the original media reaction. The demonising of the mods and rockers as folk devils caused further marginalization and therefore more deviance. This is similar to Lemert’s theory of secondary deviance.
What did Triplett discover about young offenders?
There has been an increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil and to be less tolerant of minor deviance. The criminal justice system has re-labelled minor offences such as truancy as more serious offences resulting in harsher sentences.
Explain how folk devils are opposites of the dark figure of crime
While the dark figure of crime is about unlabelled, unrecorded crime ignored by the public and the police, folk devils and their actions are over-labelled and over-exposed to public view and the attention of authorities.
Explain the difference between disintegrative and reintegrative shaming
Braithwaite - Disintegrative shaming is where not only the crime but also the criminal is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded while reintegrative shaming is where the act is labelled and not the actor. This avoids stigmatising the offender and allows them to reintegrate into society, avoiding pushing them back into secondary deviance.
Why do interactionists reject Durkheim’s positivist approach to suicide?
They argue that official statistics cannot be used to study and understand suicide and we must study its meanings for those who chose to kill themselves.
How does Douglas view official suicide statistics?
Official suicide statistics are socially constructed and they tell us about the people who construct them such as the coroners rather than the real rate of suicide. Whether a death comes to be officially labelled as a suicide depends on the interactions of the coroner, relataives, friends, doctors etc. Relatives may feel guilty about failing to prevent the death and press or a verdict of misadventure rather than suicide. A coroner may have strong religious beliefs that suicide is sin and therefore may feel reluctant to bring in a suicide vertdict. Therefore, Douglas argues that we must us qualitative methods such as analysing suicide notes or unstructured interviews with the deceased’s friends and relatives.
How does Atkinson support Douglas’ view of suicide?
Official statistics are merely a record of the labels coroners attach to deaths. He found that their ideas about a typical suicide were important; certain modes of death, location and circumstances and life history were seen as typical of suicides.
How can Atkinson be criticised?
If he is correct and all we have is interpretations about the social world, then his account is no more than interpretation and there is no good reason to accept it.
Explain Lemert’s study of paranoia
Some individuals don’t fit easily into groups. As a result of the primary deviance, others label the person as odd and begin to exclude him. This confirms the person’s suspicions that people are conspiring against them. Their reaction justifies fear for their mental health and this may lead to psychiatric intervention resulting in being officially labelled. The label ‘mental patient’ becomes their master status.
What study can be used to support Lemert’s study of paranoia?
Rosenhan’s pseudo-patient experiment in which researchers had themselves admitted to a number of hospitals claiming to have heard voices. They were diagnosed as schizophrenic and this became their master status. However, when they started acting normally, they were treated by staff as mentally ill.
Give 7 criticisms of labelling theory
Tends to be deterministic, emphasises negative aspects of labelling giving the offender a victim status, tends to focus on less serious crimes, ignores the fact that offenders may actively choose deviance, fails to explain why people commit primary deviance in the first place, implies that without labelling, crime would not exist, recognises the role of power in creating deviance but fails to analyse its source.
