interactionism: sociology of deviance

Question 1

MENTAL ILLNESS: Interactionists reject official statistics on mental illness since they’re social constructs

Answer 1

• therefore crime, mental illness and suicide are artefacts not objective social facts

Question 2

interactionists focus on..

Answer 2

• they focus on the progress of labelling an individual mentally ill and the effects of this labelling

Question 3

LEMERT: study of paranoia

Answer 3

• individuals don’t fit easily into groups in result as a primary deviance and others label them and exclude them
• person’s negative response to the label is the beginning of secondary deviance which excludes them further
• it confirms their suspicions and justifies their fears
• this will lead to psychiatric intervention and being officially labelled as mentally ill and it becomes their master status
• everything they do in the future will be interpreted as a symptom of their mental illness

Question 4

GOFFMAN: study of asylums shows some effects of being admitted to an institution e.g. mental hospital

Answer 4

• patients undergo a mortification of self where their whole identity is symbolically ‘killed’ off and replaced by a new one ‘inmate’ and it is achieved through rituals like confiscating personal belongings
• some inmates that are institutionalized are unable to adjust to the outside world but others adopt various forms of resistance to new situation
• BRAGINSKI et al: inmates are able to manipulate their symptoms so they’re ‘well enough’ but not to be discharged but ‘not sick enough’ to be confined again

Question 5

Durkheim on suicide

Answer 5

• he studied suicide with the aim of showing that sociology is a science
• e.g. official statistics have discovered the causes of suicide

Question 6

Interactionists disagree with Durkheim’s positivist approach of suicide

Answer 6

• they reject his approach because official statistics are socially constructed since they tell us more about people who construct them (coroners) than the victims of suicide

Question 7

DOUGLAS: the decision to whether a sudden death is officially labelled as suicide by a coroner depending on the interactions between relatives, friends etc

Answer 7

• if a person who is socially integrated into a group is less likely to commit suicide
• if a person who is less integrated they are most likely to commit suicide

Question 8

statistics tell us nothing about the meanings behind the person’s decision of committing suicide

Answer 8

• this is because DOUGLAS claims that only quantitative methods e.g. interviews would only enable this

Question 9

ATKINSON: factors that would classify a death as a suicide

Answer 9

• suicide notes/letters
• mode of death: hanging is said to be suicide compared to road traffic suicide being accidental deaths
• location and situation
• life history: previous mental illness, strain in relationships etc

Question 10

coroners have ‘common sense theory’

Answer 10

• this is where they classify a death as a suicide depending on the factors

Question 11

ATKINSON: suicide official statistics are part of the social world since they reflect the subjective interpretations by coroners and other statistics are seen as unnatural death

Answer 11

• objective of sociology is to comprehend the social world through categories, perceptions and interpretations
• ‘how do deaths get categorised as suicide?’