Key Theorists - Interactionalism and Labelling Theory

Question 1

KEY THEORIST - STAN COHEN: FOLK DEVILS AND MORAL PANICS

What was he interested in?

Answer 1

• The truth behind the ‘Mods and Rockers’ media hype in the late 1960s.

Question 2

KEY THEORIST - STAN COHEN: FOLK DEVILS AND MORAL PANICS

What did he argue?

Answer 2

Argued that:

• According to the media the violence between Mods and Rockers was a national problem that represented the decay of society.
• In order to understand why this occurs, we need to understand the concepts of social control, folk devils and moral panics.

Question 3

KEY THEORIST - STAN COHEN: FOLK DEVILS AND MORAL PANICS

What did he find in his research that contradicted media stories?

Answer 3

• The ‘violence’ that the media reported appeared minimal.
• The majority of people at the seaside during these ‘riots’ were not Mods or Rockers.
• The media seemed to have painted a skewed picture of events and sensationalized the clashes between these two groups.

Question 4

KEY THEORIST - MUNCIE (1987): MORAL PANICS

What do they argue?

Answer 4

A moral panic is:

• The simplification of an insubordinate or subversive minority.
• A stigmatization of those involved (labelling)
• Successful in creating a generation of trepidation among the public.

Question 5

KEY THEORIST - HALL (1976): HEGEMONY

What do they argue?

Answer 5

• Hegemony refers to the process by which the ruling class is able not only to coerce a subordinate class to conform to its interests, but to exert ‘hegemony’ or ‘total social authority’ over subordinate classes.
• The ‘Hegemonic Image of Crime’ is that it is ‘street related’, in public and committed by strangers….this is not a true representation of what’s really going on.

Question 6

KEY THEORIST - HALL (1976): HEGEMONY

What are the effects of this Hegemonic Image of Crime on the public?

Answer 6

• It fragments the working classes and turns them on one-another and thus justifies the use of repressive control.
• It justifies inequalities in society and reasserts the power of those in the higher groups of society i.e. labelling being used as a form of SOCIAL CONTROL.

Question 7

KEY THEORIST - JOCK YOUNG: DEVIANCY AMPLIFICATION SPIRAL

What does he argue and what example did he give to support his argument?

Answer 7

• Labels, folk devils and moral panics actually generate more crime.

Example: Drug takers in Notting Hill:

• Police arrest drug marijuana smokers for minor offences.
• The media sensationalise these stories and thus have their folk devil ‘the drug taker’ and begin to generate a moral panic about ‘drug takers’.
• In response to these stories, the police crackdown even harder on these folk devils.
• This pushes the ‘drug takers’ ‘underground’, this raises police suspicion and pushes the price of drugs up – the police crackdown even more harshly which creates more media coverage.
• The ‘drug taker’s’ start resisting arrest, turn to new types of drugs and have to organise themselves better which leads to more deviance.

                              THIS IS A CYCLE

Question 8

KEY THEORIST - CICOUREL: THE NEGOCIATION OF JUSTICE

What does this theorist argue?

Answer 8

Argues:

• Police officers’ decisions to arrest people are influenced by their stereotypes about offenders. This resulted in law in force meant showing a class bias, in that working class areas and people fitted police stereotypes more easily. This also led to police patrolling working class areas more intensively, resulting in more arrests.
• Other agents of social control within the criminal justice system also reinforced this bias. For example, probation officers held the commonsense theory that juvenile delinquency was caused by broken homes and poverty.
• Justice is not fixed but is Instead negotiable. For example, when a middle-class youth was arrested he was less likely to be charged.

Question 9

KEY THEORIST - LEMERT (1951): PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DEVIANCE

What does this theory do?

Answer 9

• Distinguish between primary and secondary deviance.

Question 10

KEY THEORIST - LEMERT (1951): PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DEVIANCE

What does this theorist argue?

Answer 10

• It is pointless to seek the causes of primary deviance - it so widespread that it is unlikely to have a single cause, is mostly trivial and often goes uncaught.
• Acts of primary deviance are not an organised deviant way of life, so offenders can easily rationalise them away, for example as a ‘moment of madness’. These acts have little significance for the individuals status or self-concept.
• Primary deviants don’t usually see themselves as deviant.
• Further deviance that results from acting out of the label is known as secondary deviance.

Question 11

KEY THEORIST - JOCK YOUNG (1971): PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DEVIANCE

What did this theorist do?

Answer 11

Use the concepts of secondary deviance and deviant career in his study of hippy marijuana users in Notting Hill.

Question 12

KEY THEORIST - JOCK YOUNG (1971): PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DEVIANCE

What did this theorist find?

Answer 12

• Initially, drugs were linked to a hippy lifestyle – an example of primary deviance.
• However, persecution and labelling by the control culture (the police) led the hippies to increasingly see themselves as ‘outsiders’.
• They retreated to 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.

Question 13

What does the work of Lemert and Young show?

Answer 13

• That it is not the act itself, but the hostile societal reaction to it that creates serious deviance.
• The social control processes that were meant to produce law abiding behaviour may in fact do the opposite.

Question 14

Complete the follow sentences:

The deviance _____ spiral is a term that labelling theorists use to describe a _____ in which the attempt to _____ deviance leads to an ______ in the level of deviance. This leads to ____ attempts to _____ it and, therefore produces higher levels of deviance. More and more ____ produces more and more _____, in an escalating spiral, as in the case of the hippies described by _____.

Answer 14

• Amplification
• Process
• Control
• Increase
• Greater
• Control
• Control
• Deviance
• Young

Question 15

KEY THEORIST - BRAITHWAITE (1989): REINTERGRATIVE SHAMING

What does this theorist do?

Answer 15

• Identify a more positive role for the labelling process.

Question 16

KEY THEORIST - BRAITHWAITE (1989): REINTERGRATIVE SHAMING

This theorist distinguishes between two types of shaming, what are these?

Answer 16

1) Disintegrative shaming

2) Reintegrating shaming

Question 17

KEY THEORIST - BRAITHWAITE (1989): REINTERGRATIVE SHAMING

What is disintegrative shaming?

Answer 17

Where not only the crime, but also the criminal is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society.

Question 18

KEY THEORIST - BRAITHWAITE (1989): REINTERGRATIVE SHAMING

What is reintegrating shaming?

Answer 18

• Where the act is labelled as bad but the criminal is not.

Question 19

KEY THEORIST - BRAITHWAITE (1989): REINTERGRATIVE SHAMING

What does the policy of reintegrative shaming do?

Answer 19

• Avoid stigmatising the offender as evil while at the same time making them aware of the negative impact of the actions upon others, and encourages others to forgive them.

Question 20

KEY THEORIST - BRAITHWAITE (1989): REINTERGRATIVE SHAMING

How does the policy of reintegrative shaming help both the offender and the community?

Answer 20

• By making it easier for both the offender and community to separate the offender from the offence and readmit the wrongdoer back into mainstream society. This avoids pushing them into secondary deviance.

Question 21

KEY THEORIST - BRAITHWAITE (1989): REINTERGRATIVE SHAMING

What does this theorist argue?

Answer 21

• That crime rates tend to be lower in societies where reintegrative rather than disintegrative shaming is the dominant way of dealing with offenders.

Question 22

How can the labelling theory be evaluated?

Give at least two examples.

Answer 22

• Can lead to necessary changes in the law e.g. Sarah’s Law (against paedophilia).
• Explains the media’s role in creating crime and deviance.
• Links with Marxism- as both see capitalists as having an ultimate say in who is deviant.
• Doesn’t explain why people commit crime in the first place.
• Doesn’t explain crime where there is no moral panic e.g. white collar crime.

Question 23

KEY THEORIST - DURKHEIM: SUICIDE

What did he study and what did his study aim to do?

Answer 23

• Suicide with the aim of showing that sociology is a science.

Question 24

KEY THEORIST - DURKHEIM: SUICIDE

What method did he use in his study and what did he claim to have discovered?

Answer 24

• Using official statistics he claimed to have discovered the causes of suicide in how effectively society integrated individuals and regulated their behaviour.

Question 25

How can Durkheim’s theory of suicide be evaluated?

Answer 25

- Interactionalists reject Durkheim’s positivist approach to his reliance on official statistics. They argue that to understand suicide, we must study the meanings for those who choose to kill themselves.

Question 26

KEY THEORIST - DOUGLAS: THE MEANING OF SUICIDE What type of approach did he take on suicide?

Answer 26

- Interactionalist

Question 27

KEY THEORIST - DOUGLAS: THE MEANING OF SUICIDE In what way is this key theorist critical of official statistics?

Answer 27

- He argues that they are socially constructed and they tell us about the activities of the people who construct them, such as police (in the case of crime) and coroners (in the case of suicide), rather than the real rate of crime or suicide in society.

Question 28

KEY THEORIST - DOUGLAS: THE MEANING OF SUICIDE What does this theory argue?

Answer 28

- Whether a death comes to be officially labelled as suicide rather than an accident or homicide, depends on the interactions and negotiations between social actors such as the coroner, relatives, friends, doctors and so on. For instance, the relatives may feel guilty about failing to prevent the death and press for a verdict of misadventure rather than suicide. - The statistics therefore tell us nothing about the meanings behind the individual’s decision to commit suicide. If we want to understand meanings, we must use qualitative methods instead, such as the analysis of suicide notes or unstructured interviews with the deceased’s friends or relatives.

Question 29

KEY THEORIST - ATKINSON: CORONERS COMMONSENSE KNOWLEDGE What does this theorist argue about official statistics?

Answer 29

- They are merely a record of the labels coroners attach to deaths.

Question 30

KEY THEORIST - ATKINSON: CORONERS COMMONSENSE KNOWLEDGE What does this theorist argue in general?

Answer 30

- It is impossible to know for sure what meanings the dead gave to their deaths.

Question 31

KEY THEORIST - ATKINSON: CORONERS COMMONSENSE KNOWLEDGE As this theorist argues that it is impossible to know for sure what meanings the dead gave to their deaths, what do they instead focus on? What did he find from this?

Answer 31

- The taken for granted assumptions that coroners make when reaching their verdicts. Found: - That their ideas about a typical suicide were important; certain modes of death e.g. hanging, location and circumstances of death, and life history e.g. a recent bereavement were seen as typical of suicides.

Question 32

KEY THEORIST - ATKINSON: CORONERS COMMONSENSE KNOWLEDGE How can this theory be evaluated?

Answer 32

- Atkinson’s approach can be used against him. If he’s correct that all we can do is have interpretations of the social world come out rather than have real facts about it, his account is no more than an interpretation and there is no good reason to accept it.