Topic 2 - Interactionalism and the Labelling theory

Question 1

What do Labelling theorists argue?

Answer 1

• Argue that no act is inherently criminal or deviant and that it comes down to when others label each other
• Essentially that it is not the nature of the act that makes it deviant it is how society reacts to it

Question 2

What is Beckers perspective?

Answer 2

• Believes that deviance is created when society applies rules to certain individuals and labels them as outsiders

Question 3

What is a Moral entrepreneur?

Answer 3

• An individual who attempts to influence our reaction in order to change the law
• For example, this may include Journalists and politicians

Question 4

According to Becker what are the effects of new laws?

Answer 4

• Creation of a new group of outsiders who are deviants who break the new rule
• The creation or expansion of a social control agency such as police and courts

Question 5

According to Becker why might social control agencies campaign for changes in the law?

Answer 5

• To increase their own power

Question 6

What factors influence whether a criminal gets arrested, charged and convicted?

Answer 6

• Their interaction with agencies of social control
• their appearance and background
• the circumstance of their offence

Question 7

What are officers decisions to arrest influenced by?

Answer 7

• their stereotypes about offenders

Question 8

What did Cicourel find?

Answer 8

• Found that officers typification’s ( their ideas of what a typical delinquent is) led them to concentrate on certain types
• This led to law enforcement showing a class bias because working class areas and people would often fit the police typifications
• as a result, this led to police patrolling working class areas more intensively and resulting to more working class arrests
• Further found that Middle class youths were less likely to be formally charged because they were seen as less of a threat and because their description did not fit the police typification, and partly because their parents were more likely to be able to negotiate on their behalf and convince the social agents that they were sorry, as a result he was typically counselled and warned instead of charged

Question 9

What is weakness of Cicourels findings?

Answer 9

• Ignores structural factors
• Does not account for cases where working class offenders avoid punishment

Question 10

What is primary and secondary deviance?

Answer 10

• According to Lemert, primary deviance refers to minor deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled and often goes unnoticed such as fare dodging
• Secondary deviance, is where individuals are publicly labelled as deviant which leads to self fulfilling prophecy and this leads to them being shamed and humiliated

Question 11

What is the master status and what does it lead to ?

Answer 11

• Once an individual is labelled , it leads to others only seeing them in terms of this label and thus this becomes their master status
• Leads to self fulfilling prophecy

Question 12

What does secondary deviance lead to?

Answer 12

• Because secondary deviance is likely to provoke hostile reactions from society this may lead to more deviance and a Deviant career and may involve joining deviant sub cultures that offers deviant opportunities

Question 13

What study supports the concept of secondary deviance?

Answer 13

• Young uses the concept of secondary deviance in his study of hippy marijuana users in notting hill
• initially drugs were in the hippie lifestyle and it was an example of primary deviance
• however due to labelling from the police and harsher social control this led the hippies to start to see themselves as outsiders and thus they developed a deviant subculture where they began to wear long hair and drugs became their main activity which attracted more attention from the police and created the SFP

Question 14

What is evaluation of Lemert?

Answer 14

• Assumes that once labelled individuals immediately fall into a deviant career and ignores personal choice to not
• Does not fully address economic and structural factors that contribute to crime

Question 15

What is the deviance amplification spiral ?

Answer 15

• A term used to describe a process in which attempts to control deviance actually leads to an increase in deviance

Question 16

What is an example of the deviance amplification spiral?

Answer 16

• Cohens study of the societal reaction to the mod and rockers
• Found that the press often exaggerated and began a moral panic with growing public concern
• The police would respond by arresting more youths and the courts would impose harsher penalties
• The demonising of the mods and rockers as folk devils caused further marginalisation as outsiders resulting into more deviant behaviour

Question 17

What has studies show about increases in attempts ton control?

Answer 17

• Have show how increases in the attempt to control and punish young offenders can have the opposite effect and actually increase deviance
• For example in the US, Triplett notes an increase in seeing young offenders as evil and the CJS would label their offences as more serious and this give them harsher sentences which leads to an increase in offending

Question 18

What does Braithwaite identify?

Answer 18

• Identifies two types of shaming
• Disintegrative shaming, where not only is the crime labelled as bad but the offender is too which leads to them being excluded from society
• Reintegrative shaming, which labels the act and not the individual which allows them to reintegrate back into society
• argues that crime rates tend to be lower in societies where reintegrative rather than disintegrative shaming is the dominant way with offenders

Question 19

What is a weakness of Braithwaites explanation?

Answer 19

• Doesnt account for individuals who reoffend despite being reintegrated back into society
• downplays personal choice

Question 20

What is Douglas’s view on suicide?

Answer 20

• Is critical of the use of official statistics as he believes they are socially constructed and they will only tell us about the activities of the people who construct them such as the police rather than the real rate of crime or suicide in society
• Whether a death is labelled as a suicide depends on the interactions between social actors such as coroners, relatives and friends
• For example relatives may feel guilty because they were not able to prevent the suicide so they may claim that it was not or coroner may be religious and may see suicide as a sin and may be reluctant to bring in a suicide verdict
• Thus statistics therefore tell us nothing about the meanings behind an individuals decision to commit suicide and in order to understand we must use qualitative methods such as suicide notes or unstructured interviews