Interactionist theories Flashcards
Interactionist theories of crime and deviance
- are commonly referred to as labelling theory
- suggests that because so many involve themselves in a range of deviant and illegal behaviour it is pointless to try to find the causes of crime
- official crime statistics are seen as social constructions, resulting from an unrepresentative group of offenders who have been labelled as ‘criminal’
- seeks to explain why only some people and some acts are defined as deviant or criminal, while others carrying out similar acts are not
The focus of labelling theory
- the interaction between deviants and those who define them as deviant, and why particular individuals and groups are defined as deviant
- the process whereby rules are selective enforced and why the response to rule-breaking is not always the same
- the consequences of being labelled as ‘deviant’, how people react, the effects of the label (eg self-fulfilling prophecy, deviancy amplification etc)
- circumstances in which a person becomes set apart and defined as deviant
- an analysis of who has the power to attach deviant labels and make them ‘stick’
Becker suggests that an act only becomes deviant when others
perceive and define it as such, and whether or not the deviant label is applied will depend on societal reaction
Becker calls agencies, such as the media and the police,
who have the power and resources to create or enforce rules and impose their definitions of deviance, moral entrepeneurs
Moral entrepreneur definition (Becker)
a person, group or organisation with the power to create or enforce rules and impose their definitions of deviance
Quote from Becker’s ‘Outsiders’
Social groups create deviance by making the rules who infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of the rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. The deviant is one to whom the label has successfully been applied. Deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label.
Selective law enforcement
- agencies of social control use discretion and selective judgement in deciding whether and how to deal with illegal behaviour (eg police can’t prosecute all crime due to resources and public support) so different acts are labelled differently
- Becker - police operate with the pre-existing conceptions and stereotypes of what constitutes ‘trouble’
- what action is taken will depend on the stereotypes of groups and offences law enforcement agencies hold
Selective law enforcement - the work of Cicourel (1976)
- uses a phenomenological approach to understand how law-enforcers make sense of and interpret what they see
- suggests that subjective perceptions and stereotypes can affect whether criminal labels are attached, and these lead to the social construction of crime statistics
- studied juvenile delinquency in 2 US cities and found juvenile crime rates were consistently higher in working class communities
- found that this was because the police viewed the deviant behaviour of middle class juveniles as a temporary lapse as they came from ‘good backgrounds’ with lots of support, whereas they prosecuted working-class youth due to holding the opposite opinion
- suggested that we need to look at the choices made by police over where they patrol, who they suspect and therefore who they stop and search, arrest and charge
Primary deviance (Lemert) definition
deviance that has not been publicly labelled as such
Secondary deviance (Lemert) definition
deviance that follows once a person has been publicly labelled as deviant
Master status (Becker) definition
one which displaces all other features of a person’s social standing, and a person is judged solely in terms of that one defining characteristic
Lemert (1972) - primary and secondary deviance
- primary deviance is not publicly labelled as such eg breaking traffic laws, using drugs etc - few consequences for the person, as long as nobody knows about it
- once an offender has been discovered, exposed and labelled as deviant is attached, secondary deviance may occur
Becker - master status
- attachment of a label may have major consequences for the individual’s self-concept and their future actions, because the deviant label can become a ‘master status’
- eg if someone is caught downloading child pornography, other identities like manager, husband, sportsman etc can be displaced by labels like paedophile, becoming their defining status
- others respond to this individual in light of this master status and assume that they have all the negative attributes of the label
- this is where secondary deviance begins, arising from the label and the societal reaction
- sustaining an alternative image in the deviant’s own eyes and those of others becomes difficult once master status is applied
Deviant career definition
what arises when people who have been labelled as deviant find conventional opportunities are blocked to them, and so are pushed into committing further deviant acts
Becker - deviant careers and the self-fulfilling prophecy
- suggests that labelling can lead to self-fulfilling prophecy and a deviant career similar to an occupational career, as those labelled as ‘deviant’ become ‘outsiders’
- this labelling can lead to further deviance by limiting other opportunities
- a deviant career may begin when the individual joins or identifies with a similar deviant group
- Cohen’s (1972) work on deviancy amplification and moral panics illustrated this process through the conflict between Mods and Rockers
- Young’s (1971) participant observation of hippie marijuana-users in Notting Hill also demonstrated this process
