Interactionist Perspective (Labelling Theory)

Question 1

How do interactionists shift their focus?

Answer 1

• move away from reasons why people commit crime/ deviance and focus instead on the people who are labelled as deviant and the consequences of this

Question 2

What is a big question they ask?

Answer 2

• why is it that some people/ groups come to be labelled as deviant, yet other behaviours and people escape this

Question 3

How does Becker argue that social groups create deviance?

Answer 3

• making the rules about whose infraction constitutes deviance and by applying these rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders

Question 4

How does Becker define deviance?

Answer 4

• not as a the quality of an action but a label chosen to be applied to certain behaviour and individuals in certain circumstances
• it is the result of complex process of interactions between an individual/ social group and the agencies of social control

Question 5

Becker is interested in the role of moral entrepreneurs -what especially? What do their activities lead to?

Answer 5

• how their activities can lead to new laws
• which creates a new group of ‘outsiders’ and new pressures places on agencies of social control to enforce new rules
• leads to deviance amplification

Question 6

Interactionists highlight that not everyone who commits an offence is punished for it - what factors contribute to the decision of whether a person is arrested, charged or convicted?

Answer 6

a. interactions with the agencies of social control
b. appearance, background, personal biography
c. situation and circumstance of the offence

Question 7

What does Cicourel expose about police officers’ decisions to arrest?

Answer 7

• influenced by stereotypes
• their typifications lead them to concentrate on certain ‘types’
• resultantly, law enforcement shows a class bias as their typifications are focused on wc areas and people

Question 8

What does the class bias of the police result in?

Answer 8

• more arrests (deviance amplification) and thus confirmation of stereotypes

Question 9

In what way does Cicourel view justice as negotiable?

Answer 9

• when a middle class youth was arrested, they would be less likely to be charged
• didn’t fit idea of ‘typical delinquent’
• parents were more likely to be able to negotiate successfully ensuring they knew they sorry, they would monitor and they would stay out of trouble

Question 10

Interactionists are interested in the effects of labelling upon those who have been labelled. Who distinguishes between primary and secondary deviance?

Answer 10

• Lemert

Question 11

Why does Lemert believe exploration of primary deviance is pointless?

Answer 11

• the causes of these are so widespread to attempt to explain, often trivial, unlikely to have a single cause, mostly go uncaught
• acts have little meaning for an individual’s status/ self-concept

Question 12

What can being labelled as a criminal often involve?

Answer 12

• being stigmatise, shamed, humiliated, excluded from mainstream society

Question 13

Why might being labelled as a criminal involve being excluded from mainstream society? What significance does this have?

Answer 13

• label can become the person’s master status
• master status can negatively impact the individual’s self-concept
• may lead to self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 14

What is secondary deviance more likely to produce?

Answer 14

• provoke further hostile reactions from society
• reinforce the deviant’s outsider status
• may lead the individual into a deviant subculture and a deviant career

Question 15

In what way do they consider the OS on mental illness social constructs? (as they do with all OS)

Answer 15

• they are simply the record of the activities of those such as psychiatrists with the power to successfully apply labels such as ‘depressed’
• crime, mental illness, suicide are not objective social facts

Question 16

Interactionists focus on the process of labelling on individually mentally ill and the effects of this labelling. What does Lemert’s study of paranoia highlight?

Answer 16

• some individuals don’t fit easily into groups and as a result of this primary deviance, others label the person as odd and different and start to exclude
• negative response is beginning of secondary deviance
• confirms his/ her suspicions that people are conspiring against them
• reaction justifies their fears for the person’s mental health
• may lead to official labelling (ie. being put into hospital)

Question 17

What happens once the official label as ‘mentally ill’ has been given, what happens?

Answer 17

• it becomes their master status and everything they do will be interpreted in this light

Question 18

What does Goffman’s study ‘Asylums’ show?

Answer 18

• some possible effects of being admitted to a total institution such as psychiatric hospital

Question 19

On admission, what does Goffman detail that happens to patients? How is this achieved?

Answer 19

• mortification of the self
• old identity is symbolically ‘killed off’ and replaced by new one - ‘inmate’
• achieved via ‘degradation rituals’ eg. confiscation of personal effects

Question 20

What are the two different reactions that the inmates have?

Answer 20

• some inmates become institutionalised and internalise their new identity, become unable to re-adjust to the outside world
• others form various forms of resistance/ accommodation to their new situation

Question 21

What is an example of long-term psychiatric patients being able to accomodate to their new situation?

Answer 21

• manipulating their symptoms to appear ‘not well enough’ to be led go but ‘not sick enough’ to be confined so they could gain free movement

Question 22

Interactionists reject Durkheim’s positivistic approach to suicide and his reliance on OS. What do they argue they say?

Answer 22

• they are socially constructed and tell us more about the people who construct them rather than the real rate of suicide

Question 23

Douglas claims that the decision as to whether a sudden death is officially labelled is made by a coroner. What are the various factors that might impact this decision? What conclusion does he thus draw?

Answer 23

• interactions between the person and their relatives, friends, doctors
• less integrated people are more likely to be considered to have committed suicide
• the stats tell us nothing about the meanings behind an individuals decision to commit suicide

Question 24

Atkinson believes OS reflect the subjective interpretations made by coroners and the world can only be understood in terms of the categories, perceptions and intepretations. Thus, what does he focus on? What did he find?

Answer 24

• on the taken-for-granted assumptions that coroners made
• found that their ideas about a ‘typical suicide’ were influential - certain modes of death, location, circumstances, particular life histories

Question 25

Most labelling theorists see labelling as having negative effects. However, Braithwaite identifies a more positive role for the labelling process. What two types of labelling does he distinguish between?

Answer 25

• disintegrative shaming

- reintegrative shaming

Question 26

Why does Braithwaite prefer reintegrative shaming?

Answer 26

• it avoids stigmatising the offender as evil
• still makes them aware of the negative impact of their actions, thus encouraging them to forgive
• makes it easier for both offender and community to separate act from actor and re-admit the person into society
• also avoids pushing them into secondary deviance
• crime rates tend to be lower in societies with reintegrative rather than disintegrative shaming