Labelling Theory (INTERACTIONISM)

Labelling Theory (INTERACTIONISM)

1. Deviance is simply a social construct.

2. BECKER - social groups create deviance by creating rules & applying them to particular people whom they label as 'outsiders'.

3. An act or person only becomes deviant when labelled by others as deviant.

4. DIFFERENTIAL ENFORCEMENT

   • Labelling theorists argue that social control agencies (police, courts etc) tend to label certain groups as criminal.
   • PILIAVIN & BRIAR found police decisions to arrest were based on stereotypical ideas about manner, dress, gender, class, ethnicity, time & place.

5. TYPIFICATIONS

   • CICOUREL argues that police use typifications of the 'typical delinquent'. Individuals fiiting the typification are more likely to be stopped, arrested & charged.
     • Working-class & ethnic minority juveniles are more likely to be arrested. Once arrested, those from broken homes etc are more likely to be charged.
     • Middle-class juveniles are less likely to fit the typification, & have parents who can negotiate successfully on their behalf. They are less likely to be charged.

6. CRIME STATISTICS: A TOPIC NOT A RESOURCE

   • Working-class people fit police typifications, so police patrol working-class areas, resulting in more working-class arrests.
     • Thus crime statistics recorded by the police do not give a valid picture of crime patterns.
   • CICOUREL argues that we cannot take crime statistics at face value or use them as a resource. We should treat them as a topic & investigate the processes by which they are constructed.

7. THE EFFECTS OF LABELLING

   • Labelling theorists are interesting in the effects of labelling.
     • LEMERT argues that by labelling certain people as deviant, society actually encourages them to become more so societal reaction causes 'secondary deviance'.
   • PRIMARY DEVIANCE
     • Deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled. They have many causes which are often trivial & mostly go uncaught. Those who commit them do not usually see themselves as deviant.
   • SECONDARY DEVIANCE
     • Results from societal reaction (e.g. from labelling someone as an offender) can involve stigmatising & excluding them from normal society. Others may see the offender solely in terms of the label, which becomes the individual's master status or controlling identity.

8. SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY

   • Being labelled may provoke a crisis for the individual's self-concept & lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which they live up to the label, resulting in secondary deviance.
     • Further societal reaction may reinforce the individual's outsiders status & lead to them joining a deviant subculture that offers support, role models & a deviant career.
   • YOUNG'S study of hippy marijuana users illustrate these processes.
     • Drug use was initially peripheral to the hippies' lifestyle (primary deviance), but police persecution of them as junkies (societal reaction) led them to retreat into closed groups, developing a deviant subculture where drug use became a central activity (self-fulfilling prophecy).
     • The control processes aimed at producing law-abiding behaviour thus produced the opposite.

9. DEVIANCE AMPLIFICATION SPIRAL

   • In a deviance amplification spiral, the attempt to control deviance leads to it increasing rather than decreasing - resulting in greater attempts to control it &, in turn, yet more deviance, in an escalating spiral, as w/ the hippies described by YOUNG.
   • Folk devils & moral panics: COHEN'S study of the mods & rockers uses the concept of deviance amplification spiral.
   • Media exaggeration & distortion began a moral panic, w/ growing public concern.
     • Moral entrepreneurs called for a 'crackdown'. Police responded by arresting more youths, provoking more concern.
       • Demonising the mods & rockers as 'folk devils' marginalised them further, resulting in more deviance.

10. FUNCTIONALISTS see deviance producing social control, LABELLING THEORISTS see control producing further deviance.

11. CRITICISMS OF LABELLING THEORY

    • Accused of being too deterministic of assuming that once labelled, a self-fulfilling prophecy is inevitable.
    • Fails to explain why people commit primary deviance in the first place before they are labelled.
    • MARXISTS criticise it for failing to locate the origin of such labels in the unequal structure of capitalist society.