LABELLING THEORY

LABELLING THEORY

1. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DEVIANCE:

   • Labelling theorists: no act is deviant in itself: deviance is simply a social construct.
     • According to Becker, social groups create deviance by creating rules and applying them to particular people whom they label as 'outsiders'.
       • Thus, an act or a person only becomes deviant when labelled by others as deviant.
   • DIFFERENTIAL ENFORCEMENT:
     • Labelling theorists argue that social control agencies (police/court) tend to label certain groups as criminal.
     • Piliavin&Briar found police decisions to arrest were based on stereotypical ideas.
   • TYPIFICATIONS:
     • Cicourel argues police use typifications (stereotypes) of the 'typical delinquent.' Individuals fitting 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 are more likely to be charged.
       • Middle-class juveniles are less likely to fit the typification, and have parents who can negotiate successfully on their behalf. They are less likely to be charged.
   • CRIME STATISTICS: A TOPIC NOT A RESOURCE:
     • Working class people fit police typifications, police patrol w/c areas resulting in more w/c arrests.
       • Thus, crime stats recorded by the police do not give a valid picture of crime patterns.
       • Cicourel argues we cannot take crime statistics at face value or use them as a resource.
         • We should treat them as a topic and investigate the processes by which they are constructed.

2. THE EFFECTS OF LABELLING:

   • Labelling theorists are also interested in the effects of labelling.
     • Lemert argues that by labelling certain people as deviant, society actually encourages them to be more so: societal reaction causes 'secondary deviance'.
   • PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DEVIANCE:
     • Primary deviance is deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled.
       • Many causes.
       • Often trivial, mostly go uncaught.
       • Those who commit them don't often feel they are deviant.
     • Secondary deviance results from societal reaction.
       • Labelling someone as an offender can involve stigmatising and excluding them from normal society.
       • Others may see the offender solely in terms of the label, which becomes the individuals master status or controlling identity.

3. SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY:

   • Being labelled may provoke a crisis for the individual's self concept and lead to a SFP in which they live up to the label, resulting in secondary deviance.
   • Further societal reaction may reinforce the individual's outsider status and lead to them joining a deviant subculture that offers support, role models and a deviant carer.
   • YOUNG'S STUDY OF HIPPY MARIJUANA USERS ILLUSTRATES THESE PROCESSES.
     • Drug use was initially peripheral to the hippies' lifestyle (primary) but police persecution of them as junkies (societal reaction) led them to retreat into closed groups.
       • This developed a deviant subculture where drug use became a central activity (self fulfilling prophecy.)
     • control processes aimed at producing law-abiding behaviour thus produced the opposite.
   • CRITICISM: accused of being too deterministic, of assuming that once labelled a SPF is inevitable.

4. 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 and, in turn, yet more deviance, in an escalating spiral.
   • FOLK DEVILS AND MORAL PANICS:
     • Cohen's 1972 study of the mods and rockers uses the concept of deviance amplification spiral.
       • Media exaggeration and distortion began a moral panic, with growing public concern.
       • Moral entrepeneurs called for a 'crackdown'. Police responded by arresting more youths, provoking more concern.
       • Demonising the mods and rockers as 'folk devils' marginalised them further, resulting in more deviance.

5. The work of Cohen and Young points to a key difference with functionalism.

   • Functionalists see deviance producing social control.
   • Labelling Theorists see control producing further deviance.