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Interactionsim and labelling theory - Coggle Diagram
Interactionsim and labelling theory
The social construction of crime
Interested in how and why certain acts come to be labelled as deviant
No act is inherently criminal or deviant it only becomes so when its labelled as such, societies reaction
Becker argues a deviant is someone to whom a label has been successfully added
Moral entrepeneurs, people who lead a moral crusade to change the law, however, has two effects
Creation of a new group of outsiders
Creation or expansion of a social control agency
Juvenile delinquency came from m/c who wanted to protect children
Becker notes that social control agencies can also campaign for change to increase their own power
Who gets labelled?
If a person gets punished depends on:
Their interactions with agencies and social control
Their appearance and background
The situation and circumstances of the offence
Cicourel, justice is not fixed but negotiable
Officers decisions are based on stereotypes
law enforcement shows class bias
Social construction of crime statistics
Cicourel argues that crime statistics are not a valid picture of patterns of crime, we should treat them as a topic for sociologists to investigate
Types
Official government statistics
self report surveys
victim surveys although people may exaggerate or not know they had been a victim
prison records
Questioned for validity as not all crime is recorded, dark figure
Questioned for reliability as there may be inconsistencies in recording
The effects of labelling
Primary deviance, rule breaking small scale not deviant
Secondary deviance, likely to provoke a reaction and cause a label turning to an outsider may join a deviant subculture
Master status the main way people see you, can cause large problems
Jack Young- Hippie Marijuana users in Notting hill
Became a police target market as different
consequence labelled as outsiders
drugs become abider part of their identity
A deviant subculture forms
however, very determinstic
Deviance amplification spiral
Stanley Cohen Folk devils and Moral panics, study of society reaction to mods and rockers
Press exaggerated led to public concerns
leads to a crackdown and caused more deviant behaviour
When an attempt to control deviance leads to more
Studies show that increased attempt to control young offenders leads to more offending
Braithwaite identifies a positive role of labelling, two types of shaming
Disgenerative shaming, where the offender is labelled and excluded
Regenitartive shaming, where the act but not the perosn is labelled as deviant, avoiding secondary deviance.
Mental illness and suicide
Suicide studied by Durkheim, study is an exercise in positivism. He used official statistics from multiple countries and saw them as social facts. Establish a correlation between relationships and suicide
Found that catholic counties had lower suicide rates than protestant countries
believed that too little or too much intergration would lead to suicide
Interactionists reject Durkheims study as it relies on official statistics they believe that we need to understand why people commit suicide.
Jack Doughlas
Interactionsist approach
Critical of the use of official statistics as he believes they are socaily constructed and tell us about the activities of those who create them.
Such as coroners or family members
Argues we must use qualitative mathods
Atkinson
Also belives that official statistics are just a record of those who make them
Focuses on the taken for granted assumptions of coroners, found there ideas about what a typical suicide was is important
However, leaves us with the possibility that everything is an interpretation and we cannot know the statistics of how many suicides there actually are
Mental illness
Interactionists reject the official statistics on these as they regard them as social constructs
They are simply a record of activities of those psychiatrists with the power to attach labels, aretfatcs
Paranoia of a self fulfilling prophecy
Interactionists interested in how people become mentally ill
Lemerts study of parnoia
notes some poeple don't fit into groups so labelling and exclusion occurs
This may lead to secondary deviance
May lead to psychiatric help which becomes a master status
Eg. Rosenhans 'pseudo patient' experiment
Institutionalism
Goffmans study of Asylums (total institutions)
On entering patient undergoes a new identity through degrading riutals
Some people become institutionalised meaning they want readjust to the outside world
Evaluation of labelling theory
Strenghths
Shows that the law is not a fixed set of rules but something constructed that needs expalining
show that the law is often enforces in discriminatory ways
shows that crime statisics are more a record or control agencies actions than criminals
shows attempts to control deviance can create more not less
Weaknesses
Deterministic
Ignores that people actually choose deviance
Emphasis on the negative effect of labelling and gives offender a victim status over the real victims of crime
Ignores primary deviance before being labelled
Implies taht without labels deviance would not occur
Focuses on those who apply the rules and not who makes them