Labeling "Theory" (Societal Reaction
Perspective)
I. Essence = deviance is the product
of a process of social definition, not an inherent quality of the act (deviance is socially constructed)
A.
1951, Edwin Lemert, Social Pathology
1.
deviance is relative:
what is considered deviant varies:
a. across
cultures/societies
b. within cultures
across time
c. across situations
II. Context: Accepted in 1960's
A.
anti-authoritarian, anti-institutional mood
1.
2.
Civil Rights
B.
S.R. theory fit the times
III. Theoretical Foundations
A.
symbolic interactionism (Mead,
Blumer)
1.
we mutually define one another's actions and act on
the basis of those definitions
2.
definitions (derive from and are based on):
a. moral
entrepreneurs (Howard Becker)
b. master status
(also Becker)
c. secondary deviance
(Edwin Lemert)
d. stigma (Erving
Goffman)
B.
Phenomenology (Alfred Schutz)
1.
typifications
2.
"recipe knowledge"
3.
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann
(The Social Construction of Reality)
a.
i. instinctual deprivation
ii.
extended dependency
b. background & foreground
4.
Berger & Luckmann: how is social reality constructed?
a. externalization
b. objectivation
c. internalization
d. reification
C. Ethnomethodology: (study of the methods that people
use to construct an understanding of what is taking place in a social
interaction)
1.
deviance is one of these constructed
understandings
2.
there are no meanings, there is no context, outside
of the meanings of the context that we create interactively at
the moment of interaction
3.
humans interpret each situation
4.
the interpretation creates the context
("oh, we're doing this now" -- whatever "this"
means)
4.
and then behave according to the interpretation we
create
5. we can bring documented
knowledge to bear on the situation (we have seen this behavior before)
D.
KEY: all refer to the social
construction of meaning
1. behavior
has no meaning until that meaning has been socially constructed
Or