AQA A2 Sociology- Interactionist Theory of Crime
- Created by: EmK123
- Created on: 11-06-16 13:24
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- Interpretivism and Crime
- Howard Becker- Labelling
- No actions are by nature criminal or deviant- it depends on society's definitions.
- 2 Actions:
- One group who lacks power acts in a certain way.
- Another more powerful group reacts negatively and labels the act as deviant
- Powerful groups create laws to define actions as deviant and those who don't conform are labelled as criminals.
- Lemert: Primary and Secondary deviance
- Primary = insignificant acts that haven't been labelled.
- Secondary = a reaction to society's labelling/reacion
- A criminal label can become a master status (a primary characteristic of a person)
- Leads to prejudice, discrimination and SFP. People may seek refuge with people with similar labels.
- Goffman
- Studied mental institutions as an example of secondary deviance.
- Patients are stripped of their identity (clothing, strict timetable etc) Many become institutionalised as they accept their label of being helpless so they are unable to reintegrate.
- Evaluation
- Marxists: they are wrong when they say deviance is created by labelling the act. They don't address the issue of power.
- Too deterministic to assume all labels lead to SFP
- They don't explain primary deviance properly
- Plummer- Labelling has opened up the question of who has the power to make and apply laws.
- Phenomenological Perspective
- Cicourel: Studied 2 Californian cities.
- Evaluation
- Provides insight into juvenile justice in USA
- Shows how meaning held by officials leads to labels of individuals as deviant.
- Marxists: fail to show how the police see the typical delinquent as coming from the W/C.
- Doesn't explain who has power and how this might influence the definitions of crime.
- Evaluation
- Cicourel: Studied 2 Californian cities.
- Howard Becker- Labelling
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