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Chapter 8Labeling, Conflict,
and Radical Theories
Labeling TheoryLabeling Theory
The Origins of Labeling Theory
1. Labeling theory emanates from a group of scholars known as social interactionists, who viewed the human self as formed through a process of social interaction.
2. George Herbert Mead focused on the social interactions by which an individual becomes a deviant.
Our self-concept is built no only on what we think of ourselves but also on what other think of us.
Copyright © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Labeling TheoryLabeling Theory
Labeling theorists began to explore how and why certain acts were defined as criminal or deviant and others were not, and how and why certain people were defined as criminal or deviant.
Labeling Theory declares that reactions of other people and the subsequent effects of those reactions create deviance.
Deviance is not the result of what people do, but rather how society reacts to those actions.
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Edwin LemertEdwin LemertBasic Assumptions of Labeling Theory
Lemert contended that there are two kinds of deviant acts:
Primary deviations: the initial deviant acts that bring on the first social response; these acts do not affect the individual’s self-concept.
Secondary deviations: the acts that follow the societal response to the primary deviation; these acts result from the change in self-concept brought about by the labeling process.
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Primary and Secondary Primary and Secondary DeviationsDeviations
1. A youth commits a simple deviant act (primary deviation)
2. There is an informal social reaction
3. The youth continues to break rules
4. There is an increased social reaction
5. The youth commits a more serious deviant act
6. There is a formal reaction
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Primary and Secondary Primary and Secondary Deviations Deviations ContinuedContinued
7. The youth is now labeled “delinquent” by the court and “bad” by the neighborhood
8. The youth begins to think of himself as delinquent
9. The youth commits another, yet more serious, deviant act (secondary deviation)
10. The youth is returned to juvenile court and has more offenses added to his record, is cast out further from conventional society, and takes on a completely deviant lifestyle
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Edwin SchurEdwin Schur
Edwin Schur expanded on Lemert’s secondary deviance and argued that “the effects of the labeling process are so significant that even those who wish to leave a deviant group and return to a conventional life find it difficult to do so”
the stigma carried by the deviant individual tends to separates them permanently from mainstream culture
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Howard BeckerHoward Becker
Who makes the rules? Howard Becker claimed that “moral entrepreneurs” are
responsible for making the rules that define deviant behavior, including crime.
Moral Entrepreneurs: people whose high social position gives them the power to make and enforce the social rules that all members of society have to live by.
The members of society that make the rules which define what is deviant and criminal create “outsiders” (deviants)
Copyright © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Consensus ModelConsensus Model
The model assumes that members of society by and large agree on what is right and wrong and that law is the codification of these agreed-upon social values.
The law is the mechanism to settle disputes that arise when individuals stray too far from what the community considers acceptable.
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Emile DurkheimEmile Durkheim
“We can ...say that an act is criminal when it offends strong and defined states of the collective conscience.”
When members of a society unite against a deviant they reaffirm their commitment to shared values.
Copyright © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Conflict ModelConflict Model
The model assumes that laws do not exist for the collective good; they represent the interests of specific groups that have the power to get them enacted.
The key concept in conflict theory is power. The laws thus have their origin in the interest of the few; these few shape the values, and the values, in turn, shape the laws.
Labeling theorists concentrated on the crime, conflict theorists question the system itself.
Copyright © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Conflict Theory and Conflict Theory and CriminologyCriminology
George Vold was the first theorist to relate conflict theory to criminology.
Society is in a constant state of conflict, “one of the principle and essential social processes upon which the continuing ongoing of society depends.”
Conflict theory holds that the people who posses the power, work to keep the powerless at a disadvantage.
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Radical Theory Radical Theory
Karl Marx
Georg Rusche and Otto Kirschheimer
Taylor, Walton, and Young
Richard Quinney
William Chambliss and Robert Seidman
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Emerging Emerging ExplanationsExplanations
Radical Feminist Theory
Left Realism
Abolitionist and Anarchist Criminology
Peace-Making Criminology
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Comparison of 4 Comparison of 4 Criminological PerspectivesCriminological Perspectives
Copyright © 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
