Once these steps have occurred, what Becker describes as ‘the deviant career’ is completed when the individual joins an organised deviant group and thus accepting their identity of being deviant.
However, this is not by any means inevitable and some of those who started out as convicts or drug addicts can become ‘straight’ and get jobs or quit their habits.
When Becker identified that he took a ‘sequential’ approach he means how he explains deviance and at any stage in the sequence of his explanation it is possible that the deviant will re-enter conventional society.
Lemmert also uses the interactionist perspective in his view of labelling, outlining primary and secondary deviance, primary being the act before it is publicly labelled and secondary being the response of the individual or ‘deviant’ to the reactions of others in society. But he sees the agents of social control to blame for deviance rather than the traditional views of the blame lying with the ‘deviant’ individual or group.
This labelling theory has contributed two concepts to help understand the relationship between media and crime:
- Deviancy amplification, Lesley Wilkins points out that a response to deviant acts by media and the police can actually provoke an increase in deviance. Wilkins argues that once they have been labelled deviants, they are aware of and accept this label and in turn develop their own subculture with others involved in deviancy, further isolating them and confirming their deviant nature.
- Moral panics, Stan Cohen studying youth subcultures, specifically ‘mods’ and ‘rockers’ looked at how the media concentrated on building these groups up into trouble makers due to lack of stories, because of this attention people started to decide if they were mods or rockers and accentuated the violence that took place between them. This case of moral panic can also be seen in Hall’s study of mugging.
Labelling theorists studying mental illness claim that mental illness is a label applied to certain people in certain circumstances as well as suggesting that the concept of mental illness is socially constructed.
Thomas Scheff – a leading writer on mental illness, argues that there is no such thing as mental illness, instead all behaviour that doesn’t make sense to us we just throw into a ‘dustbin category’ where behaviour cant be explained through drug or alcohol use. Also he suggests people can justify odd behaviour through just passing it off as common phrases such as ‘they’re just a bit depressed’ or ‘they’ve got a lot on their mind at the moment.’
However labelling theorists have had their work criticised on many levels, and these criticisms must be examined before any evaluation of the contribution of the labelling theorists to the sociology of deviance can be made.
Firstly it has to be questioned about the success of the labelling theories in answering questions such as why a given act is considered deviant and/or criminal in some but not all societies or why a certain kind of reaction may identify behaviour as deviant. However, Becker goes some way to explain the underlying problems of labelling theory in his study ‘Outsiders’. He suggests that firstly there are ‘not enough studies of deviant behaviour’, and furthermore there are ‘not enough studies of enough kinds of deviant behaviour’.
Becker examines some of the criticisms made of the labelling theory. Firstly, however, he points out that, rather than being an all-encompassing theory of deviance, labelling ‘theory’ was created as ‘a way of looking at a general area of human activity’. It is not focused so exclusively on the act of labelling as some have thought.
One of the major criticisms of labelling theory, is that it is deterministic, and that it treats the individuals as if they were no more than organisms, grouped into behaviour by the act of labels being given to it, and following this behaviour as a result of behaviour patterns being ascribed to it.
Labelling theorists do not consider the importance of power in their analysis, the powerful, the upper class and the power elite are not considered in much detail by the labelling theorists.
Another deficiency of the labelling theory is that they don’t have enough studies in which the researchers have achieved close contact with those they study.
There is also, claims Becker, the difficulty of secrecy. In many cases, the deviant individual performs deviant acts in secrecy, and does not wish this behaviour to become publicly known. This can be seen in the results found by Humphreys in his study of the ‘Tearoom Trade’. Here the individuals partaking in homosexual activities often had families at home and in a further questionnaire very few of the men admitted the acts. In many cases of deviance then this secrecy will create problems. It is also very difficult for the researcher to observe the deviant individuals in their everyday lives perhaps in dangerous areas of society, as the problems of gaining the trust of what may be in some cases, violent or dangerous people. It may also be difficult for the researcher to observe impartially, or to continue to observe without being drawn in to either commit the crimes themselves or to try to prevent the crimes being committed.
Becker also outlines moral problems He questions where the researchers sympathies should lie, should they side with the ‘underdog’ or should they judge criminal behaviour as wrong?
To evaluate the contribution of the labelling theorists to the study of the sociology of deviance, it can be said that it depends on how the theory is viewed. If the theory is seen as ‘ a theory with all the achievements and obligations that go with the title’ then it has many flaws. But if, as Becker suggests, we attempt to consider the theory as just a way of looking at deviance, then the contribution can be great, as it opened up a study of the individual after he has committed an act of deviance.
It can be concluded that labelling theory continues its usefulness, as long as deviant behaviour continues to exist.
