The act of injecting heroin into a vein is not inherently deviant. If a nurse gives a patient drugs under a doctor’s orders, it is perfectly proper. It is when it is done in a way that is not publicly defined as proper that it becomes deviant. The act’s deviant character lies in the way it is defined in the public mind. H.S.Becker (1971, p. 341).
This is a large turn away from older sociology which tended to rest heavily upon the idea that deviance leads to social control. I have come to believe that the reverse idea, i.e., social control leads to deviance, is equally tenable and the potentially richer premise for studying deviance in modern society. E.M. Lemert (1967, p. v).
In this chapter we shall be critically assessing the work of a group of theorists (largely American) who share several assumptions in common; they have been variously called social control theorists, social reaction theorists, transactionalists, or labelling theorists. These names are unimportant; but their assumptions are not, for although our assessment of their work is highly critical, the social reaction approach to deviance (as we shall call it) is a remarkable advance towards a fully social theory of deviance. Whilst we shall be mainly looking at the work of Howard Becker and Edwin Lemert,1 the criticisms we offer of their salient assumptions can be applied with little modification to other writers who share a similar perspective, amongst whom K.Erikson, J.Kitsuse and E.M.Schur are better known.
This chapter is doubly difficult. Not only does it engage in critical exposition of the social reaction approach, but also it encompasses a variety of theorists who, although they share many assumptions, hold to these assumptions with differing degrees of subtlety, sensitivity and
sophistication. Indeed, it is perhaps unfair to single out such a set of assumptions, and then criticize diverse theorists for not seeing the limitations of their common position. On the other hand, it is precisely one of our basic criticisms of the social reaction position held to by Lemert, Becker, Erikson, Kitsuse and others, that the degree to which these assumptions are systematically worked through in their studies is ambiguous and inconsistent.
Indeed, whilst at times the social reaction approach is presented as a full-blown theory, it is also often presented, when criticized, merely as a necessary re-orientation in criminology and the sociology of deviance. Edwin Schur (1971, p. 158), who is perhaps one of its most sophisticated defenders, has suggested that, ‘from the point of view of causal theory, labeling processes [as they have been broadly conceived in this study] represent perhaps a necessary condition of certain deviant outcomes, but labelling analysis does not concern itself basically with the specification of necessary and sufficient conditions’. Schur’s statement is rather tendentious, for the work of the social reaction or labelling theorists suffers precisely because whilst it avoids full causal or etiological analysis, on the one hand, it has also come to form a coherent body of thought serving to correct absolutist theories of deviance, and providing a processual account of the creation and maintenance of deviance, which concentrates its attention on the reaction to rule-breaking behaviour.
What is the social reaction or labelling approach to deviance?
The approach is part of a larger move in criminology and sociology against the legacy of positivistic or absolutist notions of crime, deviance and social problems. The approach rejects those genetic, psychological or multi-factoral accounts of crime and deviance which stress the absolute nature of the causes of criminality or deviation. It usually, but not necessarily, rejects the standard sociological structure- functional approach to such questions, and in its examination of the social processes giving rise to deviation it asks ‘deviant to whom?’ or ‘deviant from what?’ (Schur, 1971, p. 29).2
Their emphasis is on the nature of social rules and the labels or social reaction aimed at individuals who contravene such rules. They are, therefore, sociological relativists, insisting that what is deviant for one person may not be deviant for another, and perhaps more importantly, what is treated as deviant at one time and in one context, may not necessarily always be treated as deviant.
At its simplest, the suggestion is that the attempt to deter, punish and prevent deviation can actually create deviation itself. The statement that social control leads to deviance, or social control creates deviance can mean at least three different things:
a It can simply mean that whilst massive amounts of rule-breaking goes on in our society, this is not really deviant behaviour, or is not to be regarded as deviant behaviour until some social audience labels it deviant.
b It can be the possibility that an actor will become deviant as a result of experiencing the social reaction to an initial rule-infraction. In short, reaction by ‘social control agencies’ to an initial deviant act is so powerful in its implications for self that an individual comes to see himself as deviant and becomes increasingly committed to deviation.
c It can mean that the everyday existence of social control agencies produces given rates of deviance. In this sense it is obvious that actual indices of crime or deviation are produced as a result of the everyday workings of the police, courts, social workers, etc., which probably do not reflect actual amounts of deviance, but are merely indices of the deviance which is processed or handled by the social control agencies themselves.
Now whilst social reaction can mean three different things, the theorists under consideration in this chapter are primarily concerned with (a) and (b), and it is mainly ethnomethodologists who are concerned with the analysis of (c). We shall treat ethnomethodology separately in the next chapter.
It has been suggested that what makes comprehension of the social reaction perspective difficult is its cynical realism. Lemert himself suggests that ‘it starts with a jaundiced eye on collective efforts of societies to solve problems of deviance’ (1967, p. 59). The ultimate preoccupation of this group of theorists is with the way in which being labelled deviant by a social audience, or by an agency of social control, can change one’s conception of self, and possibly lead to a situation where, even if there was no initial commitment to deviation, there may be a progressive turn to such commitment. Thus they suggest that the very processes of social control can often lead to a ‘negative self image’ (Erikson) or to a symbolic reorganization of self (Lemert)—where one comes to see one’s self as deviant and progressively to act out such deviancy. This social psychological assumption is utilized by many of the theorists to explain commitment to deviancy. A processual account is offered of the way in which individuals (a) come to be called deviant, and (b) come to be committed to a deviant career. Part of this distinction is shown in the work of Becker (1963) when he refers to the difference between rule- breaking and deviance. As he states (p. 14):
In short, whether a given act is deviant or not depends in part on the nature of the act (that is, whether or not it violates some rule) and in part on what other people do about it.
Some people may object that this is merely a terminological quibble, that one can, after all, define terms any way he wants to and that if some people want to speak of rule-breaking behavior as deviant without reference to the reactions of others they are free to do so. This, of course, is true. Yet it might be worthwhile to refer to such behavior as rule-breaking behavior and reserve the term deviant for those labeled as deviant by some segment of society. I do not insist that this usage be followed. But it should be clear that insofar as a scientist uses ‘deviant’ to refer to any rule-breaking behavior and takes as his subject of study only those who have been labeled deviant, he will be hampered by the disparities between the two categories.
In fact, Becker is confused, for we are not dealing here with two categories but two separate social processes, that is, how a piece of behaviour comes to be labelled deviant, and what happens to a person once the label is applied. Becker’s confusion stems from his desire to preserve the category deviant for those people who are labelled deviant, but, to do this, is to imply at the outset that rule-breakers, and rule- breakers who are labelled (i.e. deviants), are fundamentally different from each other in their self-perceptions. As we shall see, this leads to an over-concentration by Becker and other social reaction theorists on the importance of the application of a label in creating a self-conscious commitment to deviant acts.
Let us return for the moment, however, to the advances made by the social reaction approach. They have concentrated on demonstrating that being defined or labelled as deviant can be an important stage in a larger process. Following the tradition of George Herbert Mead, they stress that the self is a social construct, that the way in which we come to act and see ourselves as individuals is in part the result of the way in which other people act towards us. Now it is apparent that if people see us as somewhat strange or different from other people, then we are liable to begin to conceive of ourselves as different. It is the case that someone seen as different may well be treated differently. We may treat people differently out of ignorance or prejudice, but the result is the same as if the supposed differences were real. Studies have shown that school children seen as liable to be educationally backward become educationally backward and that, vice versa, children seen as educationally capable become educationally capable (Rosenthal, 1968). If we define ourselves as incapable as a result of others’ definitions, we begin to act as if we are incapable. In part, what we are describing follows from a dictum erected by W.I.Thomas that a situation is real if it is real in its consequences.
Albert Cohen (1966, p. 24) has discussed the question of the application of deviant definitions and has pointed out that:
It is one thing to commit a deviant act—e.g. acts of lying, stealing, homosexual intercourse, narcotics’ use, drinking to excess, unfair competition. It is quite another thing to be charged and invested with a deviant character, i.e. to be socially defined as a liar, a thief, a homosexual, a dope fiend, a drunk, a chiseler, a brown-noser, a hoodlum, a sneak, a scab, and so on. It is to be assigned to a role, to a special type or category of persons. The label—the name of the role—does more than signify one who has committed such-and-such a deviant act. Each label evokes a characteristic imagery. It suggests someone who is normally or
habitually given to certain kinds of deviance; who may be
expected to behave in this way; who is literally a bundle of odious or sinister qualities. It activates sentiments and calls out responses in others: rejection, contempt, suspicion, withdrawal, fear, hatred.
Of course, the acceptance of a label is not inevitable. We have all experienced the kind of situation in which someone has in anger called us a thief or called us ugly. Just because a person defines a situation as real does not mean that we always act out their definitions. Mere definitions of reality are not always real in their consequences. But, despite its problematic character, the social self is firmly rooted in interactions with others, and it is this social fact which is so important in the consideration of an individual career.
If someone has been caught and publicly identified as deviant, the public labelling may begin to affect a person’s self-image (his social self). His personal identity may undergo transformation and, as a consequence, he may well come to view himself as a committed deviant. In Becker’s terms (1963, p. 32): ‘He [the rule-breaker] has been revealed as a different kind of person from the kind he was supposed to be. He is labeled a “fairy”, “dope fiend”, “nut”, or “lunatic” and treated accordingly.’ Once one is labelled as a certain kind of person one is liable to be treated in a different kind of way from those who commit similar actions but have not been labelled. Attention is then directed towards the institutions of social control because, as the social reaction theorists correctly argue, the control of crime and deviance frequently engenders in the criminal or deviant exactly those psychological self-perceptions which can hasten him along the road to a deviant career. Mead (1918, p. 592) had recognized this paradox early in his work and stated, in a famous essay on the psychology of punitive justice, that:
The two attitudes, that of control of crime by the hostile procedure of the law and that of control through comprehension of social and psychological conditions, cannot be combined. To
understand is to forgive and the social procedure seems to deny the very responsibility which the law affirms, and on the other hand the pursuit by criminal justice inevitably awakens the hostile attitude in the offender and renders the attitude of mutual comprehension practically impossible.
It is not surprising therefore that social reaction theorists, concerned as they are with processual explanations of deviancy, should have anchored their work in a social psychology derived from Mead. We shall later, however, find these premises to be an insufficient and a limited assumption. As our exposition unfolds, we hope to demonstrate that the social reactions theorists’ reliance upon social psychological assumptions (even where critical of Mead’s work) useful and necessary as they are in combating absolutist criminology, often lead either to a one-sided determinism or an avoidance of structural considerations relevant to their own position.
Perhaps the best conclusion to this section lies in a reference to Lemert’s critical précis of Mead’s position; for with all their modification of Mead’s ‘taken-for-granted’ determinism, the social reaction theorists do themselves sometimes lapse into the very same error (Lemert, 1967, pp. 42–3):
Mead’s conclusion…was that a system of deterrent punishments not only fails to repress crime but also ‘preserves a criminal class’…
Mead held that impartiality, maximization, and the consistent application of punishment, expressed in the ‘fixed attitude towards the jailbird’, provoked intransigence and hostility in the criminal. He seemed to take it for granted that such reactive antagonism led to further crime.
Deviance, behaviour and action
Forms of behavior per se do not differentiate deviants from non- deviants; it is the responses of the conventional and conforming members of the society which identify and interpret behavior as deviant which sociologically transform persons into deviants (John I.Kitsuse, 1962).
Deviance is not a property inherent in certain forms of behavior; it is a property conferred upon these forms by the audiences which directly or indirectly witness them (Kai T. Erikson, 1962).
to demystify cruder structural approaches which lost sight of the importance of social control as an independent variable in the creation of deviancy. Yet, despite this notable advance, much of the pioneering work nevertheless lapses into a relativistic idealism, where it is almost as if without labels there would be no deviance. Now in the broadest sense of the term (label or social reaction) this is obviously the case. A society without any rules or norms cannot have deviance—for ‘anything goes’. A society that describes all behaviour in neutral rather than pejorative terms is presumably a society free of variable social reaction. But this reliance upon a conceptual relativism in their work often leads to ambiguity and confusion.
The social reaction theorists assert that deviance or criminality is not to be seen as an inherent property of the act. Rather, for an act to be regarded as deviant, a deviant label has to be conferred upon it by society. Thus, for Becker and for others, deviant behaviour is to be seen as ‘the product of a transaction which takes place between some social group and one that is viewed by that group as a rule breaker’. Now there is a sense in which this perspective is both true and untrue. A couple of examples will illustrate the sense in which it is true. In wartime, for instance, the taking of life (murder, homicide, etc.) may be defined as one’s patriotic duty. In other particular circumstances, it may be seen as understandable and indeed perhaps a normal, if regrettable, response, as in the case of crimes passionelles or euthanasia. In the case of premeditated killing for personal gain, however, there is, of course, almost universal agreement on the deviant label. A few further examples here should clarify. With the introduction in the United Kingdom of the breathalyser test a few years ago, it suddenly became illegal to drive with a certain amount of alcohol in the blood. Similarly, the popular psychotropic drug LSD was legal in the UK and in the United States until comparatively recently. Again, it was entirely legal for a long period to raise the rents charged to tenants in private houses without restriction. The introduction of legal sanctions against all these forms of behaviour resulted in an increase in ‘deviance’ and, indeed, some of these instances, of criminality. What had happened is that society, or, more precisely, the rule-creators in society, extended their definitions and constraints to include previously non-deviant groups. Thus, there are a number of senses in which the same piece of physical action can be treated as either deviant or non-deviant depending upon the label applied to it, or, and importantly, upon the social context in which it occurs.
However, there is also a sense in which the social reaction perspective is untrue. Whilst the social reaction theorists are, of course, correct in distinguishing physical from social acts, in insisting that meanings are not constant, and that a definition is something endowed
on the action rather than the action itself, there is a sense in which this is only true once a social context is taken for granted. Whilst the act of killing can be seen as patriotism or murder—according to the social context—it is only within the existence of certain social contexts that labels are acceptable. Thus, it is unlikely that an individual found to have killed another individual in England in 1972 could claim to have committed an act of patriotism, since patriotism is a social definition used largely in periods of war.3
If it is true that certain social meanings are only acceptable in certain social contexts, then the social meanings of acts and the choice to commit them are not as variable or arbitrary as many of these theorists would have them to be.
This leads us to confront the weakness of one assumption of the ‘theory’, namely, the statement of Howard Becker (1963, p. 9) that:
Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to