Chapter 13

symbolic interactionism

focuses on the dynamics of how people interpret social situations and negotiate the meanings of these situations with others. It differs from more structurally focused perspectives in seeing individuals as actively creating the social world rather than just acting within the constraints of culture and social structure.

deviant career

passage of an individual through the stages of one or more related deviant identities

\-labelling

interest > length, crime

Primary Deviation

little change in one’s everyday routine or lifestyle

\-drift

secondary deviation

Occurs when an individual accepts the label of deviant. The result is adoption of a deviant self-identity that confirms and stabilizes the deviant lifestyle

\-modified ways of living

\-labelled

master -overrides other labels

career contingency -by chance

continued commitment -impossible to change

\

moral rhetorics

justify deviant behaviour

egoism - still feel guilty about their deviant acts

instrumental -cunning and power against power

Agents of Social Control

agents of social control

moral entrepreneurs \n -defines new rules and laws or who advocates stricter enforcement of existing laws


1. They assert the existence of a particular condition, situation, or state of affairs in which human action is implicated as a cause.
2. They define the asserted condition as offensive, harmful, undesirable, or otherwise problematic to the society but as nonetheless amenable to correction by humans.
3. They stimulate public scrutiny of the condition as the claims makers see it.

quasi-theories -selectively constructed to square with the claims makers’ views

MORAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR LEGALIZING CANNABIS IN CANADA

marijuana/cannabis

resolution to legalize

MADD -objected, more police will be needed

THE PRISON-MADE TATOO AS MASTER STATUS

fineline black tatoos

help speak for the wearer

\n \n Reactions to Commitment

self-enhancing commitment -enjoy what they do and are disinclined to abandon it \n self-degrading form -gladly abandon the world of crime if only they could find a palatable way to do so

Differential Association

1. People learn how to engage in crime.
2. This learning comes about through interaction with others who have already learned criminal ways.
3. The learning occurs in small, face-to-face groups.
4. What is learned is criminal technique (e.g., how to open a safe), motives, attitudes, and rationalizations.
5. Among criminals, one important learned attitude is disregard for the community’s legal code.
6. One acquires this attitude by differentially associating with those who hold it and failing to associate with those who do not.
7. Differential associations with criminals and noncriminals vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity.
8. Learning criminal behaviour through differential association rests on the same principles as learning any other kind of behaviour.
9. Criminal behaviour is a response to the same cultural needs and values as noncriminal behaviour.

Criminal identities

social category into which deviants are placed by others in the community and into which, eventually, they may place themselves.

Neo-Marxist Critique

fails to relate crime and other forms of deviance to the larger society

\-division between the powerful and the powerless

Empiricist Critique

examine only labelled deviants

\-labelling makes no practical difference to the individual

lacks testable propositions

Ethno-methodological Critique

Alfred Schutz

Phenomenology -how we perceive and understand the objects and events of reality

How do people make sense of their social world?