Issues in the Study of Deviance

Critical Analysis

In this text, the author examines how labeling theory has been considered by scholars, and identifies that the ongoing relationship between a group and an individual has been either ignored or incorrectly emphasized and claimed as causal. Prior to becoming labeled as a deviant at an individual level, a group has been influenced by historical context, norms, associations, legal decisions, and so-on, and these must be considered as relevant to labeling occurring. However, deviance does not follow linearly from this social context; a mid-range theory is proposed.

The author begins by categorizing and critiquing accepted perspectives from which labeling has been described: some argue from a positivist stance, or a functional stance, or a view of asymmetric power distinctions, and these are all individually too extreme. He argues that even a definition of deviance is problematic because it assumes a set and articulatable criteria that is independent of social context.

Traditional functional arguments of labeling theory often acknowledge context, but overextend the claim of societal forces acting on an individual to eliminate the actual deviant act itself: it appears too causal, as if social structures cause deviant behavior. deviance is then fixed or definable within the structures that have been named, and an individual doing something is largely lacking volition. A functionalist perspective accepts cultural relativism, but still argues that “universal values exist” without recognizing that “the relation of such values to specific acts, the persons, involved, and the surrounding situations making for deviance is highly variable between and also within cultures” (293).

The author summarizes a main challenge to traditional ways of thinking about deviance—that there is a gap between thinking of process and social structure, and “this comes out in their narrow preoccupation with the interaction between deviants and agents of social control, in a failure to locate them historically within particular social structures and in reporting their failures in the ethnographic present” (294). A functionalist perspective claims a sense of linearity (society leads to someone acting in a certain way), but the author clearly states that “social structure does not cause deviance” (298). His argument is not that a functional perspective is wrong; the argument is in the question of the way social pressures result in action, and how unescapable those pressures are (or aren’t).

Cooley’s model is argued to be a strong starting point for best understanding a relationship between functionalism, labeling and localized deviant activity: “Cooley recognized the importance of social intelligence in deliberating, calculating, weighing and sorting out values leading to choices for individual and collective action” (301). Social forces act as “influences”, not causal linkages, and this perspective still allows for a recognition of volition on the part of a local actor—“objective and subjective facts may be brought together in an analytical model which is still within the bounds of social science” (303). Cottrell’s model of “feedback” then becomes the most appropriate middle-range theory and argument for deviance labeling, where individuals (both those being labeled, and those doing the labeling) have choice and are not necessarily rational, and their values are constantly in flux.