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Labeling theory is somewhat of a "if the shoe fits, wear it" theory. Labeling theory suggests that:
Social groups make deviance by making rules whose infractions
constitute deviance and by applying these rules to particular
people and labeling them as outsiders. ... Labeling theory is especially crucial to understanding juvenile delinquency because it is during the time of adolescence that juveniles self identities are formed. "Labeling theory also helps explain the longer-term consequences of a deviant label on a persons social identity" (Calhoun 179) . ...
Labeling Theory Labeling theory is associated with Howard Becket and was introduced in 1963. Labeling theory is the theory of deviance that views deviance as a label assigned to behavior and individuals by particular figures of authority. ... This theory doesn’t plausibly explain Nevet and Begonia’s behavior. Strain Theory French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) used the term anomie to describe a state of normlessness in society, when many people are unclear as to the expectations others have of them (Durkheim, 1951). ... Anomie theory in essence states that deviant behavior is encouraged by strains builkt into the very fabric or society. ... The rebellion response to strain explains Nevet and Begonia’s action by offering that they were encouraged to act deviantly because there was so much strain of them to be perfect
LABELING THEORIES IN CRIMINOLOGY
Labeling theorists believe that labeling and reacting to offenders as "criminals" has unanticipated negative consequences, deepening the criminal behavior and making the crime problem worse. ... Labeling theorists therefore are critical of conceptions that crime is behavior that violates criminal law. ...
Early Labeling Theorists
Tannenbaum (1938) was perhaps the first labeling theorist. ...
Becker (1963), whom many consider as the founder of labeling theory, coined the term "moral entrepreneur" to describe individuals who lead campaigns to outlaw certain behaviors by making them "criminal. ... Most labeling theorists believe the system exercises a lower-class bias in rounding up offenders, and that FBI statistics are useless as a measure of how much crime is really out there, but useful in measuring class, race, and gender bias (since mostly urban poor black males are arrested). ...
Modern Labeling Theories
Today, one rarely finds labeling theories like those which predominated in the late 1960s. ... A shift seemed to take place around 1974 in which labeling theory accommodated itself to legalistic definitions somewhat, or at least a focus on state power. Labeling theories that recognize, legally speaking, societies "create" crime by passing laws are called criminalization theories (Hartjen 1974), and they have some resemblance to societal reaction approaches, but more closely fall into sociology of law perspectives that look at the purpose of law in society. Labeling theories that focus on state power can be considered as branches of control-ology (Ditton 1979), and go back to a critique by Liazos (1972) that sociologists need to stop studying "nuts, sluts, and preverts". ...
"Social Response" Theories:
Labeling Theory, Marxist Scholarship,
& Social Response in the Criminological Tradition
Labeling Theory
* * * * *
1. ... Labeling theory is strongly influenced by the symbolic interactionism developed by George Herbert Mead, for whom the intersubjective was the "raw stuff" of sociology. ... The labeling perspective is so fundamentally bound up with interactionist epistemological commitments that Howard Becker preferred to call it an "interactionist theory of deviance.
Approximate Word count = 2633
Approximate Pages = 10.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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