Deviance and Interactionist Theories Quiz

Interactionist Theories of Criminology

• This theory focuses on how individuals are socialized into crime through interactions and the meanings people attach to those interactions.
•  Symbolic interactionism is a central element, with three key premises: people act toward others based on the meanings those others hold for them; meanings arise from social interactions; and these meanings are modified through interactions.
• The central concept in interactionist theories of crime is the deviant career. This involves the stages an individual progresses through in their involvement in criminal activity.

Learning Objectives

• Understand primary and secondary deviation and how primary deviance leads to secondary deviance.
• Understand the processes of drift among juvenile delinquents.
• Explain how moral entrepreneurs create and enforce the law.
• Discuss the various contingencies criminals encounter in their deviant careers.
• Explain how people are socialized into a criminal lifestyle.
• Outline the strengths and weaknesses of interactionist theories.

Interactionist Theory in Criminology

• The theory centers on the interchanges between people and the meanings of these interchanges in the context of criminal activity, as opposed to broader symbolic interactionism.
•  The theory describes three fundamental parts of symbolic interactionism, with the first point highlighting how people react toward nonhuman and human objects based on the meaning of those objects and interactions.
• The second premise explains the theory that the meaning of objects emerges from their interactions with people and the surrounding culture. The final premise is that all of the meanings learnt, through repeated interactions, are applied and sometimes adapted during future interactions.

The Deviant Career

•  The deviant career is the path individuals travel along, influenced by factors and incidents encountered during each stage of deviance.
• This concept explores how social reactions influence a person's deviant career, moving them toward a criminal identity.
•  Deviance is a label that can be negotiated and applied differently depending on social power dynamics. Some deviate but are not detected; others are labelled as deviants even if they have not deviated.
•  Interactionism focuses on the events occurring after the criminal acts commence. - Different actions can cause deviance to be maintained or changed.

The Deviant Career - Labelling Theory (Lemert, 1972)

• Primary deviation: Early in a criminal career, an offender commits infrequent deviant acts without self-identifying as a deviant.
• Secondary deviation: The individual develops an affinity for the deviant act involved, which becomes their way of life. Accusations and societal reactions toward this behavior cause the individual to modify their lifestyle and potentially further engage in criminal behavior.

The Deviant Career: A Precondition for Deviance

•  Willingness to engage in deviant actions is a prerequisite for deviance. Individuals must have an affinity for the proposed deviant act.
• Some individuals are more likely to engage in deviance due to a weak commitment to societal norms or lacking a strong moral or value code.
• This concept examines concepts like, 'drift', where the deviancy is not continuous but happens intermittently during life.

Moral Rhetorics

•  Claims and assertions used to justify deviant behavior. Arguments are used to neutralize the implications of deviance.
• Young offenders may use instrumental rhetoric to justify their acts in order to gain power and control.

Agents of Social Control

• Agents of social control are involved in maintaining law and order, which include police, judges, other members of the criminal justice system, and everyday citizens.
• Moral entrepreneurs influence the creation and enforcement of laws. They suggest new laws, or support changes to existing ones.

Agents of Social Control - Claim-Making

• Moral entrepreneurs engage in claim-making activities to convince the public of existing threats, often based around human behavior.
• Identifying and defining a condition as undesirable in order to influence public action to address the issue. Claims are often presented in order to gain public scrutiny, public debate, and public action.
• These arguments are often quasi-theories, not necessarily supported by concrete evidence and can frequently be found to be oversimplified.

Secondary Deviation

• Secondary deviation occurs when deviants significantly change their lifestyles as a result of society's reactions to their actions.
• Accusations and labels, like thief, murderer, or rapist, heavily influence the trajectory of a deviant career.
• A master status is assigned when society views the individual's criminality as their defining characteristic.

Secondary Deviation - Career Contingency

• Unforeseen events or situations in an individual's life, such as interactions with social control agents, can impact the trajectory of a deviant career. These may be the starting point for continuing deviant behavior, or can represent a turning point where the individual changes or halts deviant behavior.

Secondary Deviation - Continuance Commitment

• This involves acknowledging the impossibility of a non-criminal lifestyle due to societal reactions and penalties such as difficulty finding employment, or police harassment.
• Penalties for deviance may have structural origins in the social community, or may be rooted in the attitudes or perceptions of individuals involved.

Reactions to Commitment

• Self-enhancing commitment: Some individuals are strongly attached to their criminal activities, finding enjoyment and are not motivated to change.
• Self-degrading commitment: Individuals redefine values and penalties around their criminal identities, leading to the adoption and permanence of a criminal lifestyle.

Socialization into Crime - Differential Association

• Individuals learn criminal behaviors through interactions with others who already engage in criminal activity. This learning occurs primary in small groups within a social context.
• Learned behaviors include criminal techniques, motives, attitudes, and rationalizations. One important attitude that is often learned is a disregard for the community's legal code.
• Individuals can achieve this attitude, not only by associating with criminals, but also by avoiding contact with those who do not share the same attitude.

Differential Association Theory - Strengths & Contributions

• Highlights the importance of learning criminal behaviors, motives, techniques, and attitudes.
• Ties to deviant peers are crucial in contributing to criminal behavior.

Differential Association Theory - Critiques

• Learning of deviant motives and meanings happens gradually and not consistently.
• Societal interactions involve both deviants and non-deviants, and meanings are adapted.
•  Expressive reasons for committing crimes, not just instrumental reasons, are often omitted. Testing the theory faces operationalization problems due to the complexity of the theory's concepts.

Limitations of Interactionist Theories

• Neo-Marxist critique: Interactionist theories fail to connect crime to broader societal issues relating to power, politics, and economics.
• Empiricist critique: Labelling theory overlooks cases of deviance without societal reaction, inadequately conceptualizes the causes of deviance as interpretations and not causes, and lacks testable propositions.
• Ethnomethodological critique: Labelling theory neglects how people make sense of the social world and doesn't adequately explain the dynamics of how labels are created.

Implications

• This theory exposes the role of moral entrepreneurs in creating and enforcing rules that define deviance.
• It illustrates how deviance, particularly when applied to youth, results in potentially harmful consequences that can hinder re-integration and adherence to societal norms.
• It emphasizes the importance of looking beyond the causes of deviancy in investigating the criminal career.

Summary of Interactionist Theories

•  Interactionist theory focuses on the interchanges, meanings, and interpretations within social interactions to explain crimes.
• A deviant career is the sequence of events in an individual's involvement in criminal activity, which includes different social stages and societal reactions.
• Primary deviation is the initial, infrequent deviance often leading to secondary deviance.
•  Secondary deviance is the evolution of the deviant lifestyle and behavior that potentially is influenced by societal reaction and the development of a self-identity.
• Interactionist theories offer insightful explanations of criminal behavior through the lens of socialization, meaning-making, and the labelling process. They also contribute significantly to understanding the broader spectrum of deviant careers beyond their origins.