NCJ Number
75264
Journal
Canadian Journal of Sociology Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Dated: (1980) Pages: 213-233
Date Published
1980
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article criticizes a 1975 research review that concluded that the labeling theory or perspective of social deviance is not supported by any empirical evidence. This critique uses sociological paradigms to demonstrate that the reported demise of the theory is illusory.
Abstract
The labeling theory has been a subject of much debate by sociologists since the mid-1960's. There are generally two schools of thought associated with the development of the theory. The Chicago/California perspective toward deviance and social control is based on the interpretative paradigm. It is an amalgam of the sociology of Lemert, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology and phenomenological sociology. The other is a translation of certain of the themes of the California/Chicago perspective into a positivist framework. It is the latter version of the theory, advanced by some of the very positivists who denounced the validity of the theory, and not the pure labeling theory, that the empirical evidence fails to support. The marshaling of evidence by the positivist who denounced the labeling theory in 1975 to support the claim that the theory was not supported by the empirical evidence is essentially an exercise in the destruction of a sociological strawman. Footnotes and a bibliography of nearly 150 references are included. (Author abstract modified)