
In Howard Becker’s analysis of labelling,
Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance
(1964). Becker described how being
negatively labelled for a minor act of primary
deviance could lead to a change of selfimage, encouraging the individual to seek the
company of other deviants and move on to
more serious acts of secondary deviance.

If more negative
labelling followed, the
perpetrator might
eventually embark on a
deviant career, viewing
himself as having
permanent master
status as a deviant.

What other labelling studies can you think of
in relation to crime, deviance or education?




Crime: Jock Young’s The Drug Takers
Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics
Deviance: Lemert on stuttering
Rosenhan’s On being Sane in Insane Places




Education:
Hargreaves: Deviance in Classrooms
Ball’s Beachside Comprehensive
Rosenthal and Jacobson’s Pygmalion in the
Classroom
Interactionists are also interested in how people
view particular groups or acts. For example teachers
are said by some researchers to have different
expectations of Asian and Afro-Caribbean students.
They construct different images of them.
 Hence, though the meanings of the words are
slightly different, interactionists are sometimes
known as social constructionists.


David Gillborn carried out observations over 2
years in a comprehensive school in which he
discovered that Afro-Caribbean pupils were
more likely to be reprimanded by teachers
than Asian pupils whose behaviour was
similar (Race, Ethnicity and Education, 1990).

He gave a very full description of how hard a
particular black student, Paul Dixon, tried not to get
into trouble despite the negative attitude of some
teachers.
This study could be described in any of the following ways.
Can you remember what they mean now and how they
apply?
 Social action theory
 Grounded
 Ethnography
 Bottom up
 Interactionist
 Labelling
 Social constructionist
 Interpretive

Gillborn’s study could also be described as middle
range because it observed a small group of students
and their teachers but drew conclusions about
wider issues such as the examination results of
whole ethnic groups and the effects of
discrimination on job aspirations.
 In contrast micro sociologists are interested in ideas
of the self, which could be regarded as work with a
narrower focus.


According to psychologist William James
(1890) as well as the spiritual self that might
be described as our underlying personality,
we have a material self, the outward
appearance we choose to present to the
world as a result of our public roles and a
social self, the concept which we have of
ourselves as a result of other people’s
reaction to us.

Cooley (1922) aptly called the social self the
‘looking glass self’, referring to how, after a
while, we begin to view ourselves as if others’
eyes are a mirror.

G. H. Mead in 1934 described our awareness
of how others see us. The ‘I’ is the
spontaneous side of our personality which
would like to act freely, but we are aware of
the way ‘generalised others’ of our society
view us and expect us to behave and this
more inhibiting self concept seen through the
eyes of others is termed the ‘me’.

More recently Erving Goffman in The Presentation of
Self in Everyday Life (1959) used language from the
theatre to describe how people act social roles with
appropriate costumes to present the official image
of themselves when they are ‘in the front regions’ in
the eyes of the public (on stage). In the ‘back
regions’ (off stage) they are more likely to drop their
guard. It can be very embarrassing if this
inconsistency of identity comes to light.

What examples of Goffman’s dramaturgical
self can you think of? Think of ways people in
different walks of life have to put on an act
and perhaps an actual costume as part of
their impression management.


What examples of
Goffman’s dramaturgical
self can you think of?
Think of ways people in
different walks of life have
to put on an act and
perhaps an actual costume
as part of their impression
management.

Goffman in his study Stigma: Notes on the
Management of a Spoiled Identity (1963)
noted how people with visible stigmas such
as disabilities soon learn that they are likely
to be discriminated against by others, begin
to see themselves through others’ eyes and
take steps to avoid situations which draw
attention to signs of their disability.

We all potentially have stigmas which we
strive to keep from public sight as we know
how revelation would affect our social
identity.

Ethnomethodology, another type of social
action approach, can certainly be described
as micro sociology as it examines how people
speak to each other and interact in everyday
conversations and in relationships within
their own homes.

Ethnomethodology
reveals that there are
unspoken rules when
people of a common
culture chat to each
other. For example we
usually take turns and
respond to what the
other person has just
said in an appropriate
way.

There are conventions
such as not describing
our ailments in detail if
a comparative stranger
greets us with ‘How are
you?’

Harold Garfinkel (1967) conducted ‘breaching
experiments’ in which participants were asked to
break these conventions in order to reveal how
much we take them for granted. Students were
asked to go home and behave as if they were guests
at a hotel run by their parents. The parents, not
aware than an experiment was taking place,
believed their children were suffering from some
sort of mental illness or had taken drugs.

Phenomenology is another branch of social
action theory with a slightly different
emphasis. It examines the social construction
of particular phenomena and the results of
this subjective way of seeing and talking
about them (a discourse) on people’s
attitudes and behaviour.

Phenomenologist Jack Douglas studied
concepts of suicide, suggesting that some
people viewed it as a means of crying for
help, some as a way to get revenge, others as
a spiritual hope of reaching a better place.
These different motivations for suicide meant
that it could not be regarded as a single type
of act, making nonsense of analysing
patterns in suicide statistics in the hope of
finding causes.

How people view childhood, deviance,
gender and religion have also been studied
extensively by phenomenologists e.g. Aries’
Centuries of Childhood.



To summarise:
Structural approaches emphasise how
people are influenced by major structural
forces.
Social action studies may describe how
individuals operate in society as relatively
free agents, creating identities for
themselves.

Anthony Giddens (1984) suggests that to take
either view of our role in contemporary
society is to oversimplify matters. We are all
somewhat constrained by structural factors
such as our gender, age and income but we
are also free to some extent to take action to
change our circumstances. Hence Giddens
calls his theory structuration (a combination
of the words structure and action).

Discuss how parents’ choice of a school for
their children and the children’s academic
achievements there could be a result of both
structural forces and agency.

Other theorists have challenged the structuralist
approach from a different point of view. Poststructuralists such as the French philosopher Michel
Foucault (1926-84) claim that in postmodern
society, people no longer see themselves primarily
in terms of their class, gender, ethnicity but choose
to forge their own identities and lifestyles by
selecting from consumer products and ideas from
the media.