Becker – Outsiders – Flashcards

Also called “Labeling Theory”

1. All social groups make rules
2. All try to enforce them, sometimes

1. Define situations
2. Define kinds of behavior appropriate to the rules
3. Specify right and wrong behavior

Those who have been thought to have broken an enforced rule

1. Special kind of people
2. Untrustworthy because they don’t live according to agreed rules

May not accept the rule by which he/she is being judged

The person labeled ‘outsider’ may regard those who are labeling him/her as incompetent or illegitimate

i.e. they may think the labelers are the real outsiders

1. Situations (or rule breaking and enforcement)

2. Processes (by which some break rules and some enforce them)

1. formally enacted by law and enforced by police

2. Informal agreement enforced by informal sanctions associated with age, tradition, consensus

1. Everyone
2. Everyone in a certain group
3. Specialized bodies, like professional associations

1. Sometimes they may remain on the books anyways, like blue laws and sodomy laws

2. Sometimes they simply die

They are kept alive by enforcement

Our tolerance is related to the act and the situation

e.g. getting drunk at a party; knifing someone at a party

Depends on the person and the situation

e.g. traffic violation may not seem unjust, alcoholics may feel ambivalent, others might rejected.

Unconscious/Uncritical Homophobia Alert

1. Associated with breaking, or seeming to break, social rules

2. Some characteristic of the person who breaks the rule

Scientists uncritically accept the values of the group making the judgment

The person making the judgment
The process by which the judgment is arrive at
The situation in which it is made

If scientists take common sense view, they may leave out an important variable, the variable character of the judgment process

It will limit the kin of theories and understandings that can be developed

Simplifies question by doing away with questions of value by simply calculating distance from average

Too simple – wind up with a mixed back (redheads to murderers)

Too far removed from the issue of rule-breaking – some people who do not fit the average have no broken any rules

Problems of use of medical analogy – health and disease of human organism

Analogy: applying meaning from one piece of knowledge to another

It is relatively easy to agree on what is not healthy from a medical perspective, but when you stretch the analogy, it falls short. People don’t necessarily agree on what is deviant. No definition will satisfy

Accepts lay judgment of deviance

By use of analogy, locates source in individual (disguising judgment as part of process)

To discriminate between those features of society which promote stability and those which disrupt stability.

To point out areas of possible trouble in a society of which people may not be aware

Often a political question, which limits our understanding

in political conflict – not nature of organization

factions within the group disagree and maneuver to have their own definition of the groups function accepted

It tends to ignore politics and change over time

Maybe, but the ambiguities have to be analyzed:
Which rules? Who decides?

And if people belong to different groups, which set of rules should be attended to?

These things have to be figured out through empirical research

A society has many groups, each with its own set of rules, and people belong to many groups simultaneously.

Therefore, a person may break the rules of one group by the very act of abiding by the rules of another group.

It is created by society

Deviance is not a quality of the at the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an “offender”

We cannot assume that these people have actually committed a deviant act or broken some rule because the process of labeling may not be infallible;

Some people may be labeled deviant who have not broken a rule.

All the people who did not get caught

They share the label and the experience of being labeled as outsiders

They share the process by which they came to be thought of as outsiders and their reactions to that judgment

Whether an act is deviant, then, depends on how other people react to it… The response of other people has to be regarded as problematic

Boy commits suicide for breaking exogamy rule because taunted unjustifiably by another; he didn’t understand that his village would not be outraged by the knowledge of his “crime,” nor that it would not react directly — Indeed, sex between endogamous couples is not rare.

Varies over time – some deviant acts may be responded to much more leniently than he would at some other time

Who commits the act and who feels harmed – middle class boy is less likely to be taken to the station and booked compared to someone from the slums

POINT – There is differential enforcement of rules on different categories of people.

Because they lead to the perspective that “whether a given act is deviant or not depends in part on the nature of the act. That is, whether or not it violates some rule and in part on what people do about it.

More precise terminology – rule breaker vs deviant (the latter applied only to those who have been so labeled)

Not a quality, an interaction

Different sets of rules evolve in different groups and there will be contradiction and disagreement

Empirical research – any given rule reveals variation; formal and informal factions

Within Group – depends on political and economic power, gender, generation and race:

Becker gives examples of elders forcing rules on young people, men make rules for women, negros are subject to rules made by whites.

People are always forcing their rules on others, applying them more or less against the will and without the consent of those others

…

The ability to make and apply rules

…

They are the object of conflict and disagreement, art of the political process of society

Individual conception of behavior develops in course of experience with deviant activity (time and sociality produce motivation rather than inner psychology)

curiosity transformed into patterns of action through social interpretation of ambiguous social experience

To understand the sequence of changes in attitude and experience which lead to the use of marijuana for pleasure

1. Once you identify a particular trait as causal, the researcher has difficulty accounting for users who do not display this trait

2. Difficulty accounting for change over time in individual behavior

After studying 50 interviews with marijuana users, he finds a hypothesis that fits every case

He was working as a professional dance musician

Colleagues working on opiate drug users made interview material available to him

No one knows the nature of universe from which the random sample would be drawn

History of person’s experience

Using the jargon of he interveiwee

With the person who arrived at the point of willingness to try marijuana

i.e. the person who has gone through the steps he identifies

In a way that insures sufficient dosage to produce real symptoms of intoxication (although this is ritualized, it is also efficient)

1. Social participation
2. Observation
3. Imitation

1. Presence of symptoms cause by marijuana use

2. Recognition of these symptoms in a way that connects user with drug use

Learning produces a stable set of categories for experiencing drug effects

He/She decides to, redefining through participation with other users

1. Learning the smoke the drug in a way which will produce real effects
2. Learning to recognize the effects and connect them with drug use (learning to get high)
3. Learning to enjoy the sensations he perceives

Becoming responsive to values of smaller groups, rather than larger society

Through power and application of sanctions

Subtle mechanisms reshaping conceptions of the activity in question and possibility of engaging in it (hegemony)

Characterizes events that render sanctions ineffective

Characterizes experiences that shift conceptions such that the behavior becomes conceivable

1. Illegality
2. Severe penalties (possible arrest and imprisonment)
3. Difficult access
4. Associated with violations of moral imperatives (self control)

beginner

occasional user

regular user

1. limiting supply and access
2. need to keep nonusers from discovering
3. defining use as immoral

Through a group organized in opposition to mainstream conventions

use is a function of availability (i.e. chance encounters)

Needs a more stable source of supply

Establishes connections with people in the narcotics business

1. Larger quantities
2. More economical
3. Have to have a connection to illicit dealers

Person becomes more identified with dealer-groups

Is considered trustworthy

Is defined as a member

Revises sense of danger once he/she accomplishes it without arrest

Danger no longer blocks access

Learns to observe elementary,, common sense precautions

Arrest of dealer is a form of indirect deterrence

Each use level has a typical group-derived supply route

Changes in participation and membership lead to changes in use – use is a dependent variable

Fear of repudiation by nonusers leading to disrupted relationships

Beginners are comfortable as long as occasional/regular users are comfortable

Occasional makes sure nonusers are not present and are not likely to intrude. The drug is used only when offered

Regular users believe that their actions can be carried on under the noses of nonusers; reduces contact with nonusers to almost zero

Nonusers won’t realize they are high

Reduces contacts with nonusers to near zero point

Key relationships of deterrence are broken

New relationships with nonusers are inhibited

Learn to control the drug’s effects while in the company of nonusers (becoming a secret deviant)

Develop idiosyncratic solutions (act goofy all the time, so people won’t know the difference)

Each level of use can occur only when the person has revised his conception of the dangers involved in such a way as to follow it

Self control, rational behavior, responsibility

Participation, observation, liberation from conventional stereotypes e.g. that one becomes a slave to the drug

Acquisition of rationalizations and justifications learned from experience in drug-using groups (folklore); reorganization or moral notions

Fear of weakness, habit, personality maladjustment

Knowing and accepting that it is an escape

Replacing mainstream conceptions with “inside” knowledge

Denial of responsibility

Denial of injury

Denial of the victim

Condemn the Condemner

Appeal to higher loyalites

Their culture and wy of life are considered bizarre and unconventional by many

Conventional understandings that manifest in act and artifact

Inter-Communivation among the members

An abstraction of idea type toward which members tend to conform

Smaller groups within complex societies are also held together by common understandings

In response to a problem faced in common by a group of people, insofar as they are able to communicate effectively

Where people who engage in deviant activities have the opportunity to interact with one another they are likely to develop a culture built around the problems arising out of the differences between their definition of what they do and the differences between their definition of what they do and the definition help by other members of society.

Because they operate within and in distinction to larger society

As a service profession i.e. workers come into more or less contact with consumers

Client is able to direct or attempt to direct the worker and apply sanction

Conflict and hostility

Defense mechanisms on the part of workers

Subculture

Music which is produced without reference to the demands of outsiders

…

A type of popular music originating among African Americans in the southern United States, typically performed by ensembles and broadly characterized by regular forceful rhythms, syncopated phrasing, modifications to traditional instrumental tone and pitch, and improvisatory soloing

Tension between conventional success and artistic standards

On a continuum between extreme “jazz” to “commercial”

Problems arising out of difference between insiders and outsiders = protoype

Site and time – Chicago music scene 1948-9, at jobs and at “job markets”

Participant observation

Listening and recording ordinary kinds of conversation (rather than formal interviews)

By work setting and to a lesser extent, by city size

He lives and works there, so he has access

It is a sizable cit that allows musicians to specialize

Noun or Adj – Everything that a musician is not, or does not value

As someone possessing special gifts

As someone who should be free of control

Not to criticize or attempt to influence another’s playing while on the job

Musicians believe that they are under no obligation to imitate the conventional behavior of squares

No one can tell a musician how to do anything

Idiosyncrasy and being a “character” is a primary occupational value

Desire for free self-expression

Recognition that musicians may be forced to forego satisfying the desire because of outside pressures

Isolation from audience

Intensification of musicians’ status as outsiders through a cyclic operation of increasing deviance

Segregating on platform or barricaded in corner

Working conditions (late hours, geographic mobility)

Hostile rejection of American culture in toto

Fully assimilated national groups: Irish, Scandanavian, German, and English

i.e. privileged, many wealthy

A person who identifies with a certain ethnic group may isolate himself from that group due to the differences between squares and musicians

i.e. Jewish man

Slang is a symbolic expression that marks the process of self-segregation

The moving perspective in which the person sees his/her life as a whole and interprets the meaning of his/her various attributes, actions, and the things which happen to him/her

A series of statuses and clearly defied offices… typically sequences of postion achievement, responsibility, and even adventure

Affects contingencies and crisis points

Cultivate relationships with the group that controls rewards

Movement through a hierarchy of available jobs

Expects to change jobs frequently

Hours worked, degree of community recognition of achievement

1. Joints – lower class taverns and night clubs, strip clubs

2. Steady job with local bands in ‘respectable’ night clubs

3. Class B name – Orchestras (second rank of nationally known dance orchestras)

4. Class A name – bands or local orchestras that play best night clubs, hotels, etc.

5. Men who hold staff positions on radio and Tv or legitimate theatres

A network of informal, interlocking cliques allocates the jobs available for a given time

Cliques are bound together by ties of mutual importance

If you’re not in a clique, you don’t get hired

The number and quality of relationships of mutual obligation that you have established; the more connections, the higher your job security.

Medical jobs tend to be based in a few large hospitals, musicians jobs have greater “number of possible foci,” thus lessening the power of one particular clique

Provide routes through which one can move up through levels of jobs

The system operates to bring available men to the attention of those who have jobs to fill and to provide them with recruits who can be trusted to perform adequately

Successful functioning and professional mobility are unctions of the individuals relation to a network of informal organizations composed of his colleagues.

The successful career my be viewed as a series of steps, each one a sequence of sponsorship, successful performance, and the building up of relationships at each new level

Prestige – the degree to which one refuses to modify one’s performance in deference to outside demands

But

Jazz doesn’t pay, rumbas do

For jobs, the most important cliques are commercial in orientation

artistic integrity

security, mobility, income, and general social prestige

His success depends on how he reacts to it.

Either choose between them, compromise to some degree, or get out of the profession

Has to radically change, has to think of himself as a different kind of person

the audience

family – membership in families binds the musician to people who are squares

Parents – do not aid the development of his career because entering this profession encourages his breaking with the conventional behavior patterns of his family

Lower class families see this career route as a possibly mobility route

Middle class families, choice of dance music as an occupation is viewed as a movement into Bohemianism, involving a loss of prestige for them and family; vigorously opposed

It varies

Only when something provokes enforcement

Not automatic relation between a rule’s existence and its enforcement

An entrepreneur takes initiative to punish a culprit

An infraction is made public

People blow the whistle when they see some advantage in doing so

Personal interest

The kind of personal interest varies with the complexity of the situation and social structure

Breaking incest rule

There was no conflict over the rule itself – everyone agreed that incest was wrong

However, the village didn’t think the boy should have died because of it

Anonymity

Everyone minds their own business

Everyone maintains an attitude of “reserve”

Grants everyone personal freedom

Ordinary people ignore rule infractions, leaving enforcement to professionals

Conflict is chronic

Groups in conflict tend to allow each other to commit certain infractions

Groups committing deviant acts tend not to reveal them to the public

Example – Routine theft in industrial organizations

It is not actually a system of theft, but an unofficial system of rewards where no legitimate reward system exists

Rules are not enforced because competing power groups — management and workers — find it mutually advantageous to ignore infractions

In competing partners (tool-crib attendants and machinists) were part of a system in which there was a balance of power and interest

The rule was inefficient

Accommodation and compromise are more difficult

Conflict tends to be more open and unresolved

Access to communication channels becomes an important variable

When a corrupted prosecutor hides something one too many times

When an anti-corruption drive takes place, exposing infractions to the public that would have been kept hidden before

When the system of compromise that characterizes the relationship breaks down

Personal interest generates enterprise

Publicity

Character of the organization lends itself to enforcement

Fundamental agreement about the rule increases likelihood of enforcement

NATURAL HISTORY deals with what is typical of a class of events, while HISTORY deals with how events are different

Regularity rather than idiosyncrasy

Development and enforcement of informally constituted rules

Elements of a shared symbolic system

Serves as a criterion or standard for selection among alternatives of orientation

In an intrinsically open situation

Tell which of several alternative lines of action would be preferable, all things being equal – but all things are seldom equal

i.e. too ambiguous to direct us to a specific line of action

We can hold conflicting values without being aware of it

We often don’t figure it out until we can’t make a decision in a moment of crisis

Begin judicial procedures to resolve conflict

Values provide major premise from which specific rules are deduced

In problematic situations

Which actions are approved, which are forbidden

Situations to which rules are applicable

Sanctions attached to breaking it

carefully drawn

many layers of judicial interpretation

unambiguous

Different rules may be deduced from the same value

Rules will only be deduced from values of specific situations that prompt people to do so

A specific rule might conflict with another one deduced from the same value

Fence them in with qualifications and exceptions

Tend to be more precise and unambiguous

It has to actualize in particular acts of enforcement

Kinds of people

Different times

Different situations

Technical rules that resolve conflicts between other and earlier rules.

Rules that attempt to regularize the workings of complex institutions

Some rules are invented to justify acts

Do empirical research on various kinds of rules in various kinds of situations.

With the entrepreneur who makes it his/her business to see that the rules are deduced

Look at the sociolegal context – how similar substances (alcohol/opium) had been treated in US law

Protestant Ethic – idea of never losing control of yourself

Pragmatism/Utilitarianism – against ecstasy pursued for its own sake

Humanitarianism – make it impossible for people to give in to their weakness

18th Amendment and Volstead Act forbidding importation of alcoholic beverages into the US and manufacture within the US

Harrison Act punished use of opiates for all but medical purposes

Medical exception for morphine and other opiate derivaties for relief of pain

Protection of police powers in certain states by presenting the law as a revenue measure, taxing only unlicensed purveyors at an exorbitant rate

Police measure presented as a revenue measure

Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established in the Treasury Department

Relatively lax enforcement of already existing laws against marijuana use

Police didn’t think marijuana use was a pressing problem – a fact supported by its low price

Perceived an area of wrongdoing that belonged in their jurisdiction and moved to put it there

Cooperating in development of state legislation

Providing facts and figures for journalistic accounts of the problem

Cooperated with the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, stressing the need to control marijuana use

AKA Indian Hemp, the ‘lethal’ weed

Hinted that Federal intervention might otherwise be necessary

Aroused the public thought “educational” campaigns in multiple popular media outlets

Promulgated “atrocity” stories (ax murderer)

Pushed for uniform state laws

Self control

Search for illicit pleasure

The same two values they used in push for prohibiting alcohol and opiates

Industrial, medical, scientific use

Excluding the mature stalks in the definition of “marijuana”

The paint and varnish industry, which used the seeds. THe seeds contain active compounds

They would have no problem because they rarely prescribed the drug and it would thus cause no hardship

Only become a menace in last few years

Many crimes committee under its influence (the ax-murderer)

Low prices made it available to everyone

They could use sterilized seeds

They had no representation or legitimate grounds for attack and did not apear in the public record

The Bureau used its enterprise to create “a new fragment of the moral constitution of society, its code of right and wrong

Enlisting support from coordinate groups

Use of available media of communication to fashion a favorable climate of opinion

Shaped by complexity of the organization

Rest on the basis of shared understanding in simpler groups

Results from political maneuvering and bargaining in complex structures

Interested in the content of rules

Operates with absolute ethic

Typically believe that their mission is holy

Believes that if people do what is right, it will be good for them (humanitarianism)

Tend to link various concerns

Dominated by those in the upper levels of social structure

They use their social power to bolster the legitimacy of their moral position

Care more about ends than means

Rely on expert advice to draw up acceptable legislation

Commonly enacted after a few serious crimes are committed in quick succession arouse fear

Agitated activity of the community in response to fear

Appointment of a committee

May play a role in the committee

For help in drawing up legislation

Unforeseen consequences related to the interest group of professionals

e.g. psychiatrists in sexual predator laws

He/It may be out of a job

He/It may become a professional discoverer of wrongs to be righted

He/It may give up the mission

He/It may adhere to an increasingly less popular mission – becoming outsiders themselves

Class dynamics may shift
e.g. upper to lower-middle class of Prohibition movement

A police force
e.g. Federal Bureau of Narcotics

Institutionalization

Not the content, but the fact that it is his job to enforce it

The rule provides him with a job

Attempts at enforcement are effective and worthwhile

The problem is worse than ever, requiring new and increased effort

They tend to be pessimistic about human nature

Without respect, there is fear that job security will be lost

Rule breaking

Showing disrespect to enforcers

Can’t tackle everything at once, so they have priorities and bases for making decisions

The “fixer” system
(political influence, know-how, and a professional “fixer”)

Whether the enforcement officials feel that at this time he make some show of doing his job in order to justify his position

Whether the misbehavior shows proper deference to the enforcer

Whether the “fix” has been put in

Where the kind of act committed stands on the enforcer’s list of priorities

Both are necessary for a rule to form

Because deviant behavior is a product of both the rule-breaker and the rule-enforcer

This process of interaction that creates deviance can be discovered in these kinds of events