ABSTRACT
Labelling theory is an important explanatory tool within the study of deviance. First proposed by Lemert (1951), but most closely associated with the work of Howard Becker (1963), it is grounded in symbolic interactionism. The theory argues that an individual does not become a deviant simply by breaking some behavioural norm (such as a law). Rather, ‘deviant’ is seen as a label that is imposed upon the individual. An initial violation of a commonly accepted behavioural rule becomes significant only if others react to it. Human beings are understood, within the theory, as forming their personal identity or self-understanding only through interaction with others. Therefore, if others perceive one’s actions negatively, and crucially talk about you and describe your actions in this negative language, then you will begin to think of yourself in those terms. Your personal identity will then be constructed through those terms. Thus, labels, such as junkie or drug addict, lunatic or mentally ill, mugger and child molester, are not neutral. They are inherently critical of the sort of person they describe. In incorporating these labels into one’s own self-identity, one learns to live and behave differently. (Goffman (1961), for example, has analysed the processes by which new inmates of asylums for the mentally ill learn to behave as mentally ill.) The deviant may be isolated from ‘normal’ society, turning to the company of other deviants. The others whom the individual encounters on a routine basis, and who are thus responsible for forming the individual’s self-identity, change. A relatively minor violation of norms (such as the smoking of cannabis) can then be ‘amplified’ into more serious forms of deviance (such as the taking of hard drugs) as the deviant shifts from the norms of behaviour and language typical of ‘normal’ society, to those typical of ‘deviant’ subcultures. It may be added that the process by which the self-identity of the individual is reconstructed is not automatic. The imposition of a label may be resisted. Those with great economic or intellectual and educational resources will have more power to resist the application of a label (for example, by having the resources to provide a more adequate defence of themselves in court). [AE] Further reading: Fine 1977; Gove 1980.
