ABSTRACT
Within American writings of the 1960s criminological positivism became attacked by an interactionist orientation called labelling theory, and the rise of a general anti-deterministic current within the philosophy of social science. This chapter will first consider how labelling theory changes the naturalist perspective of positivism into a concern with process, then discuss the work of David Matza, and suggest how we can read connections between the themes of Matza, and a philosophical position which represents some aspects of the modern human predicament and the culture of contingency, namely, existentialism.
