ABSTRACT
As far as the study of crime is concerned, the first premise entails the view that whether a given act is criminal or not depends on the meanings that are attributed to it. The second premise means that these conferred meanings arise interactionally, whether in interaction with others or with oneself. The third premise means that what particular meaning is conferred or construed depends upon how the act is interpreted by the parties to the interaction. Interactionists have paid particular attention to the face-to-face, situational and organizational aspects of the contexts of symbolic interaction. For some sociologists of crime and deviance, interactionism/labelling theory was something of a passing phase on the way to a more "radical" position within the Marxist or structural conflict perspective. If symbolic interactionism as a sociological perspective has been expounded primarily by Herbert Blumer, it derives chiefly from the influence on him of the philosophical social psychology of George Herbert Mead.
