ABSTRACT
This chapter is the tale of the spread of the plague. The consensual role and symbolic interactionist labelling accounts of deviance provide an instance of how the dialectic between symbolic interaction and other sociological theories does work to some extent and should be encouraged to work further. The critics of labelling have produced a version of the theory that is implicit or arguably so in the causal claims embedded in some early symbolic interactionist labelling accounts. The theory of people as passive and as social products has developed several specific and worthwhile ways of understanding people as products of their current non-consensus situations through theories of role conflict, role strain and the pluralisation of world-views. Causal role theory has developed many good specific analyses to deal with aspects of the real world. However, these specific analyses have not been integrated into a role theory with an historical dimension.
