Propel

 What does to Propel mean?

to push or move something somewhere, often with a lot of force: a rocket propelled through space. The Kon-Tiki sailed across the Pacific Ocean propelled by wind power

6.3.3: Labeling Theory

 6.3.3: Labeling Theory

 Suppose for one undesirable moment that people think of you as a “whore,” a “pervert,” or a “cheat.” (Pick one.)

 What power such a reputation would have—over both how others would see you and how you would see yourself. 

How about if you became known as “very intelligent,” “truthful in everything,” or “honest to the core”? (Choose one.) 

You can see how this type of reputation would give people different expectations of your character and behavior—and how the label would also shape the way you see yourself.

 This is what labeling theory focuses on: the significance of labels (or reputations), how they help set us on paths that propel us into deviance or divert us away from it.

 Rejecting Labels: 

How People Neutralize Deviance Not many of us want to be called “whore,” “pervert,” or “cheat.” We resist negative labels, even lesser ones than these that others might try to pin on us. Did you know that some people are so successful at rejecting labels that even though they beat people up and vandalize property, they consider themselves to be conforming members of society? How do they do it?

Sociologists Gresham Sykes and David Matza (1957/1988) studied boys like this. They found that the boys used five techniques of neutralization to deflect society’s norms. Five Techniques of Neutralization In the following Applying Sociology to Your Life, consider how you use these five techniques of neutralization.

Applying Sociology to Your Life

 How Do You Use Techniques of Neutralization to Protect Your Self Concept?

 It is not only delinquents who try to neutralize the norms of mainstream society. 

Even people involved in mass killing use these techniques (Bryant et al. 2018).

 How about you?

Even though you are neither a delinquent nor a terrorist, you use these same techniques as part of your everyday life.

 As we look at these techniques one by one, I’ll try to find examples that you might have used at some time. 

They should sound familiar. Denial of responsibility: 

“I was so mad that I couldn’t help myself.” Denial of injury: “You can say what you want, but who really got hurt?”

 Denial of a victim: “Don’t you think she deserved that, after what she did?” Condemnation of the condemners:

 “Who are you to talk?” Appeal of higher loyalties: “I had to help my friends—wouldn’t you have done the same thing?”

 All of us attempt to neutralize the moral demands of society. Neutralization helps us to sleep at night.

How do you use techniques of neutralization to protect your self concept?

 Credit: PeopleImages/E+/Getty Images For Your Consideration →

 What other statements have you made (to others or to yourself) to help deflect the norms of society?

 → How do the techniques of neutralization that you use help protect your self concept? 

→ Can you think of any techniques of neutralization that people use other than these five? 173 

Embracing Labels: 

The Example of Outlaw Bikers Years ago, in a defensive statement, the American Motorcyclists’ Association said that 99 percent of motorcyclists are law abiding citizens, that only 1 percent are thugs and criminals.

The Outlaws, Hells Angels, and Warlocks then began to proudly display 1 percent on their uniforms (Stutzman 2014). 

Sociologist Mark Watson (1980/2006) did participant–observation with outlaw bikers. 

He rebuilt Harleys with them, hung around their bars and homes, and went on “runs” (trips) with them. 

He concluded that outlaw bikers see the world as “hostile, weak, and effeminate.”

 Holding the conventional world in contempt, gang members pride themselves on breaking its norms and getting in trouble, laughing at death, and treating women as lesser beings whose primary value is to provide them with services—especially sex.

 They take pleasure in shocking people by their appearance and behavior. 

They pride themselves in looking “dirty, mean, and generally undesirable.” 

Outlaw bikers also regard themselves as losers, a view that is woven into their unusual embrace of deviance. 

Although most of us resist attempts to label us as deviant, it is not only outlaw bikers who revel in a deviant identity. By their clothing, music, hairstyles, and body art, some teenagers make certain that no one misses their rejection of adult norms. Their status among fellow members of a subculture—within which they are almost obsessive conformists—is vastly more important than any status outside it. Gallery Embracing Deviance Image Viewer Preview Hens13e_UP Ch6 - Gallery: Embracing Deviance

 

While most people resist labels of deviance, some embrace them. In what different ways do these photos illustrate the embracement of deviance? Credit: 

Labels can Be Powerful To label a teenager a delinquent can trigger a process that leads to greater involvement in deviance (Dong and Krohn 2019). 

Because of this, judges sometimes use diversion: To avoid the label of delinquent, they divert youthful offenders away from the criminal justice system.

Instead of sending them to reform school or jail, they assign them to social workers and counselors. In the following Thinking Critically about Social Life, let’s consider how powerful labeling can be

Thinking Critically about Social Life The Saints and the Roughnecks: 

Labeling in Everyday Life As you recall from Chapter 4, the Saints and the Roughnecks were high school boys. 

Both groups were “constantly occupied with truancy, drinking, wild parties, petty theft, and vandalism.” Yet their teachers looked on the Saints as “headed for success” and the Roughnecks as “headed for failure.” By the time they finished high school, not one Saint had been arrested, while the Roughnecks had been in constant trouble with the police. 

Why did the members of the community perceive these boys so differently? 

Chambliss concluded that social class created this split vision. 

As symbolic interactionists emphasize, social class is like a lens that focuses our perceptions. 

The Saints came from respectable, middle-class families, while the Roughnecks were from less respectable, working-class families. These backgrounds led teachers and the authorities to expect good things from the Saints but trouble from the Roughnecks. 

And, like the rest of us, teachers and police saw what they expected to see.

The boys’ social class also affected their visibility. 

The Saints had automobiles, and they did their drinking and vandalism out of town. 

Without cars, the Roughnecks hung around their own street corners. 

There, their drinking and boisterous behavior drew the attention of police, confirming the negative impressions that the community already had of them. 

The boys’ social class also equipped them with distinct styles of interaction. 

When police or teachers questioned them, the Saints were apologetic. 

Their show of respect for authority elicited a positive reaction from teachers and police, allowing the Saints to escape school and legal problems.

 The Roughnecks, said Chambliss, were “almost the polar opposite.” When questioned, they were hostile. 

Even when these boys tried to assume a respectful attitude, everyone could see through it. As a result, the teachers and police let the Saints off with warnings, but they came down hard on the Roughnecks

Stereotypes, both positive and negative, help to form the perception and reaction of authorities. What stereotypes come to mind when you look at this photo? Credit: Grandriver/E+/Getty Images

Certainly, what happens in life is not determined by labels alone, but the Saints and the Roughnecks did live up to the labels that the community gave them. 

As you may recall, all but one of the Saints went on to college. 

One earned a Ph.D., one became a lawyer, one a doctor, and the others business managers. In contrast, only two of the Roughnecks went to college. 

They earned athletic scholarships and became coaches. 

The other Roughnecks did not fare so well.

 Two of them dropped out of high school, later became involved in separate killings, and were sent to prison.

 Of the final two, one became a local bookie, and no one knows the whereabouts of the other.

For Your Consideration 

→ Besides labels, what else could have been involved in the life outcomes of these boys? → In what areas of life do you see the power of labels?

How Do Labels Work? 

How labels work is complicated because they involve self-concepts and reactions that vary from one individual to another.

 To analyze this process would require a book. 

For our purposes, let’s just note that unlike its meaning in sociology, in everyday life the term deviant is emotionally charged with negative judgment. 

This label closes doors of opportunity. 

It can lock people out of conforming groups and push them into almost exclusive contact with people who have been similarly labeled.

Hearing from Students Understanding Deviance in Social Life Play Hearing from StudentsUnderstanding Deviance in Social Life

 In Sum Symbolic interactionists examine how people’s definitions of the situation underlie their deviating from or conforming to social norms. They focus on group membership (differential association), how people balance pressures to conform and to deviate (control theory), and the significance of people’s reputations (labeling theory).

6.3.2: Control Theory

 6.3.2: Control Theory 

Do you ever feel the urge to do something that you know you shouldn’t, something that would get you in trouble?

 Most of us fight temptations to break society’s norms.

 We find that we have to stifle things inside us—urges, hostilities, raunchy desires of various sorts.

And most of the time, we manage to keep ourselves out of trouble.

The basic question that control theory tries to answer is, With the desire to deviate so common, why don’t we all just “bust loose?"

 The Theory Sociologist Walter Reckless (1899–1988), who developed control theory, stressed that we have two control systems that work against our motivations to deviate.

 Our inner controls include our internalized morality—conscience, religious principles, ideas of right and wrong. Inner controls also include fears of punishment and the desire to be a “good” person (Reckless 1973; Leverso and Matsuedo 2019). Our outer controls consist of people—such as family, friends, and the police—who influence us not to deviate.

As sociologist Travis Hirschi (1969) pointed out, the stronger our bonds are with society, the more effective our inner controls are. These bonds are based on attachments (our affection and respect for people who conform to mainstream norms), commitments (having a stake in society that you don’t want to risk, such as your place in your family, being a college student, or having a job), involvements (participating in approved activities), and beliefs (convictions that certain actions are wrong).

The social control of deviance takes many forms. One of the most prominent is the actions of the police. Credit: Radius Images/Alamy Stock Photo This theory is really about self-control, said Hirschi. 

Where do we learn self-control? 

As you know, this happens during childhood, especially in the family when our parents supervise us and punish our deviant acts (Gottfredson 2011; Morawska et al. 2019). Sometimes they use shame to keep us in line.

 You probably had that finger shaken at you. I certainly recall it aimed at me. Do you think that more use of shaming, discussed in the following Down-to-Earth Sociology, could help strengthen people’s internal controls?

Down-to-Earth Sociology Shaming: Making a Comeback? 

In The Scarlet Letter, a book published in 1850 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, town officials forced Hester Prynne to wear a scarlet “A” sewn on her dress. The “A” stood for Adulteress. 

Wherever she went, Prynne had to wear this badge of shame—every day for the rest of her life. Shaming can be effective, especially when members of a primary group use it.

 In some communities, where the individual’s reputation was at stake, shaming was the centerpiece of the enforcement of norms. 

As with Hester Prynne, violators were marked as deviant and held up for all the world to see. As our society grew large and urban, the sense of community diminished, and shaming lost its effectiveness. Shaming is now starting to make a comeback (Rogers and Miller 2019).

In Pennsylvania, two women took a gift card from a girl at Walmart. They had to stand in front of the courthouse, each holding a sign that read, “I stole from a 9-year-old on her birthday! Don’t steal or this could happen to you.” (Reutter 2015) 

Online shaming sites have also appeared. Captured on cell phone cameras are bad drivers, older men who leer at teenaged girls, and people who don’t pick up their dog’s poop.

 In Spain, where one’s reputation with neighbors still matters, debt collectors dress in tuxedos and top hats and walk slowly to the debtor’s front door. The sight shames debtors into paying (Catan 2008). 

And as shown in the next photo, a judge in Cleveland, Ohio, ordered a woman who drove on a sidewalk in order to pass a school bus to hold a sign at the intersection reading, “Only an idiot would drive on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus” (Reutter 2015). 

​​​Sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1956) gave the name degredation ceremony to an extreme form of shaming. The individual is called to account before the group, witnesses denounce him or her, the offender is pronounced guilty, and the individual is stripped of his or her identity as a group member. In some courts-martial, officers who are found guilty stand at attention before their peers while others rip the insignia of rank from their uniforms. This ceremony screams that the individual is no longer a member of the group. Although Hester Prynne was not banished from the group physically, she was banished morally; her degradation ceremony proclaimed her a moral outcast from the community. The scarlet “A” marked her as “not one of us.”​

For doing what the sign says, this woman must humiliate herself by holding the sign. She is using the sign to help shield her identity. Credit: Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters For Your Consideration → How do you think law enforcement officials might use shaming to reduce law breaking? → How do you think school officials could use shaming? → Suppose that you were caught shoplifting at a store near where you live. Would you rather spend a week in jail with no one but your family knowing it or 6 hours a day for a week walking in front of the store you stole from wearing a placard that proclaims in bold red capital letters: “I AM A THIEF!” and in smaller letters: “I am sorry for stealing from this store and making you pay higher prices”? Why? 171 Your desire to avoid feeling shame is just one of your many internal controls. In the following Applying Sociology to Your Life, let’s see other ways that control theory might apply to your life.

Applying Sociology to Your Life “How Does Social Control Theory Apply to You?” Suppose that your friends invite you to go to a nightclub. When you get there, you notice that everyone seems unusually happy—almost giddy. They seem to be euphoric in their animated conversations and dancing. Your friends tell you that almost everyone here has taken the drug Ecstasy, and they invite you to take some with them. What do you do?

How would social control theory apply to you in such a situation? Credit: Robert Daly/Caiaimage/Getty Images Let’s not explore the question of whether taking Ecstasy in this setting is a deviant or a conforming act, an interesting topic by itself. Instead, think about the pushes and pulls you would feel in this situation. There would be pushes toward taking the drug: your friends, the setting, and perhaps your curiosity or even sense of adventure. Then there are your inner controls. You are intimately familiar with these—those inner voices of conscience and those internal recordings from your parents and from others. Your inner controls also include your fears: of being arrested, of hurting your reputation, and of the dangers of taking illegal drugs. Outer controls would also be significant in your decision—perhaps the uniformed security guard looking in your direction. For Your Consideration

So, what would you decide? Which do you think would be stronger in this situation: the pushes and pulls toward taking the drug or your inner and outer controls? It is you who can best weigh these forces because they differ with each of us. This little example puts you at the center of what control theory is all about.

6.3.1: Differential Association Theory

 6.3: The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective PT

 6.3.1: Differential Association Theory

 Going directly against the idea that biology or personality is the source of deviance, sociologists stress people’s experiences in groups. 

Differential association theory, which was developed by Edwin Sutherland in the 1920s, is an excellent example of this emphasis. 

The Theory Let’s start with an extreme example: boys and girls who join street gangs and boys and girls who join the Scouts. 

Immediately, you know that each learns different attitudes and behaviors concerning deviance and conformity. And this is just what the term differential association indicates—that from the different groups we associate with, we learn to deviate from or to conform to society’s norms (Sutherland 1924, 1947; Kobayashi 2019).

 Sutherland’s theory is more complicated than this, but he basically said that the different groups with which we associate (our “different(ial) association”) give us messages about conformity and deviance.

 We may receive mixed messages, but we end up with more of one kind of message than the other (an “excess of definitions,” as Sutherland put it).

 The end result is an imbalance—attitudes that tilt us in one direction or another. Consequently, we learn to either conform or to deviate. 

Families

You know how important your family has been in forming your views toward life, in laying down basic values, goals, and expectations, so it probably is obvious to you that the family makes a significant difference in whether people learn deviance or conformity. 

In your family, a form of involuntary differential association, you learned morality, ideas of right and wrong, and you have resulting feelings of guilt or shame when you violate that morality. In the extreme, families that are involved in crime tend to set their children on lawbreaking paths, while children reared in conforming families are much less likely to become involved in criminal activities (Salihu and Gholami 2018). 

Friends, Neighborhoods, and Subcultures Most people don’t know the term differential association, but they do know how it works. Most parents want to move out of “bad” neighborhoods because they know that if their kids have delinquent friends, they are likely to become delinquent, too. Sociological research also supports this common observation (Miller 1958; Vilalta and Fondevila 2019).

And how different neighborhoods are! In some neighborhoods, violence is so woven into the subculture that even a wrong glance can mean your death (“Why ya lookin’ at me?”) (Gardiner and Fox 2010). 

If the neighbors feel that someone who was killed deserved to be killed, they refuse to testify because “he got what was coming to him” (Kubrin and Weitzer 2003). 

In some neighborhoods/subcultures, killing can even be viewed as honorable: When sociologist Ruth Horowitz (1983, 2005), did participant observation in a lower-class Chicano neighborhood in Chicago, she discovered how the concept of “honor” propels(drive into particular situation) young men to deviance. The formula is simple. 

“A real man has honor. An insult is a threat to one’s honor. Therefore, not to stand up to someone is to be less than a real man.”

Now suppose you are a young man growing up in this neighborhood. 

You likely would do a fair amount of fighting, since you would interpret many things as attacks on your honor.

 You might even carry a knife or a gun, because words and fists wouldn’t always be sufficient. Along with members of your group, you would define fighting, knifing, and shooting quite differently from the way most people do. 

Suppose that you were a member of the Mafia. You would learn to intertwine ideas of manliness with killing.

 For you, to kill would be a measure of manhood. If a Mafia member were to seduce the capo’s wife or girlfriend, for example, you know how that seduction would slash at the capo’s manliness and honor.

 Without even thinking about it, you know that this offense, the breaking of norms, requires swift, violent retaliation. You would not be surprised when the offender’s body is found in the trunk of a car parked at the airport and that the man’s penis is stuffed in his mouth. You also would know that not all killings bring the same respect, for in the Mafia book of morality “the more awesome and potent the victim, the more worthy and meritorious the killer” (Arlacchi 1980).

From this example, you can again see the relativity of deviance. 

Killing is deviant in mainstream society, but for members of the Mafia, not to kill after certain of their norms are broken would be the deviant act.

Do you understand how the definitions of deviance that Mafia members use underlie their behavior? 

Although their definitions are markedly different from ours, the process is the same.

 Shown here is John Gotti when he was the head of New York's Gambino Mafia. 

Convicted for murder, Gotti died in prison. Credit: Splash/Newscom 

Differential Association in the Cyber Age 

The computer has brought major changes to social interaction. 

I have seen people lying on a beautiful Florida beach with friends, not interacting with those next to them, not swimming or playing in the sand, but lying there, each on a smartphone absorbed in communicating with someone far away.

 I’m sure you have seen people walking on the sidewalk, engrossed in smartphones, barely aware of the presence of passersby. With whom are they associating? Friends and family remain the focus of most of these communications. But the computer has also opened easy access to areas of life previously hidden and accessible only with difficulty. Sociologists have begun to study how this can impact people’s orientations to conformity. 

An example is how terrorist groups use the social media to motivate people to do violence (Borau and Wamba 2019). 

Differential association with the social media is new, and at this point everything about this intriguing topic is preliminary

Prison or Freedom? As was mentioned in Chapter 3, an issue that comes up over and over again in sociology is whether we are prisoners of socialization. 

Symbolic interactionists stress that we are not mere pawns in the hands of others. 

We are not destined to think and act as our associations and groups dictate.

 Rather, we help to produce our own orientations to life. 

By joining one group rather than another (differential association), for example, we help to shape the self. 

One college student may join a feminist group that is trying to change ideas about fraternities and rape, while another associates with women who shoplift on weekends.

 Their choices point them in different directions. The one who joins the feminist group may develop an even greater interest in producing social change, while the one who associates with shoplifters may become even more oriented toward criminal activities.

6.3 The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

 The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective 6.3 Apply the symbolic interactionist perspective to deviance by explaining differential association, control, and labeling. As we examine symbolic interactionism, it will become more evident why sociologists are not satisfied with explanations that are rooted in sociobiology or psychology. A basic principle of symbolic interactionism is that we are thinking beings who act according to how we interpret situations. Let’s consider how our membership in groups influences how we view life and, from there, our behavior.

6.2.3: Sociological Explanations

 6.2.3: Sociological Explanations 

In contrast with both sociobiologists and psychologists, sociologists search for factors outside the individual.

 They look for social influences that “recruit” people to break norms.

To account for why people commit crimes, for example, sociologists examine such external influences as socialization, membership in subcultures, and social class. 

Social class, a concept that we discuss in depth in Chapter 8, refers to people’s relative standing in terms of education, occupation, and especially income and wealth. 

To explain deviance, sociologists apply the three sociological perspectives—symbolic interactionism, functionalism, and conflict theory. Let’s compare these three explanations.

6.2.2: Psychological Explanations

 6.2.2: Psychological Explanations

 Psychologists focus on abnormalities within the individual. Instead of genes, they examine what are called personality disorders. Their supposition is that deviating individuals have deviating personalities (Euler et al. 2019) and that subconscious motives drive people to deviance. 

Researchers have never found a specific childhood experience to be invariably linked with deviance.

 For example, some children who had “bad toilet training,” “suffocating mothers,” or “emotionally aloof fathers” become embezzling bookkeepers—but others become good accountants

. Just as college students and police officers represent a variety of childhood experiences—both good and bad—so do deviants. 

Similarly, people with “suppressed anger” can become freeway snipers or military sharpshooters—or anything else.

 In short, there is no inevitable outcome of any childhood experience. Deviance is not associated with any particular personality.