Overview of perspective

• Rules

  • Social groups with more power (agents of social control) often create and enforce societal rules.
  • These powerful groups label individuals based on conformity to these rules (e.g., adults setting school attendance rules for youth).
  • Labelling can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the labelled person adopts behaviors expected by others.
  • However, some individuals resist or reject the labels placed upon them, refuting the prophecy.
• What is Interactionism?

  • Interactionism is a sociological approach that focuses on individual and small-group interactions rather than large-scale structures like economy or institutions.
  • Smaller-scale society
• how does it differ from other sociological perspectives?

  • Marxism, Functionalism, and Feminism study society’s overall structure and class, gender, or function
  • Interactionism looks at how people create meaning in everyday social interactions
  • Smaller-scale society and individual interactions
• What is Labelling Theory?

  • explains how agents of social control have the power to assign labels to people, such as "deviant" or "criminal."
  • theory tries to explain why only some people and some acts are defined as deviant and criminal, while others, carrying out similar acts are not
  • it depends on who is observed and judged to be assigned a label
  • explains how being labeled can affect a person's behavior, sometimes causing them to act according to the label.
• Why are sociologists interested in labelling and crime/deviance?

  • Argues that most people commit deviant acts, but only some are caught and labeled.
  • Focuses on how society defines crime and deviance and how people respond, rather than on the acts themselves.
  • Labels can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, where individuals adopt behaviors that fit the label.
  • Powerful groups influence which behaviors or social groups are labeled as deviant.
  • Crime and deviance are seen as social constructs, shaped by reactions, not just by actions themselves.
• Official statistics

  •  police label certain groups in society
  • The official statistics would support this view
  • Black people are stopped and searched 10x more often than white people.
  • These powers allow police officers to act on stereotypes centered around racial profiling