Transcript Slide 1
In Howard Becker’s analysis of labelling, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1964). Becker described how being negatively labelled for a minor act of primary deviance could lead to a change of selfimage, encouraging the individual to seek the company of other deviants and move on to more serious acts of secondary deviance. If more negative labelling followed, the perpetrator might eventually embark on a deviant career, viewing himself as having permanent master status as a deviant. What other labelling studies can you think of in relation to crime, deviance or education? Crime: Jock Young’s The Drug Takers Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics Deviance: Lemert on stuttering Rosenhan’s On being Sane in Insane Places Education: Hargreaves: Deviance in Classrooms Ball’s Beachside Comprehensive Rosenthal and Jacobson’s Pygmalion in the Classroom Interactionists are also interested in how people view particular groups or acts. For example teachers are said by some researchers to have different expectations of Asian and Afro-Caribbean students. They construct different images of them. Hence, though the meanings of the words are slightly different, interactionists are sometimes known as social constructionists. David Gillborn carried out observations over 2 years in a comprehensive school in which he discovered that Afro-Caribbean pupils were more likely to be reprimanded by teachers than Asian pupils whose behaviour was similar (Race, Ethnicity and Education, 1990). He gave a very full description of how hard a particular black student, Paul Dixon, tried not to get into trouble despite the negative attitude of some teachers. This study could be described in any of the following ways. Can you remember what they mean now and how they apply? Social action theory Grounded Ethnography Bottom up Interactionist Labelling Social constructionist Interpretive Gillborn’s study could also be described as middle range because it observed a small group of students and their teachers but drew conclusions about wider issues such as the examination results of whole ethnic groups and the effects of discrimination on job aspirations. In contrast micro sociologists are interested in ideas of the self, which could be regarded as work with a narrower focus. According to psychologist William James (1890) as well as the spiritual self that might be described as our underlying personality, we have a material self, the outward appearance we choose to present to the world as a result of our public roles and a social self, the concept which we have of ourselves as a result of other people’s reaction to us. Cooley (1922) aptly called the social self the ‘looking glass self’, referring to how, after a while, we begin to view ourselves as if others’ eyes are a mirror. G. H. Mead in 1934 described our awareness of how others see us. The ‘I’ is the spontaneous side of our personality which would like to act freely, but we are aware of the way ‘generalised others’ of our society view us and expect us to behave and this more inhibiting self concept seen through the eyes of others is termed the ‘me’. More recently Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) used language from the theatre to describe how people act social roles with appropriate costumes to present the official image of themselves when they are ‘in the front regions’ in the eyes of the public (on stage). In the ‘back regions’ (off stage) they are more likely to drop their guard. It can be very embarrassing if this inconsistency of identity comes to light. What examples of Goffman’s dramaturgical self can you think of? Think of ways people in different walks of life have to put on an act and perhaps an actual costume as part of their impression management. What examples of Goffman’s dramaturgical self can you think of? Think of ways people in different walks of life have to put on an act and perhaps an actual costume as part of their impression management. Goffman in his study Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity (1963) noted how people with visible stigmas such as disabilities soon learn that they are likely to be discriminated against by others, begin to see themselves through others’ eyes and take steps to avoid situations which draw attention to signs of their disability. We all potentially have stigmas which we strive to keep from public sight as we know how revelation would affect our social identity. Ethnomethodology, another type of social action approach, can certainly be described as micro sociology as it examines how people speak to each other and interact in everyday conversations and in relationships within their own homes. Ethnomethodology reveals that there are unspoken rules when people of a common culture chat to each other. For example we usually take turns and respond to what the other person has just said in an appropriate way. There are conventions such as not describing our ailments in detail if a comparative stranger greets us with ‘How are you?’ Harold Garfinkel (1967) conducted ‘breaching experiments’ in which participants were asked to break these conventions in order to reveal how much we take them for granted. Students were asked to go home and behave as if they were guests at a hotel run by their parents. The parents, not aware than an experiment was taking place, believed their children were suffering from some sort of mental illness or had taken drugs. Phenomenology is another branch of social action theory with a slightly different emphasis. It examines the social construction of particular phenomena and the results of this subjective way of seeing and talking about them (a discourse) on people’s attitudes and behaviour. Phenomenologist Jack Douglas studied concepts of suicide, suggesting that some people viewed it as a means of crying for help, some as a way to get revenge, others as a spiritual hope of reaching a better place. These different motivations for suicide meant that it could not be regarded as a single type of act, making nonsense of analysing patterns in suicide statistics in the hope of finding causes. How people view childhood, deviance, gender and religion have also been studied extensively by phenomenologists e.g. Aries’ Centuries of Childhood. To summarise: Structural approaches emphasise how people are influenced by major structural forces. Social action studies may describe how individuals operate in society as relatively free agents, creating identities for themselves. Anthony Giddens (1984) suggests that to take either view of our role in contemporary society is to oversimplify matters. We are all somewhat constrained by structural factors such as our gender, age and income but we are also free to some extent to take action to change our circumstances. Hence Giddens calls his theory structuration (a combination of the words structure and action). Discuss how parents’ choice of a school for their children and the children’s academic achievements there could be a result of both structural forces and agency. Other theorists have challenged the structuralist approach from a different point of view. Poststructuralists such as the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-84) claim that in postmodern society, people no longer see themselves primarily in terms of their class, gender, ethnicity but choose to forge their own identities and lifestyles by selecting from consumer products and ideas from the media.