Labeling Theory and Social Construction of Deviance

A central move in twentieth-century sociology of deviance was to abandon the assumption that deviance is an inherent property of acts. On the classical view, stealing, drunkenness, or same-sex intimacy are deviant in themselves; the sociologist's task is to explain why some people commit such intrinsically wrong acts. Edwin Lemert and Howard Becker, building on the symbolic interactionist tradition of George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer, argued that this view inverted the actual sociology. Deviance, they insisted, is not a quality of the act but a quality of the reaction to the act — a social category applied by audiences with the power to apply it.

Howard S. Becker's Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963) stated the point starkly in a much-quoted passage: 'Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application of rules and sanctions to an "offender."' Becker's formulation moved sociological attention from the supposed pathology of the rule-breaker to the social machinery of rule-making and rule-enforcing.

Two empirical observations anchored this theoretical shift. First, the same act is treated as deviant in one context and unremarkable in another: recreational cannabis use, adult same-sex relationships, unmarried cohabitation, and interracial marriage have all moved across the deviant/non-deviant boundary in American life within living memory. Second, whether a given rule-breaker becomes officially labeled depends heavily on who they are. Becker's own fieldwork with jazz musicians in 1950s Chicago documented widespread cannabis use that rarely produced legal consequences for white middle-class musicians but routinely destroyed the lives of Black users arrested for the same conduct. The act was constant; the label was socially distributed.

Labeling theory thus reframed the research question. Instead of asking 'what causes people to commit deviant acts?' sociologists began to ask 'how is deviance defined, applied, and experienced?' The answers implicated legislatures, prosecutors, police, journalists, and moral reformers — all of the agents who build and enforce the categories through which some conduct becomes 'crime' and some persons become 'criminals.'