Constitutive and mundane versions of labeling theory

Abstract

Labeling theory is currently in the throes of reconsideration (Gove, 1975; Rock, 1974), reformulation (Becker, 1974; Goode, 1975; Rains, 1975), and perhaps rebirth (Emerson & Messinger, 1977). This liminal period is crucial for it will determine what the "new" labeling theory will look like and indeed whether there will be a new labeling theory at all. If a new labeling theory is to emerge, conceptual midwives would do well to nourish the perspective with contents which make for a broader and more substantial base than previous formulations. Similarly, those who are apt to be affected by the fate and liveliness of labeling theory ought to contribute ideas which fortify rather than diminish the embryonic perspective. In this spirit I use an ethno? methodological eye to specify an anatomical weakness in labeling theory which ought not be transmitted to its intellectual progeny. In the maxim "the deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label (Becker, 1963, p. 9), an ethnomethodologist can recognize a nascent correspondence to his own programmatic research directives. The labeling theorist's maxim is not unlike the heuristic through which the ethnomethodologist is led to treat seemingly stable or given features of a social setting as the collective achievement of the setting's participants (Garfinkel, 1967). The transformation of "social facts" into processual accomplishments is a paradigmatic principle of ethno? methodological inquiry, and the labeling theorists seemed on the verge of exhibiting the ways in which "deviance" was not a given property of acts but rather the name of the process through which such designations were achieved. Yet the seeming affinity between the two perspectives has not led to an intellectual rapprochement of any magnitude. One reason for the failure, at least from an ethnomethodological point of view, is the fusion of lay and analytic perspectives in some of the leading statements of the labeling stance, particularly those of Howard Becker. The confusion is more than excusable in the considerable effort to achieve an