Deviant Careers Research Articles

Shifts and Oscillations in Deviant Careers: The Case of Upper-Level Drug Dealers and Smugglers

Shifts and Oscillations in Deviant Careers: The Case of Upper-Level Drug Dealers and Smugglers

Careers in Deviance and Respectability: The Analogy's Limitations

By examining the analogy between deviant and respectable careers, this paper refines the concept of deviant career. Compared to respectable careers, especially occupational careers in formal organizations, deviant careers develop within an ambiguous and unstable structural context. Deviant careers do not move through established sequences of well-defined positions; career pathways do not always lead upward; career progress does not always bring increased rewards and security; and careers involve multiple, short-term involvements. The differences between deviant and respectable careers are consequential for deviants. Mobility is of uncertain direction; deviant careers feature individualized career shifts, rather than standard sequences of positions. Since deviant careers lack institutional supports, career progress requires special tactics to foster security and regularize rewards. This analysis demonstrates that deviance and respectability differ in important respects and the concept of deviant career must be used so as not to ignore these differences.

The Social Marketability of Self: Toward a New Theory of Social Deviance

Abstract Deviance theory has problems in accounting for. (a) the form deviance takes within and between social groups, and (b) why individuals continue or discontinue deviant careers and responses. This paper deals with these problems by providing a new conceptualization of social deviance. Essentially, the theory is a combination of two ideas. First, we can all be thought of as social commodities; our commodity value (marketability) is based on the qualities we possess that others desire. Second, we all desire certain identities (ideas of who we are or would like to be) validated by others through their actions. Deviance is viewed as a response to strains involving this marketability-identity nexus that is in a continuous process of change.

The Effects of Legal Processing on Delinquent Orientations

Labelling theorists have long argued that deviant careers and commitments are developed in the process of interaction between individuals and social control agents. A critical issue in this process concerns the effect of official labelling on an individual's subsequent orientation toward delinquency. This study attempts to explicate this process by exploring a number of variables which may intervene in this interaction. Our findings indicate that over a four year period, youth with police contact(s) show a significant increase in delinquent orientations compared with their peers who had no such contact. Such factors as the delinquency level of one's peer group and actual involvement in delinquent behavior as reported by the subjects do not appear to be as important as police contact in explaining the increased orientation toward delinquency. The data also suggest that certain sub-groups (white males, in particular) are more susceptible to the effects of labelling than others.

Stigma and Deviant Careers in School

Stigma and Deviant Careers in School

Stigma and Deviant Careers in School

Academic and non-academic grades of two groups of 7th, 8th, and 9th grade pupils were compared. One was a publically “deviant,” or delinquent, group; the other had no known history of delinquency. These comparisons were designed to test certain claims of the “labelling theory” approach to deviance. Findings were not entirely consistent with the theoretical claims. Further areas of research to assess these claims more rigorously are suggested.

Delabeling, Relabeling, and Alcoholics Anonymous

Labeling theory implicitly assumes that deviant careers are relatively permanent. Little systematic effort has been devoted to consideration of delabeling and relabeling processes. Alcoholics Anonymous appears to be a unique agency for carrying out successful delabeling and relabeling of stigmatized deviants. This success appears to be accounted for largely by A.A.'s use of the repentant role available in American society, constructing a “comeback” for “repentant” alcoholics based on their apparently intense adherence to middle-class ideals coupled with their repudiation of the “hedonistic underworld” to which they “traveled” as alcoholics. The repentant role gains further strength from the status-enhancing effects of the “skid-row image,” and the congruence of A.A. with American value orientations. A.A. promulgates an “allergy” concept of alcoholism which is parallel to mental health agencies' emphasis on the illness concept of behavior disorders. The allergy concept appears to play a relatively minor role in the process of public reacceptance.

Factorial dimensions of the characteristics of children in placement and their families.

It has been estimated that there were some 286,000 children living in foster family care and in institutions for dependent and neglected children in the United States during 1960. Of these, 72 per cent were residing with foster families and 28 per cent were in institutions.2 Unfortunately, many of these youngsters-very few of whom are orphans-will continue to live in limbo for many of their childhood years, neither returning to their own families nor being given the opportunity to sink roots with new families through adoption (4). The vulnerability of these children is suggested by recent studies which show an association between foster care experience and subsequent mental illness and deviant social careers (I, 7). Surprisingly, despite the large number of children involved, there has been relatively little research about the characteristics of children in placement and the families from which they originate. In the face of this void, Maas and Engler undertook a major descriptive study of children who