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... ed modern life to which many react in what Merton terms an escapist or retreats manner. Aboriginals retreat from society by rejecting both the social goals and socially accepted means to achieve wealth. This type of attitude arises from the unequal opportunities available to Aboriginal people in society.
The lack of education and poverty has made it extremely difficult for them to achieve a minimal amount of wealth through legitimate means. Frustration and thwarted aspiration lead to the search for avenues of escape from a culturally induced and intolerable situation. Defeated the Aboriginals resort to the use and abuse of alcohol by choosing a different type of lifestyle in order to escape from society rules. The final adaptation, rebellion, occurs when the cultural goals and the legitimate means are rejected. Individuals create their own goals and their own means, by protest or revolutionary activity.
Here the person responds to his frustration by replacing the values of society with new ones. The basic point is that this person ceases to function as a member of the existing society and begins to live within an alternate culture (Criminological theories p 138). The main distinguishing characteristic of this school of thought is the proposition that how an individual who has broken some rule is viewed and treated by others who value the observance of that rule (Social Deviance in Australia p 4). Interactionist's', look at deviance from the point of view of both the definers and the deviant who gets defined: under what conditions do people become candidates for the status of deviant and how are they regarded by non-deviants? (Social Deviance in Australia p 5).
The key concepts represented in the interactionism perspective are, therefore, interaction (between rule makers, rule breakers and rule enforcers), social audience (a concept which can refer to the deviant himself, an actual group of friends or others who witness a rule breaking act, unknown ordinary members of the public or official agents of control whose job it is to search out and deal with violations of society's norms), power (the ability to impose one's definitions of morality and reality on others who do not share one's views), and social processes and career (the idea that a time dimension is involved in becoming deviant) (Social Deviance in Australia p 10). Deviance is not just a sudden single event, but the outcome of a process of interaction and negotiation between an actor and an audience over a period of time which takes place within a broader structural context. People may intentionally or unintentionally assist or hinder the deviant by opening up or closing off legitimate or illegitimate opportunities for them, thus altering their chances of giving up, persisting in or diversifying his deviant career (Social Deviance in Australia p 12). Howard Becker explores how and why certain acts were defined as deviant and why other such acts were not. He views deviants not as evil persons who engaged in wrong acts but as individuals who had a criminal status placed upon them by both the criminal justice system and the community at large. From this point of view, deviant acts thus themselves are not significant, it is the social reaction to them that are (Overview of labeling theories, Website). 'Deviance is not a quality of the acts the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender.
The deviant is one to whom the label has successfully been applied; deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label'. Labelling theories concentrate on the reaction of other people and the subsequent effects of those reactions which generate deviance. When it becomes known that a person has engaged in deviant acts, he or she is then segregated from society and thus labelled, 'whore', 'homosexual', 'alcoholic'. Becker found that this process of segregation creates 'outsiders', who are cast out from society, and then begin to associate with other individuals who have also been cast out. When more and more people begin to think of individuals as deviants, they respond to them as such, thus the deviant reacts to such a response by continuing to engage in the behaviour society now expects from them (Overview of labeling theories, Website). From the interactionism perspective the process of making rules, defining behaviour as good or bad, and applying label to those individuals who fail to conform to the rules are seen as 'normal' everyday occurrences (Social Deviance in Australia p 41).
Interactionism points to the way in which groups, communities and societies create and reinforce categories of deviance. Interactionist's' insist that what might be a crime or deviant act in one society may not be regarded in another culture or at another period of time (Study guide p 16). In the strongly patriarchal and male dominated societies of Ancient Greece and Rome, to be bi-sexual was considered to be normal. Centuries ago in European societies, individuals often engaged in 'forbidden acts' which were seen to be either habitual or discreet sins against 'nature' and God. Today, however, the social perception of homosexual behaviour has taken a undergone a major transformation due to medical practitioners and psychologists who have treated homosexuality as an unnatural perversion which needs to be treated and controlled (study guide p 27). Homosexuals are often blamed for a number of problems including child molestation, the decline of the nuclear family, and for the spread of AIDS.
Even in countries such as America where homosexual behaviour has been legalized, to reveal one's sexual preference is to invite ridicule by the use of such names as poofters, queers, fires or dykes (Study Guide p 28). Malawi, for example, with a population of 10 million is one of the poorest countries in the world. Each year thousands of people continue to die from Aids due to the lack of money to afford medication. In Malawi, Aids is considered a shameful disease. Malawians are extremely hypocritical about sex. Malawi is a religious country.
Open homosexuality is still regarded as a cultural taboo. Families go to church, listen to sermons, believe in God, chastity and the Ten Commandments. The Alastair Campbell of South Africa, Parks Mankahlana Chief press aid to Nelson Mandela and South African president Thabo Mbeik, died of Aids even though his widow, insisted that he died of 'chronic anaemia'. If someone dies of Aids, even the churches are quick to judge those infected (While the world looks away, the Guardian, 2000, Kevin Tools). Interactionism defines the ways in which the categorisation of deviance serves the purpose of social control, which is evident in Malawi with the stigma associated with Aids and homosexuality. Interactionism focuses on the values which society hold dear and also what occurs when people offend against them.
Howard Becker believes that the only common element deviants have is that they share the experience of being labelled. This leads him to point out that even though an individual may break social rules, and that the action be widely known in the community, this does not necessarily invoke the sanction of being labelled deviant or an 'outsider'. O...
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