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Describe and evaluate 'labelling theory' to the study of crime and deviance Deviance has, over the years, provided great debate between the sociologists. Some sociologists would explain deviance by accepting without question definitions of deviance and concerning themselves with primary aetiology. Labelling theorists stress the point of seeing deviance from the viewpoint of the deviant individual. They claim that when a person becomes known as a deviant, and is ascribed deviant behaviour patterns, it is as much, if not more, to do with the way they have been labelled, as the deviant act they are said to have committed. Howard S. Becker, one of the earlier interaction theorists, claimed that, "social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders". According to Becker, after the individual has been labelled as deviant, they progress down the path of...

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