Deviance without deviants: The temporal quality of patterned behavior 1

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Social scientists oriented toward labeling have argued that there are unfortunate consequences, in the form of self‐fulfilling prophesies or secondary deviance, of placing people into a deviant category and giving them the label associated with that grouping. This paper proposes that such a process of categorization is inaccurate because it transforms activity into identity. Identity suggests permanence, whereas activity suggests voluntarism, responsibility, and the labile nature of human conduct. Deviance without deviants would stress the impermanence of patterns of behavior, even though they be patterns, and the potential of all persons to go in all directions.

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit: