Deviance and Social Control 9781138499423, 9781351014632, 9781138482111, 9781351059039

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: BRITISH SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

Volume 18

DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL

Edited by PAUL ROCK AND MARY MCINTOSH

First published in 1974 by Tavistock Publications Limited This edition first published in 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1974 British Sociological Association All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

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Deviance and Social Control edited by PAUL ROCK and MARY McINTOSH

TAVISTOCK PUBLICATIONS

First published in 1974 by Tavistock Publications Limited ii New Fetter Lane, London £€4 Printed in Great Britain in 10 on 12 pt Plantin by William Clowes & Sons, Limited London, Beccles and Colchester SEN 422 74260 o (hardback) SBN 422 75620 2 (paperback) © The British Sociological Association 1974 This title is available in both hard- and paperback editions. The paperback edition is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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Contents PAUL ROCK and MARY MCINTOSH Preface

vii

STANLEY COHEN

Criminology and the Sociology of Deviance in Britain

i

HOWARD S. BECKER

Labelling Theory Reconsidered w. G. CARSON The Sociology of Crime and the Emergence of Criminal Laws

41

67

R O L A N D R O B E R T S O N and L A U R I E T A Y L O R

Problems in the Comparative Analysis of Deviance

91

MICHAEL P H I L L I P S O N and MAURICE ROCHE

Phenomenology, Sociology, and the Study of Deviance

125

M I K E HEPWORTH and MIKE F E A T H E R S T O N E

'Persons Believed Missing'

163

GERALD MARS

Dock Pilferage

209

JOCK YOUNG

Mass Media, Drugs, and Deviance

229

STUART HALL

Deviance, Politics, and the Media

261

SUBJECT INDEX

307

N A M E INDEX

317

Preface The sociology of deviance is relatively young. While it can claim a respectable intellectual ancestry in the Chicago School and in occasional passages of Durkheim and Marx, it has long been subject to isolating strains which attempt to transform it into a curiously bastardized and multi-disciplinary enterprise or into a correctional aid. The emancipation of the sociology from obfuscating eclecticism and instant practicality has been partly accomplished by a debate directed against the positivist and 'number-crunching' propensities of criminology proper. It is remarkable that the sociologists of deviance have felt it necessary to champion the sociologically commonplace assumption that deviance should be considered analytically as part of an ongoing social process sustained by groups and phenomena which are, in a sense, 'external' to itself. The novel focus on the structures of rule-making, rule-enforcing, and rule-transmitting has had revolutionary implications for the academically underdeveloped field of criminology. When the anomie tradition exhausted itself, there emerged a sociological framework which received unusually wide acceptance by people working in the area of deviance. In its pristine form this framework offered little in the way of new formal perspectives. Its originality lay in its uprooting orthodox and unexceptionable propositions from various areas and transplanting them. Conceptions which had been entirely unremarkable in the sociologies of work, education, and institutions, galvanized when applied to deviance. Ideas of career, secondary deviation, process and so on, transformed a discipline which had taken for granted the static, insulated, and immanent qualities of rule-breaking. The new approach stressed the utility of its own model of the sociology of knowledge; it re-introduced a political complexion into analyses of rule-breaking; it attended to problematic features of social and bureaucratic organization; and it employed the language of emergence. Above all, it normalized deviance by recognizing those features which formally underpin deviant and non-deviant events alike; and it treated deviance as if it

viii

Preface

were but one element in a complex network of interrelated occurrences. The outcome has been a coherent and unified approach which is only now beginning to break down into a set of divergent formulations under the impact of ethnomethodology, Marxism, and conflict theory. The natural history of this work has been distinguished by isolation from the main body of sociology. In its development of idiosyncratic forms, it has much to feed back into orthodox thought. Matza, Cicourel, Lemert, and others have produced accounts of social order which are immensely provocative. Yet, apart from occasional forays by critics such as Gouldner, their work has been largely unmarked by the larger sociological world. Theories of anomie and ecology have been considerably refined within the older structuralist tradition as well. Nevertheless, the boundary between orthodox sociology and the sociology of deviance has retained rigidity and impermeability. While it might be a matter of professional shame for a sociologist to be ignorant of the sociologies of religion, politics or development, a bland indifference is often displayed towards the analysis of social rule-breaking. The conservation of this boundary is unfortunate in its consequences for maturing the parent discipline. An understanding of social rules, social control, and the structures of moral order is integral to most sociological enquiry. If the sociology of deviance comes out of retreat, it will be exposed to influences emanating from other substantive concerns that will further improve it. The British Sociological Association's Conference might mark the official coming out of deviance. The nine papers contained in this volume are a selection from those which were presented at the annual conference of the Association which was held at London University in April 1971. Although the Conference membership was not as representative of the profession as it might have been, the presentation of deviance as a central area of inquiry could well lead to a new injection of ideas into an expanding field. We are indebted to the British Sociological Association and to members of the committee of the National Deviancy Conference for their help in planning the Conference programme. In particular, we should like to thank Miss Anne Dix who undertook a great deal of the work of preparation. Paul Rock and Mary Mclntosh

STANLEY COHEN

Criminology and the sociology of deviance in Britain A recent history and a current report A danger that faces the sociologist who indulges in the current vogue for 'sociologies of sociology' or 'self-reflexive sociology' is that he will end up playing what Goflfman (1959: 149) describes as the 'discrepant role' of go-between or mediator. In this role, he 'learns the secrets of each side and gives each side the true impression that he will keep its secrets; but he tends to give each side the false impression that he is more loyal to it than to the other.' The sociologist, as a member of many more than two teams, is continually doing this sort of thing: telling society all the sordid secrets of his discipline, its inconsistencies, dishonesties, evasiveness, and then telling his colleagues how unreasonable, reactionary, irrational this society is. He goes continually backwards and forwards to employers, students, the profession, making sincere noises about responsibility, truth, relevance, or whatever the appropriate demand is. Such manoeuvres can be exciting; but we live dangerously when we publish or give conference papers, because then we are always and inevitably in the simultaneous presence of all our teams. Goflfman suggests what may then happen: 'When a go-between operates in the actual presence of the two teams of which he is a member, we then obtain a wonderful display, not unlike a man desperately trying to play tenis with himself.' Papers of the 'current report' type are particularly prone to such displays, especially if the writer is, however insignificantly, part of what he is supposed to be reporting on. I have tried where possible to avoid these problems, but it would be disingenuous to claim that the paper is a detached report from a spectator with no team loyalties. Let me indicate three further but

2 Stanley Cohen more mundane limitations of this paper, which arise primarily from the brief that was given to me: (1) I have concentrated on the recent history of criminology and the sociology of deviance; this implies for criminology going back not much further than the immediate pre-war years and for sociology the post-war expansion of the subject in its academic settings. This does not mean that a proper chronology (which could be a rewarding sociological exercise) would not have to go much further back, at least, for example, to Booth, Rowntree, Mayhew, and others.1 (2) A full scale treatment of the subject would have to deal first with the ideas involved in all the disciplines under review, secondly with the institutional contexts in which they arose and were diffused, and thirdly with the wider ideological and structural contexts in which they manifested themselves. This three level distinction corresponds more or less to the one made by Horowitz (1968) between 'the inner life of sociology', 'the academic life of sociology' and 'the political life of sociology'. This paper deals more fully, if still selectively, with the second of these levels, about which Horowitz's remarks apply even more forcibly if one substitutes 'criminology' for 'sociology': 'Without an appreciation for the institutional setting for sociology the place after all where most sociologists make their living and legitimize their careers - the analysis of theory appears a formalistic exercise in the passage of novel ideas from great man to great man ... sociological history is embodied in the educational agencies and research bureaucracies from which sociologists issue forth their proclamations and projections.' (Horowitz 1969: Preface) Only at a few points do I try to make explicit the wider political contexts in which such education and research must be located. (3) I have chosen to deal with a number of aspects of the subject superficially, rather than concentrating on a few in any depth. Questions of values and methodology, for example, need a much more sustained treatment than is given here, nor can I pretend to do full justice to the individuals or institutions whose work is reviewed. The paper is divided into five sections. The first identifies a number of rudimentary signposts pointing to the directions in which the sociology of deviance seems currently to be going. Then a selective review of British criminology is presented which partly uses these

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signposts as evaluative criteria and partly analyses further related characteristics which acted as an impetus for the 'new' sociology of deviance to develop in this country. A third section deals briefly with the response of British sociology to the substance and theory of studying crime and deviance - again, only in so far as this response stimulated new developments in the sociology of deviance. The origins and impact of the National Deviancy Conference are then sketched and in the final section the traditional criminological institutions and the newer sociology of deviance are polarized and assessed. IDENTIFYING A SOCIOLOGY OF DEVIANCE

In this brief section, I would like to list four signposts by which most self-styled 'genuine' sociologists of deviance would probably identify the ways they are moving. To repeat, this is not meant to be a sociology-of-knowledge exercise on how this subject has evolved; such an exercise is in any event partly redundant after Matza's analysis of criminological positivism (1964) and his subsequent chronicle and recommendation (1969) of the naturalist perspective on deviance. On a more parochial level and for a general public, I have tried elsewhere (1971) to identify how what I called the 'sceptical' approach to deviance differs from more established positions. The term 'genuine' is, of course, tendentious and the distinction between 'new' and 'old' is also not particularly satisfactory. To make the polarizations on which the paper depends, I will refer simply to mainstream criminology and the sociology of deviance. In a somewhat religious vein, I use texts from four influential American contributors - Becker, Lemert, Matza, and Skolnick - to point to my four signposts: (i) Continuity with sociology It would seem absurd to insist on the self-evident, but one of the characteristic features of the study of crime, delinquency, and social problems has been its non-sociological or even anti-sociological nature. It is therefore the first and minimal criterion of the field that its connexions, if not continuity, with sociology should be recognized. Becker is justified in claiming that whatever 'labelling theory' is (and this claim is not of course peculiar to it) it fulfils this criterion:

4

Stanley Cohen ' "Labelling theory" so called, is a way of looking at deviance which actually represents a complete continuity with the rest of sociology. In other words, if a sociologist were going to study any topic, he would probably take such an approach, unless there were reasons not to. But there have been reasons not to approach criminology and the study of crime in the same way we might approach some more neutral topic. In studying most kinds of social organization, we will more likely understand that we have to study the actions of all the people involved in that organization... But somehow when sociologists studied crime, they didn't understand the problem that way. Instead they accepted the commonsense notion that there must be something wrong with criminals, otherwise they wouldn't act that way... The study of crime lost its connections with the mainstream of sociological development and became a very bizarre deformation of sociology.' (Becker, in Debro, 1970: 165-6)

(2) The significance of social control It is not necessary for a sociologist of deviance to accept all the implications of labelling theory, the societal reaction perspective or its variants. What is necessary is to recognize the problematic nature of social control. Lemert presents one perspective on this problem with typical restraint: c

... older sociology tended to rest heavily upon the idea that deviance leads to social control. I have come to believe that the reverse idea, i.e. that social control leads to deviance, is equally tenable and the potentially richer premise for studying deviance in modern society.' (Lemert 1967: v) There are many levels at which such a proposition can be approached, and sociologists might find any or all of these levels weak. But at least they would concede that the problem of deviance and control is a real one. (3) Appreciation I take from Matza the crucial contrast between 'correction' and 'appreciation' (Matza 1969: Chapter 2). The correctional stance takes for granted the objective of getting rid of the deviant phenomenon under question - and in so doing it 'systematically interferes with the

Criminology and the sociology of deviance in Britain

5

capacity to empathize and thus comprehend the subject of enquiry'. Mainstream criminology has refused to go beyond the correctional stance: a weak demand from sociologists is to question the applicability of this ideology; a stronger demand would be to accept appreciation and the subjective view as the only defensible one. This acceptance, as Matza indicates, is a 'fateful decision': it entails a commitment to render the phenomenon with fidelity and without violating its integrity. In a more fundamental way: 'It delivers the analyst into the arms of the subject who renders the phenomenon, and commits him, though not without regrets or qualifications, to the subject's definition of the situation. This does not mean that the analyst always concurs with the subject's definition of the situation; rather that his aim is to comprehend and to illuminate the subject's view and to interpret the world as it appears to him' (Matza 1969: 24, 25)2 (4) The political implications of studying deviance It follows from my second and third criteria and it should follow from the first that the very categories of crime and deviance and hence how one studies them, are problematic in specifically political ways. That is, the field has something to do with control, power, legitimacy, ideology. Skolnick points to two cases: 'it's becoming increasingly apparent to a whole generation of criminologists and sociologists, that it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between crime and political and moral dissent' (Skolnick, in Carte 1969: 115). Then, in connexion with drug legislation, if one asks questions such as how the political structure ever allowed laws like this to be passed, '... as a criminologist or sociologist you necessarily come into the field of political science' (117). Leaving aside disciplinary demarcations, the problem is the structural and political loci of definitions of deviance, a problem that has been accentuated rather than created by recent convergences between the 'ideological' and the 'criminal'.3 I have listed these four signposts as ones that would be recognized by the current generation of adherents to the sociology of deviance 'institution' but have been largely ignored or by-passed by mainstream criminology. I am not setting these up as articles of faith to be demanded by some new orthodoxy, still less as criteria for evaluating research, methodology or theory. They do however, singly or together,

6 Stanley Cohen serve to demarcate significantly one set of collective self-conceptions from another. The drift of my argument in the next section is that the history and, to a large extent, the current state of British criminology, are antithetical to the sociology of deviance as conceived above - as well as containing intrinsic limitations many of which are peculiarly British. It has not moved out of its paradigm, and even its uncomfortable recognition that 'where it's happening' is elsewhere cannot change the position much. It tries to graft on new bodies of thought, concepts, models, leaving the basic structure intact. Because this structure has an integrity of its own, a certain impressive weight and an umbrella-like quality which is able to embrace so much, I do not believe that our task as sociologists should be to reform it. To a large extent we will have to remain partly parasitic on it while improving our critique of it. Although the analogy is not exact, the relationship might be similar to that between the sociology of industry on one hand, and industrial relations on the other.4 MAINSTREAM BRITISH CRIMINOLOGY

In many respects, Charles Goring, author of The English Convict (1913) and perhaps the first recognized major figure in British criminology, epitomizes the whole tradition which followed him. It is not just that as an archetypal representative of positivism he survived in the spirit of criminology long after the substance of his contribution was repudiated (though this is so and what Matza says about positivist criminology in general is doubly true in Britain). I am not dealing with the 'inner life' of criminology in this way. My point is that Goring's contribution can be characterized in further ways that found themselves mirrored in the history of mainstream British criminology in the sixty years after his work.5 I have picked out four such characteristics, only the last of which relates to Matza's evaluation of positivism: these are (i) pragmatism, (2) criminology as interdisciplinary science, insulated from sociology:, (3) the correctional and reformative positions and (4) the positivist trap. Goring's approach was totally pragmatic. He belonged to no criminological school and, starting from his day to day experience as a prison doctor, simply set out more systematically to test the claims of Lombroso. (This pragmatism carried with it another quality, a certain amateur, whimsical spirit which at one stage I thought of

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tracing in later criminology; the parallels are not always clear though and in the case of, say, the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, hardly apply. Goring did combine an odd mixture of what was at the time a fairly sophisticated control group technique with a rather bizarre notion of where to select his controls. His choice of Scottish, Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates, University of London professors, inmates of a general hospital, British Royal Engineers and German army recruits did, though, enable him to indulge in the following: 'From a knowledge only of an undergraduate's cephalic measurement, a better judgement could be given as to whether he were studying at an English or Scottish University than a prediction could be made as to whether he would eventually become a university professor or a convicted felon.' When this tone appears in later British criminology, onefindsit - depending on aesthetic preferences - either disarming or wholly irritating.) Goring was not just pragmatic, but in his combination of disciplines - some background in philosophy, a training as a doctor, a bit of psychological speculation, a familiarity with statistical techniques - he exhibited one of the most characteristic features of British criminology, its inter-disciplinary approach, which as I will show was more than usually catholic and indiscriminate. And, although the same may be said for most national criminologies excluding the American, this mixture never really allowed for a sociological perspective. As Mannheim correctly states, this applied even more to Goring than Lombroso (Mannheim 1965: 227). Goring wrote: 'Crime is only to a trifling extent (if to any) the product of social inequalities of adverse environment and of other manifestations o f . . . the force of circumstances.' And, as a prison doctor, Goring's interests in doing research were fairly clear-cut: one had to find better ways of dealing with convicted criminals, presumably by treating them on the basis of their supposed psychological characteristics. Finally, Goring seemed caught in the positivist trap in a way which keeps recurring in British criminology. His statistical analysis disproved Lombroso, but instead of stopping at this point, he went on to develop a causal account as predictable and as misleading as Lombroso's and pointing in a specifically clinical direction. I will try to show that later British criminologists, even with an intellectual awareness which Goring could never have had of the paradoxes of this model, fall into the same trap. I have chosen these four characteristics to organize my review of

8 Stanley Cohen British criminology because they are the ones which provide the main impetus for the new sociology of deviance to take root in the middle 19608. The main institutions under review are: (i) the Home Office and particularly the Home Office Research Unit, set up in 1957 to carry out a long term research programme, mainly concerned with the treatment of offenders and to act as 'a centre of discussion with universities and other interested organizations'; (2) the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency (ISTD), set up in 1931, and crucial in that it directly produced the British Society of Criminology (BSC) and the only criminological journal in the country, the British Journal of Criminology (BJG)', (3) the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge, set up under Home Office sponsorship in 1958 and (4) the teaching of criminology in London, particularly the work of Hermann Mannheim. These institutions and individuals by no means represent a monolithic establishment, and there are many cross links, for example, the Cambridge Institute has close links with the Home Office, but not with the British Journal of Criminology group. (i) Pragmatism The pragmatic approach has become an indisputable feature of British criminology. This is not a characterization made in retrospect by current observers (see, for example, Carson and Wiles, 1971: 7) but one that has been proudly proclaimed by the leading representatives of the indigenous British criminological tradition. Thus Radzinowicz (1966) after surveying what he calls the 'liberal' and 'deterministic' theories of crime, ends up by endorsing what he himself terms the 'pragmatic position'. This he sees as a 'new realism': there is no single purpose of punishment, there is no single causal theory of crime, therefore any or all perspectives, from Burt to Merton, have something to recommend themselves and in this 'lies the strength and promise of the pragmatic position' (1966: 128). The pragmatic frame of reference is the one that shapes the few general textbook-type works produced by British criminologists (e.g. Walker 1965; Jones 1965; Mannheim 1965; West 1967) as well as the organization of research and teaching. One finds an overall distrust for theory or for some master conception into which various subjects can be fitted. The impediments to a theoretical criminology are easier to find than account for. One major reason has been alluded to at several

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points by Radzinowicz (1961, 1966): that the fact that the whole idea of 'schools' of criminal law and criminology in the Continental sense is quite alien to the British legal tradition. On the Continent, major schools of criminal law - liberal, classical determinist, positivist, social defence - flourished for decades, partly because of the powerful position of professors of criminal law in the legal system. In England such positions of influence were the prerogative of the judiciary, the makers and interpreters of the law, 'to them the formulation of an all-embracing doctrine and the emergence of a school was something quite alien' (Radzinowicz 1966: 21). Criminology had to take root in this pragmatic legal tradition. In making the contrast with America, the significant point is that although an autonomous criminology, as in Britain, also developed, it was from the outset located among the social sciences (in the broadest sense). As Radinowicz (1961: 119) among others has suggested, this location was partly due to the American ideology of optimism in which crime could be seen as the product of remediable social forces. There has also been something different about American legal training: quite unlike Britain, lawyers have for a long time been exposed to the social sciences in their undergraduate training. The strong American legal-sociological tradition has been virtually absent in Britain. There was little opportunity then for either a legally or a sociologically based theoretical criminology to emerge. In a wider sense, the pragmatic tradition is part of the national culture. I am referring not just to the amateur, muddling-along air which foreigners detect about British life but, for example, to the Fabian type of pragmatism in which disciplines such as criminology with obvious practical implications are located. The attitude behind many enterprises in such fields has been more or less one of rinding out the facts, and letting the well-meaning chaps (say, in the Home Office) make the obvious inferences and do the rest. Contrasted to America, the collection of information for policy making is very different; compare say the composition of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, with its impressive range of experts, the professionalism with which it could produce about fifteen massively documented volumes in less than two years, to the typical Royal Commission with its motley collection of peers, bishops, judges, very part-time experts, and 'informed laymen', and its unbelievably slow rate of productivity.6

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Although I do not accept the drift of much of his argument, all these points need to be put into a broader context such as the one suggested by Anderson (1968). His argument is that there is not just an absence of a tradition of revolutionary thought in Britain, but an absence of major intellectual traditions at all. Thus the weakness of sociology (which he overstates) is diagnosed in terms of its failure to produce any classical tradition and its historical dependence on the charity, social work, and Fabian institutions. Significantly, from the point of this paper, Anderson finds one reason for the absence of a separate intelligentsia in the factor I have already mentioned - the absence of Roman Law in England and the blocking of an intelligentsia based on legal faculties, teaching abstract principles of jurisprudence (Anderson 1968: 15). Another - somewhat less secure - plank of his argument is the influence of European emigres (Popper, Wittgenstein, Berlin, Eysenck, et a?.). These were *... intellectuals with an elective affinity to English modes of thought and political outlook' who found British empiricism and conservatism - the way it shunned theories and systems even in its rejection of them - quite congenial (18-19). It is (aesthetically at least) appealing to apply much of this analysis to British criminology. To give a specific parallel, the careers of the major founders of contemporary British criminology - Mannheim, Radzinowicz, Griinhut - are not too far removed from those of the emigres Anderson considers. Mannheim, for example, after a distinguished judicial career in Germany, came to London in 1934, where - according to all his biographers and ex-students - his natural empiricism and tendency to relate his teaching to practical work in the courts found an affinity in 'the ideas of English social reformers, the work of the probation service and expedients in the after care of prisoners' (Croft 1965: xvi).7 To point to this pragmatic frame of mind does not, of course, detract from the contributions, for example in teaching or reform, of figures such as these - indeed, this might be their strength - but it does provide a necessary lens through which to view their work. (2) The interdisciplinary conception Pragmatism and empiricism are perspectives which often- go hand in hand with the interdisciplinary ideology. Criminology cannot, I believe, be other than interdisciplinary in the sense that it has to draw on the findings of what Morris (1966: 62) refers to as the 'strange

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motley of investigators who have at some time or another borne the title of criminologist' - doctors, lawyers, statisticians, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and others more bizarre than these. It would be a waste of time then to labour this point, if not for two additional turns this feature has taken in British criminology - the first has been to make a religion out of the necessity of drawing on different disciplines and the second has been the playing down of the sociological contribution to this pantheon, pushing criminology either in the legalistic direction or (more frequently and more unfortunately) towards the clinical/psychological/forensic ideology. Again, let me start with an assertion from Radzinowicz (1961: 177) to the effect that progress in criminology can only be made by the interdisciplinary approach: 'a psychiatrist, a social psychologist, a penologist, a lawyer, a statistician joining together on a combined research operation'. In the British context, the fact that a sociologist is not even mentioned is predictable. By the end of the 19508 the major figures in teaching and research were Radzinowicz (legal), Griinhut (legal), Mannheim (legal training and later psychiatric and especially sociological interest). The major institutions directly or marginally contributing - the Maudsley Hospital, the Tavistock Institute, the ISTD, the BSC, and the BJC - heavily weighted the field towards psychology and psychiatry. This weighting remained despite the later contribution by sociologists such as Mays, Morris, and later Downes. This multidisciplinary image was reflected at a number of levels. It was part of the criminologist's presentation of self to the public.8 It could be found in criminological conferences in textbooks and in lecture courses. Thus in Walker's (1965) text, out of fifty-seven pages devoted to the topic of explaining crime, seven are given to 'constitutional theories', fifteen to 'mental subnormality and illness', twenty to psychological theories of 'maladjustment, the normal offender, and psychopathy' and fifteen to 'environmental theories' (including 'economic theories', 'topographical aspects' and 'the human environment'). Mannheim's work is more difficult to characterize in this way because, although he clearly sees criminology as multi-disciplinary and his own training was legal,9 he made significant sociological contributions in such books as Social Aspects of Crime in England between the Wars and his treatment of most sociological theories (with exceptions such as differential association) is as comprehensive as the rest of his 1965 text.

12

Stanley Cohen A very clear statement in favour of criminology remaining exceptionally wide in scope was provided by another leading British criminologist, Gibbens, at a recent Council of Europe Criminological Conference: '... most of the important ideas and research hypotheses in criminology still come from the parent disciplines of law, social science, psychology and psychiatry... major contributions to criminology continue to come from studies which are not originally designed to come within its scope. Geneticists stumbled upon the significance of the XYY syndrome, the Danish twin study was a by-product of medical study, the English study of a sample of the population born on the same day was originally designed to study midwifery and infant mortality...' (Gibbens 1970: 5) Other institutions reveal much the same, with an even more striking weighting towards the legal or clinical disciplines. The twelve research reports published to date by the Home Office Research Unit contain mainly topics of a statistical, social administrative type, together with highly technical psychological research (e.g. on the Hewitt and Jenkins hypothesis, and the use of the Jesness Inventory). The character of British criminology is seen very distinctively in the ISTD, BSC, BfC axis. The Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency, set up in 1931, was the only one of its kind until the establishment of the Cambridge Institute. Its original objects included 'to initiate and promote scientific research into the causes and prevention of crime', to provide educational and training facilities and 'to establish observation centres or other auxiliary services for the study and treatment of delinquency'. The essentially clinical nature of its approach was not altogether removed after its 'Psychopathic Clinic' was taken over by the National Health Service in 1948 and the phrase 'Scientific Treatment' was changed to 'Study and Treatment'. Thus in its 1957-8 Annual Report the case against handling crime from the penal end of the system and just using outside scientific information was stated and the case made for moving from the outside towards 'extending the principle of treating offences whenever possible as behaviour disorders calling for appropriate psycho-social measures' (p. 4). Clinical positivism was stressed as the scientific ideal; in the following year's Report the phrase '... the root problem of delinquency, viz. the condition of "pre-delinquency"' (p. 3) occurred.

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The possibility of predicting delinquency - an obsession in British criminology - was always stressed and the 1960-1 Report complained that there were still resistances to dealing with crime as a 'behaviour problem with characteristic antecedents ... Judging by comparative study of other forms of mental disorder, it is in the highest degree probable that in all cases the existence of a "predelinquent" stage can be established...' (p. 3, emphasis mine). It is of course true that the ISTD was uniquely dominated by the psychiatrists (Edward Glover and Emmanuel Miller being the most notable) but Mannheim was a leading member from the outset and a scrutiny of the Annual Reports from 1950 onwards shows that virtually every leading British criminologist (with the exception of Radzinowicz) held some office in it. The parent organization had considerable import through its educational activities, but also through its offshoots, the BJC, started in July 1950 as the British Journal of Delinquency, with Glover, Miller, and Mannheim as its editors10 (the name was changed in July 1960), and the BSC, which started off life within the ISTD in 1953 as the Scientific Group for the Discussion of Delinquency Problems. The contents of the BJC over its twenty years have fairly accurately reflected the concerns of the discipline. Considerable attention is given to penology, to abnormal psychology, to delinquency and institutions for delinquents, and there is consistent interest in matters of legal and penal reform. A detailed classification of the contents (Wright 1970) contains the following frequencies of articles etc. appearing between 1950 and 1970: penology (including institutions, probation, capital punishment) 205; criminology (including delinquency classification, special types of offences) 379; social work 28; law 33; administration of justice 67; psychology 24; abnormal psychology 80; psychiatry 37; social sciences (including 'social factors', education) 79. This classification does not reveal disciplinary origins (for example, under criminology and penology) very clearly, nor does it convey the characteristic flavour of the journal. The attention given to very practical issues and the reprinting of addresses such as those given by a Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis (April 1968) clearly moves the journal away from a strictly academic format. And despite what to an outsider might look as a fair proportion of space given to clinical material, one of the editors recently complained: 'Where, we may ask, are the brave, resourceful, and imaginative clinical papers of yesterday?' (Glover 1970: 315)

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Stanley Cohen The BSC reveals a more or less similar pattern. The make-up of its original Organizing Committee in 1961 (the year after it changed its name) included one representative each from the following: biology; criminal law and justice; organic medicine; psychiatry; psychoanalysis; psychology; social work; criminology; statistics; treatment of offenders; education and ethics, and moral philosophy. (Currently the Committee is made up of four representatives each from criminal law and the administration of justice; criminological medicine and psychology; treatment of offenders; criminological treatment of research; 'other persons'.) One of its first meetings (in November 1953) was addressed by the two physiological psychologists, while its seventieth meeting (in February 1971) was addressed by a forensic psychiatrist on the subject of epileptics in prison. Out of 96 guest speakers at its meetings (some conferences or meetings had more than one speaker), there were 16 sociological criminologists, 16 psychologists (7 from the Home Office Research Unit, 2 from prisons), 12 psychiatrists, 12 lawyers, 5 Home Office administrators, 5 'criminologists', 4 Home Office statisticians, 6 social workers, 6 social administrators, 5 police officers, and a miscellaneous group of 10 including historians, geneticists, prison officers, prison doctors, and prison governors. This rapid analysis of the disciplinary content and preoccupations in British criminology is not meant to give the impression that sociologists were somehow wilfully excluded due to some conspiracy. The imbalance is there partly because sociological criminology has not demonstrated its practical pay-off, but more simply, in Britain, because there was just so little of it available. As the editors of a recent collection on the sociology of crime and delinquency point out: 'Our reliance upon theories developed in other countries and particularly the United States is sometimes so pronounced in the teaching context, that students gain the impression of an almost complete hiatus in British research. Erroneous as such an impression may be the fact remains that the heavy traffic in ideas about delinquency has tended to flow almost exclusively in one direction.' (Carson and Wiles 1971: 48) As I will show in the next section, the impression of a hiatus in sociological attention on crime is not all that erroneous. With the notable exceptions of Morris's ecological study and its predecessors (Mays, Sprott, Jephcott, Carter, and Kerr) the Morrises' sociological

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studies of prison, and some work on sentencing, there was virtually nothing before the post-1965 wave following Downes' book (Hargreaves, Willmott and others). Two of the most frequently cited works of sociological relevance before the 19608 - Sainsbury's study of the ecological patterns of suicide in London and Scott's description of delinquent gangs - were in fact both done by psychiatrists. An index of the paucity of indigenous sociology - and of the fact that one does not have to invoke conspiracy theories - is that the Institute of Criminology has often 'imported' leading American sociological criminologists such as Cressey and Wolfgang. While it is difficult altogether to blame British sociology for paying so little attention to indigenous sociology, it cannot be exonerated easily from two further charges: a certain parochialism which wilfully excluded American sociology of crime and deviance for so long and, then, a clear misunderstanding as to what sociology is about. Mannheim is partly guilty on the first charge, with his apparent policy of selecting for his textbook American work only when British or European work could not be found; while the work of West is a clear example on both these counts. Curious notions about sociology being concerned with 'area' or 'environmental' factors appear, sociology is identified with statistics, and concepts such as anomie, subculture, or deprivation are distorted.11 In summary, the off-putting features of the interdisciplinary approach are the rigidity with which it is defended, the way it is skewed to exclude sociology and lean in the clinical direction, its parochialism, and its misunderstanding of sociology. These features may be illustrated by the following anecdote: during a visit two years ago David Matza was introduced to a body of British criminologists by a leading British criminologist, who said that although he hadn't actually read any of Professor Matza's work, he'd been told it was very interesting... (3) Correction, reform, and the problem of values British criminology has always been tied to two interests: the first, the administrative interest of making the correctional system more efficient and the second the humanitarian interest in reforming the system. These interests are not, of course, necessarily incompatible especially in their recent appearance under the psychiatric ideology which

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rationalizes the treatment approach as being both more efficient and more humane. The problems these interests raise are complex and although it is easy enough to find instances in British criminology where investigators have compromised themselves by their institutional connexions or their open espousal of correctional interests, the charge against criminology is that it has simply not even realized the complexity of the issue. Correctional aims are apparently taken for granted: 'Criminology, in its narrow sense, is concerned with the study of the phenomenon of crime and of the factors or circumstances... which may have an influence on or be associated with criminal behaviour and the state of crime in general. But this does not and should not exhaust the whole subject matter of criminology. There remains the vitally important problem of combating crime... To rob it of this practical function, is to divorce criminology from reality and render it sterile.' (Radzinowicz 1961: 168) Or attempts are made to divorce criminology from such 'practical functions'. Walker, for example, states that 'Perhaps the hardest impression to eradicate is that the criminologist is a penal reformer' and concedes that although his findings might form the basis of reform campaigns such campaigns are humanitarian not scientific in nature: 'It is no more his [the criminologist's] function to attack or defend the death penalty than it is the function of the political scientist to take part in an election campaign. The confusion, however, between criminologists and penal reformers has been encouraged by criminologists themselves, many of whom have also been penal reformers. Strictly speaking, penal reform is a spare time occupation for criminologists just as canvassing for votes would be for political scientists. The difference is that the criminologists' spare time occupation is more likely to take this form, and when it does so it is more likely to interfere with what should be purely criminological thoughts.' (Walker 1965: preface) It is to Walker's credit that he states his resolution of the problem so clearly. In contrast, the major institutions of British criminology have apparently quite unselfconsciously accepted the goals of social control taking up, within these, various correctional or reformative stances. Contributions are made by those (like Goring) who are part of the system, those who are sponsored by the system (e.g. doing

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research financed by the Home Office) or by the numerous institutions part of whose policy is to encourage cooperation between so-called 'scientific' and so called 'practical' objectives. These styles appear in various guises in the ISTD, the BJC, the BSC, and the Cambridge Institute. Thus, for example, when the BSC held a conference four years ago on 'The Role of the Prison Officer' the speakers were the Secretary of the Prison Officers Association, a Chief Prison Officer, the Principal of the Officers Training School, a prison psychiatrist, and the Assistant Secretary of State in the Home Office Prison Department. When such styles appear in the work of bodies as the Cambridge Institute, they are more sophisticated and it would be insulting to suggest that the individuals involved in such research or communication are unaware of potential tensions and conflicts of interests. But I would repeat that if any such self awareness is there, it has not - with few exceptions - been manifested in any public way. Now, while Walker's solution is clear, it is both over-simplified and untenable. One cannot believe that what has been problematic to social scientists for generations - for Weber, Myrdal, and Mills no less than in the special deviancy context for Becker, Polsky, Gouldner, and others - can be resolved by asserting that there are such things as 'purely criminological thoughts'. The constraints that operate in the very selection of certain subjects as worthy of research, the methods one chooses, the way one is funded and sponsored, how one's results will be used... these and numerous other problems cannot be brushed under the carpet. Unless and until the private doubts that most criminologists express - what to do, for example, if the Home Office refuses to let one's research assistant look at records because he is a security risk - are made public, these criminologists should not complain that the outsider believes that they do not have these doubts. This is not, of course, a problem peculiar to criminology. There are many parallels, for example, in contemporary research on race relations, where there is the continual conflict between accepting official goals, taking a reformist position, siding with particular interest groups, or showing an allegiance to some professional ethic. In studying crime and deviance, where what Becker (1967) terms the hierarchies of credibility and morality are so much taken for granted, the problems are heightened. It is not enough for the Social Science Research Council to comment as follows on its policy in regard to criminological research:

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Stanley Cohen 'the great grant-giving foundations do not appear to have any place in the present quasi-official arrangements between the Home Office, the Cambridge Institute and the Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders and this again might well be a matter for consideration by the SSRC which could well accept responsibility for co-ordination in the allocation of funds and maintain a balance between the interests involved.' (SSRC 1968) It must be made clear just whose 'interests' are being 'balanced'.

(4) The positivist trap The heavy dominance of clinical positivism within the interdisciplinary rubric of British criminology is one of many indices that support my contention that the basic model which shaped Goring's thought has not really been transcended. It should be made clear that this is not an objection to explanations at the psychological level per se (unlike most of my sociological colleagues, I believe that such objections are theoretically indefensible) but to demonistic psychology of the Eysenck type. As this is not the level of analysis the paper is primarily concerned with, let me just give two brief examples of the trap. The first surrounds the concept of determinism, which has been so controversial an issue in legal, psychiatric and recently sociological discussions of crime. Jones (1965: 70), a sociological criminologist, in discussing the implications of the treatment model in imputing criminal responsibility, cites a distinction made by a philosopher between the kleptomaniac and the thief: the former is not responsible for his behaviour while the latter is to be treated as a rational person. 'But', Jones comments, 'current psychological and sociological research gives us reason to question the validity of such a distinction.' Good, one thinks, even if he is not referring to the general problem about responsibility as Matza does, he is going to make the specific point that Cressey makes in his well-known paper (1954, revised 1962) that so-called compulsive crimes such as kleptomania in fact lack the characteristics imputed to them by psychiatrists, and if re-examined in terms of sociological theories of motivation, identification, roleplaying etc. are similar to other motivated, rational behaviour. But no, Jones is making exactly the opposite point, the trap has been well laid: 'The ability to resist temptation, for example, depends upon a person's character structure and this in turn arises out of personal

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relationships within the family during earliest years of life - experience over which the individual has no control.' My other example is less specific and will serve to epitomize - as much as Goring did - all the characteristics of mainstream British criminology I have highlighted in this review. It is a recent book by West (1969), the first Report (after seven years work) of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. It is one of the largest single pieces of criminological research ever carried out in this country, financed by the Home Office (£70,000 to March 1968, now under annual review, the project still having some years to go) and with an eminent Consultative and Advisory Committee (including only two out of eleven with more or less sociological backgrounds). In his preface to this report, Radzinowicz hails the research as being '... in the great tradition of explorations of the springs of delinquency. Although on a smaller scale it will ultimately claim a place alongside such classics as the work of Robins, the Gluecks and the McCords. All too little of this sort has been attempted in England' (p. vii). This assertion is correct: in methodology and conception this research goes no further than the extraordinary jumble of eclectic positivism that rendered the work of the Gluecks such an anachronism. Sociologists cannot be expected to be very impressed with a study which states that although it is more concerned with individual characteristics, it is also interested in the 'demonstration' of the extent to which troublesome boys and other family problems are concentrated among the very poorest: 'It may be that the next stage of the inquiry will go some way to answering the question of whether these problems spring from poverty or whether poverty itself merely reflects an underlying individual inadequacy' [sic] (p. vii). The design involves an eight-year follow-up of some 400 boys selected at the age of eight or nine. Did some overall conception inform the selection of dimensions to be studied? West answers: 'The aim was to collect information on a large number of items, all of them said to have relevance to the development of juvenile delinquency and to see in the event which items or which combination of items would prove to be the clearest determinants of future delinquency' (p. 2). Social factors such as television were excluded because these were too 'universal' and of course - as the Gluecks also argued neighbourhood influences could be excluded because these were constant. Besides such indices as teachers' ratings and psychological

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dimensions of the family, items used includes ones such as height, weight, body-type and various tests of psychomotor habits.12 The preliminary findings suggest that the social level of the family was the most important single factor in discriminating poorly behaved boys from the rest. From an actuarial point of view, the most efficient prediction might be based on a few easily registered and objective social facts. The index 'family income inadequate' was 'remarkably effective' in identifying the 'problem prone minority'. If this is so (and of course such a finding was the basis of Toby's devastating critique of the Gluecks six years ago) then what is the point of a study like this? Why use the opportunities provided by a long scale longitudinal design in such a way? Leaving aside any theoretical payoff (which the researchers might want to say does not concern them) the practical advantages of such individualistic prediction studies - as numerous critics have shown - are highly dubious. If this is the sort of research which is to command prestige and credibility in the future, then British criminology cannot be said to have advanced a great deal and, more particularly, it cannot be expected to command much positive sociological interest. Let me conclude this review with three important footnotes, without which the point of the exercise could be misunderstood: (i) These four distinguishing features were chosen not only because they were in some ways characteristic, but because they were ones which were reacted against by the new sociology of deviance. In only the last of these can the reaction be said to be a partial resolution. Pragmatism - if not in the form it takes in British criminology - is partially unavoidable and in some instances can be recommended. Then, it is difficult to see criminology not being inter-disciplinary although again the particular form it has taken (the advocacy of 'teamwork' for example) is intellectually facile and when it has no theoretical edifice to support it, it is extraordinarily vulnerable to attack from faddishness, not to say charlatanism. The advances of the XYY 'explanation',13 Eysenck's excursions into criminology, and the onslaught which is just gathering momentum, the ethology kick, do not give one much faith in the subject's integrity. Finally, while sociologists have seemed more aware - at times perhaps obsessed by the value problem, they can hardly have said to have solved it. Self-images stressing styles such as appreciating, muckraking, cynically commenting, reflecting, might all have their aesthetic appeals, but they do not constitute solutions to doing research, say, on prisons. Such

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research cannot but resemble that by orthodox criminologists in being reformist, in laying itself open to be used for other ends, in having to compromise itself at various points. (2) Talking about 'mainstream' criminology has meant leaving out those few attempts which cannot be characterized by at least all of these features. In sociological criminology the work, say, of Morris and Downes has already been mentioned and the same applies in psychology to that of Trasler: although his 'explanation of criminality5 has severe limitations, it at least constitutes a theory. The work of Tony Parker, too often disparaged as being 'just a few good stories', must also be singled out. (3) There are a number of current developments in the sociology of law, which already has one base in the contributions by Radzinowicz (in his history of the English criminal law) and Walker (in his histories of the use of psychiatric concepts in the legal system). This field has received recent theoretical interest and empirical contributions such as those from the Legal Research Unit at Bedford College, recent studies of the legal profession and allied subjects (by Abel-Smith, Zander, and others), and the current development of a Legal Advice Research Unit (financed by Nuffield) could vitalize the whole field, relating it, for example, to wider sociological interests in social control and the legal order. A second development has been research in the sociology of the police. There have already been a few isolated projects in this field over the last few years and attempts are currently being made - although one has some misgivings about the directions some of these might go - by Banton and others (again with Nuffield Foundation assistance) to 'evaluate recent research and define future priorities'. Finally, an interest in deviance has been shown by students of mass media and mass culture; these are shown in different ways in Stuart Hall's paper to this conference and in the work of the Centre for Mass Communication Research at Leicester (see Halloran, et al., 1970). THE R E S P O N S E FROM S O C I O L O G Y

That the study of deviant behaviour, crime, and social problems has become insulated from sociology is, I think, self-evident and I have tried to show the form this insulation took in Britain. What, though, was the response from the 'other side', from the mainstream of sociology? No one has considered this problem, although Morris, in

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his review of Mannheim's text, points out that even if British criminology has not moved in a neo-Lombrosian direction away from the concerns of such Victorian amateurs as Mayhew, it '... would still not have been able to gain much from association with the social sciences in British Universities' (Morris 1966: 61). Without pioneers such as Mannheim, he suggests, criminology would still be where it was in the thirties. But what have sociologists been doing all this time? The answer to this question is important, because there is little doubt that at an intellectual level the new deviance theories are responses to the insulation from sociology and at a personal level, as I will suggest, their adherents see themselves as stigmatized outsiders trying to get back into the respectable, i.e. sociological, community. (Although, as I will also suggest, this is a partially serious passing rather than repentant attempt at full re-socialization.) One index of the insulation has been the relative lack of interest admitted by sociologists in the pre-occupations of criminology. Few would show a comparable unfamiliarity with other sub-fields - say, educational or industrial sociology. For the most part this indifference is justified, but even potentially important issues in sociological criminology (e.g. white collar crime) have been ignored. On the surface, this state of affairs is all the more surprising as the study of deviance was rooted in the central concerns of sociological theory. As Becker, among others, has pointed out, to theorists like Durkheim 'problems of deviance were problems of general sociology' (Becker 1964: i). This is no more true for the obvious case of Suicide than it is for Rules and Division of Labour, both works having produced themes explicitly taken up later, for example, by Erikson in the sceptical sociology of deviance. The reasons for severing these connexions are complex and beyond my scope in this paper. On the side of sociology, they include a sophisticated version of the sort of philistine distrust which greets, say, Durkheim's Suicide and the whole work of Freud. How can looking at suicide explain how societies work 'normally'? How can the interpsychic conflicts of a few middle class Viennese Jews explain how the 'normal' mind works? Studying deviance is seen as an esoteric and marginal occupation. Crucial too, has been the development of consensual theories in sociology, in the more mechanistic versions of which crime and deviance are simply the results of the machine going wrong. It is precisely this sort of conception that recent theorists of deviance have reacted against.

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The major barriers, though, have been created on the other side: the moralistic, non-abstract ways in which deviance has been studied and the early identification of this field with social work, reformative or correctional concerns.14 As Polsky has noted, criminology has been the least successful of all subfields of sociology in freeing itself from these concerns. He comments on Merton's condemnation of the 'slum encouraged provincialism of thinking that the primary subject matter of sociology was centred on such peripheral problems of social life as divorce and delinquency' that: 'Given the perspectives within which delinquency and crime are always studied it is obvious why Merton might regard them as peripheral problems of social life rather than fundamental processes of central concern to sociology.' (Polsky 1967: 142) Polsky is guilty here of caricaturing criminology and is certainly wrong if the old Chicago School studies of crime and deviance are considered. But clearly the development of criminology has little to recommend itself to sociology. Returning to the institutional level, would one not expect the reverse in Britain, that the pragmatic Fabian stream in sociology would find criminology and related fields highly congruent with its selfimage? To some extent, this has been true, but this stream is running dry. On the one hand, sociology is developing scientific, academic, or professional self-images into which certain topics are not respectable enough to be fitted and on the other, soft, liberal attitudes are becoming anathema to the hard radicals of sociology who don't consider deviants as 'really' political. Both these developments, but particularly the first which is the more dominant, lead to those common room sniggerings about 'girls who want to do sociology because they like people'. Elsewhere (Cohen 1971) in trying to describe the sort of attitudes that were prevalent in the profession, I wrote: 'In terms of having congenial people to discuss our work with, we found some of our sociological colleagues equally unhelpful. They were either mandarins who were hostile towards a committed sociology and found subjects such as delinquency nasty, distasteful or simply boring, or else they were self-proclaimed radicals, whose political interests went only as far as their own definition of "political" and were happy to consign deviants to social welfare or

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Stanley Cohen psychiatry. For different reasons, both groups found our subject matter too messy and devoid of significance. They shared with official criminology a depersonalized, dehumanized picture of the deviant: he was simply part of the waste products of the system, the reject from the conveyor belt.'

In an earlier draft I hadn't included 'some of before 'our sociological colleagues'; the alteration was partly in response to a sociological colleague who had written 'who are these nasties?' next to this passage. I took his point that not all sociologists were like this caricature, but I remain convinced that the mandarin attitude exists. This attitude is buttressed by the erroneous conception that sociology is being swamped by hordes of deviance researchers while the really important subjects, such as education, industry, and stratification are being neglected. In fact, even a superficial examination of the market will show that this is not the case. A comparison of the three major British sociological journals with, say, the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology shows a low proportion of articles even remotely connected with criminology or deviance. Whole substantive areas such as sexual deviance, drug taking, mental illness, are virtually completely missing, and there are no journals like Social Problems to cover these areas. In the one admittedly inadequate - survey of research from the early 19505 to the 19605 (Krausz 1969) nothing much emerges from the five pages on deviance, aside from a few studies of penal institutions and the ecological-subcultural traditions from Mays, Morris, Downes, and Willmott (this, incidentally, being most misleadingly summarized). More substantial information can be found from the 1966 survey of British sociologists undertaken by the Social Science Research Council in collaboration with the British Sociological Association.15 In the context of the 'sociological explosion' in Britain (one university chair before the war and over forty in 1967) sociological attention given to crime and deviance is insignificant. The replies from the 416 BSA members whose questionnaires were 'usable' (this included about three-quarters of teachers of the subject) indicated that crime ranked low on each of the separate criteria of 'main interests', 'other special interests', 'research completed 1945-1960', 'research completed 1961-1966', and 'current research'. In terms of 'main interests' for example (excluding 'basic theory', 'methodology', and 'methods') criminology (30) ranked well behind sociology of education (102),

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industrial sociology/sociology of work (96), social stratification (66), and community studies (46). Out of the 340 projects listed under 'current research', industrial sociology maintains the lead it had in earlier periods with 74, sociology of education next with 51 and, after a big drop to community studies (34), criminology only registered 10. (One might add to this a few of the 25 classified under 'sociology of social services/policy/problems.) Using these indices at least, it would not appear that British sociology has nurtured much of an interest in crime and deviance. Although the mandarin characterization may be an overstatement I believe there has been and is likely to remain a basic divide between those who, to use Horowitz's terms (1969: 92-3), think that sociology should be impeccable and those who think it should be important: 'The aesthetic vision of the impeccable sociologist... preserves him from the worst infections of "helping people".' The gap is more than a matter of aesthetic styles, though '... it demands a specific decision on the part of scholars and researchers as to where they will place their intellectual bets: on scientific autonomy or on social relevance' (1969: 99).16 Leaving aside for the moment the complication that much conflict exists within the sociology of deviance between impeccability and importance, the obvious political question remains as to what is 'socially relevant' and, more to the point, relevant to whom? This leads me to the stream of political radicalism within and on the margins of sociology that is indifferent, if not hostile, to the field of deviance. The Left have simply followed the liberal rhetoric and consigned deviants to the welfare category while orthodox Marxists (whose sole contribution to the field was that of the Dutch criminologist Bonger some fifty years ago) have written criminals off as the Lumpen, or the 'rabble' who, as Marx described to Engels, gathered to jeer at him when he was evicted from his Soho flat. The only stream of radical political thought which is sympathetic is anarchism and it is no accident (!) that five out of the seven founder members of the National Deviancy Conference (although not all anarchists themselves) have published articles about deviance at one time or another in the British journal. Anarchy. The various sources of insulation that I have sketched are, I believe, becoming less potent. Much of the above analysis would not apply to the current younger cohort of British sociologists and, even among the others, an ideology which rejects deviance as a topic of interest is

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hardly dominant. The present potential of research and theory on deviance is on balance more likely to convince mainstream sociology of its centrality rather than its marginality. But the relationship between deviance and the rest of sociology must always remain strained: the interests of its students, the peculiar institutional constraints it has to operate in, the umbrella-like nature of areas like criminology, are features which cannot be glossed over in the name of some professional consensus. I will refer to more of these strains in the next section. THE EVOLUTION OF THE NATIONAL DEVIANCY CONFERENCE At this point in the paper I experience my discrepant role of mediator most acutely, having to describe in a supposedly detached way a development I have been closely concerned with. The greatest danger lies in exaggerating the importance of this development and I would like to stress that I do not consider it (or the sociology of deviance as a whole) worthy of extensive self-reflection. The development is also not unique and has some parallels with the emergence in America of the Society For the Study of Social Problems (in 1951!) although the Society is more closely tied to bodies such as the ASA and is undoubtedly more professional. I have indicated implicitly throughout the paper the constellation of intellectual reasons which created the 'need' for such a development. By the middle 19605 there were a number of young sociologists attracted to the wholly American field of the sociology of deviance. (I suspect they were turned on first by Outsiders and then Delinquency and Drift.) These ideas seemed to relate to what they were either teaching or doing research on (subjects including drugs, homosexuality, approved schools, vandalism, youth culture, mental illness, etc.). For reasons I have indicated, official criminology was regarded with attitudes ranging from ideological condemnation to a certain boredom (and I suspect that the latter was more dominant than many would admit). One had to get away from that scene, but being a sociologist wasn't enough, one had to find a separate subculture within the sociological world. The sheer physical isolation of many of us in small departments, teaching a subject with no colleagues in the field and few graduate students, was another contributory pressure. So, ostensibly for these reasons (although this account sounds suspiciously like colour supplement history), seven of us met in July

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19685 fittingly enough in Cambridge in the middle of the Third National Conference of Teaching and Research on Criminology, organized by the Institute and opened by the Home Secretary. We decided to form a group to provide some sort of intellectual support for each other and to cope with collective problems of identity, not to mention the problems of reaction formation and the absence of a legitimate opportunity structure. Friends and colleagues were to be sounded out, ideas about circulating reading lists and research plans were discussed and it was proposed to arrange a symposium. Before taking up the subsequent progress of the group, let me speculate on some further reasons for its formation and subsequent rapid growth: it would be dishonest as well as sociologically naive to suggest that the ostensible intellectual reasons I have given were the only ones. The first is that we all sensed something in the sceptical, labelling, and societal reaction perspectives, the anti-psychiatry school and similar currents, which struck a responsive political chord. The stress on labelling, injustice, scapegoating, stigmatizing, the implicit underdog sympathy, the whole 'central irony' (as Matza calls it) of the neoChicago School and its recognition of Leviathan, the implications of Laing's work - these were all sympathetic ideas. It is precisely the limitations of this sympathy (which I don't believe was ever expressed that simply anyway) which has provoked indiscriminate attacks (such as those by Gouldner 1968) as well as the more discerning remarks such as those of Lemert in the course of his re-examination of the secondary deviance concept: ' "Secondary deviance" may be a convenient vehicle for civil libertarians or young men of sociology to voice angry critiques of social institutions' (Lemert 1967: 59). Both such interests were present in the original group and these ideas were found appealing for reasons strongly related to the personal background of the group's members. Without exception they had all been involved in orthodox political movements with degrees of commitment ranging through Anarchists, CND, Young Communists and International Socialists. In common with many of their contemporaries they were going through various degrees of disillusionment with such activities. They had all been through the generational experience which only a few commentators such as Jeff Nurtall (1968) have tried to comprehend. Talking or doing something about deviance seemed to offer - however misguided this might now look to an outsider - a form of commitment, a way of staying in, without on the one hand

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selling out or on the other playing the drab game of orthodox politics, whose simplicities were becoming increasingly irritating. Such commitment was easier because the historical period was one of growing and visible militancy of deviant groups working outside the political structure. The hope for real social change (or any event, where the action was) seemed to be with the hippies, druggies, squatters and, above all, everything that was happening in the American campuses and ghettoes. These identifications were facilitated by personal involvement in some of these marginal groups. Some of the original members and even more of the later members of the Deviancy Conference were on the fringes of what Jock Young has nicely called 'the Middle Underground'. Involved as participants, they couldn't resist the lure to be observers and make a decent living from it. The romantic, voyeur-like appeal of the subject matter was thus important; one doubts whether a similar group could have sprung up around, say, industrial sociology, educational sociology, or community studies. I have speculated at some length on this sort of reason because it would seem implausible to suggest that some sort of disinterested quest for knowledge was drawing people to the field. These reasons are complex to unravel and have meant more or less to different people at different stages of their involvement: the organization has become all things to all members. Such a background contains intrinsic tensions, which I will comment on later, but despite such tensions - or because of them? - the sheer numerical strength of the group has increased dramatically, although it has possibly reached some sort of plateau now. The original group of seven increased at the first Conference at York in November 1968 to about twenty (most of them friends) and this number rose to 130 by the seventh Conference in October 1970 (about twenty more having to be turned away for lack of accommodation). The paid-up membership of the organization is now 230. At a minimal level, the fact that the group has kept going and attracted so many new people shows that it is filling some obvious need. It has tried, not altogether successfully, to involve groups other than sociologists, the largest of these being social workers. Other 'lay' activists or commentators on the scene have also been drawn in as speakers: a crime reporter, the leader of a squatters' group, a detached youth worker. A forum and some support have also been given to groups such as tenants' associations, claimants' unions, Case Con (the

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militant social work organization), and RAP (Radical Alternatives to Prison). Plans are in hand to formalize contacts with these groups and perhaps in the long run provide them with some sort of umbrella organization. It is possible that a journal might be published and there are plans to publish policy oriented pamphlets on such subjects as aversion therapy of homosexuals, restrictions on prison visiting, invasions of privacy, and drug legislation. Another achievement is presumably to have played the major role in organizing and manning this BSA Conference. Papers at the seven York conferences have been mainly in the four categories: ethnographies of deviant types, studies of social control, theories of deviance, and critiques; plus attempts to connect with institutions such as social work, psychiatry, and the mass media. There is no shortage of topics, but a semi-conscious colonialism seems to be operating in which whole new territories (for example education and the mass media) are taken over and planted with a sociology-ofdeviance flag. Interests listed in the research register range from homosexual prostitutes, crime in the USSR, physical handicap as deviance, to tenants' associations, false consciousness(!), and the sociology of soccer. As the group has expanded, so its conception of itself has changed and clearly new tensions are introduced in simply coping with the range of interests and involvements. The original circular of invitation to the first Conference simply said '... A group of social scientists who are currently concerned with problems of crime and deviancy have decided to hold a one day symposium related to these areas.' The subjects were described as being a 'mixed bag' but, continued the circular, 'the aim of the symposium is not to create an artificial academic consensus, but rather to bring together a group of people who appear to share certain common perspectives.' A year later, in August 1969, one member of the committee 'at the risk of accusations of Leninism' as he put it, circulated a letter to his fellow members which included the following: 'The most important worry is perhaps over the total nature of the project we're involved in. At the moment, it does seem that we are on the way towards being a "left wing" value committed "social problems" sociology, reinforcing each other periodically in our institutional isolation, revivifying our lecture courses with ideas

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Stanley Cohen culled from the symposium - but never really moving outside our chosen ... occupational roles. Perhaps we might also be helping to create a new (rather ill-defined, libertarian) sociological culture among our students and friends. But there are other activities we should be involved in.'

The 'other activities' he suggested included being a pressure group, acting as a corrective to official definitions of deviance and social problems, and the setting up of a kind of anti-sociology. It has become transparent subsequently - and was so all along to anyone aware of the group's diversity - that there are different and partially irreconcilable ways ahead. Let me end this section by just listing some differences which have become manifest so far: (1) Should the group just drift along, amplifying and if need be changing, or should some attempt be made at lightening up? (2) Should one tighten up in the direction of demanding greater commitment to social action? (3) Should one tighten up in the direction of demanding greater theoretical sophistication, making everything more impeccable? As a corollary, does this mean excluding or limiting the numbers of nonsociologists? (4) To what extent should the perceived limitations of the theories which originally looked so attractive lead to an immersion in 'harder' and ostensibly more political theories? My personal inclination, because of an aversion to the apocalyptic, is to avoid a tightening up in any of these directions; this does not mean that the tensions which result from these differing conceptions can always be coped with. One other tension is worth noting, the one with sociology. I have made much of the desire to get the subject back into sociology, but my impression is that the commitment to sociology among many in the Conference is somewhat weak. Mainstream sociologists are not wholly unjustified in seeing the group as marginals, with loyalties elsewhere, who would prefer, for example, to teach a group of social workers than a group of honours sociology students and whose avowed interests in making theoretical links with the sociological tradition are not always very convincing. Again, although this might be an important issue to some, I do not personally see it as a priority.

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SOME CURRENT C O M P A R I S O N S

In this last, highly speculative, section, I would like to make some assessment of the current position, particularly by comparing mainstream criminology and the sociology of deviance with each other and the world outside. I have used the three criteria of impact, relevance, and commitment. (i) Impact There is little question that the institutional position of mainstream criminology is powerful and fairly concentrated. The Institute of Criminology at Cambridge, with its close links to the Home Office, commands prestige and support and in the public eye virtually is criminology. Its educational impact has been made through its highly successful diploma course (as well as other short courses) and is strong in a number of law faculties. It has certain high level connexions with bodies such as the Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders. The BSC - ISTD - BJC axis is perhaps less powerful and its direct influence is more on middle range professionals (probation officers, clinicians) or through the institutional positions of its non-academic members. In terms of access to the mass media, potential influences on policy through official inquiries, reports, commissions etc., these groups are fairly well placed. In contrast, the sociology of deviance group - although just as inbred as mainstream criminology - has a much more diffuse power base, mainly confined to academic sociology departments. In so far as part of its original aim was to spread to this area, it has been fairly successful. There are about twelve university or polytechnic courses in criminology or deviance run by persons closely associated with the group and perhaps an equal number by those with some ties. Strength with professionals lies more with social workers and others. Many members of the group spend time talking to magistrates, probation officers, prison officers, and others, but I doubt whether this is a very distinctive contribution. Describing the position in this way does not imply that many members of either group would see themselves as engaging in some sort of power struggle. Also, having prestige or running undergraduate courses hardly means the same as having any impact. Clearly

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criminologists do have some impact and are in positions which ensure that their definitions are given credibility. I suspect though that both groups, not to mention sociologists as a whole, are given to exaggerating any such influence they may have. Introducing his collection on The Impact of Sociology Douglas (1970: i) speculates on the 'profound' and 'rapidly accelerating' effects the social sciences are having on everyday lives. 'While it may still be too prophetic to be accorded much credibility, I believe that many of us will live to see the social sciences become the primary means by which we seek to determine social policies which will rationally order our everyday lives.' One doubts it. Matza's passing remarks about functionalism are relevant here c ... the functionalist perspective has had little public consequence. It has neither bolstered the social order nor subverted it. Except among a few thousand sociologists it has passed unnoticed' (Matza 1969: 58). This argument can be used against some of Matza's own theories: some research and much impressionistic evidence indicates that - in this country at any rate - control agents have simply not been won over to the positivist ideology and in their day to day work and reflections about delinquency use a much more common sense model, which is hardly deterministic at all. In the same light, one might note Radzinowicz's conclusion that there has not been much of a connexion between criminological research and penal reform: 'Treatment by probation, the borstal system, the juvenile courts and several other innovations were not devised on the strength of fresh and precise criminological knowledge. They can be shown to have evolved on the whole under the influence of growing social consciousness, of religious movements and philanthropic stimulus, from some temporary measure, or just from straightforward common sense, supported by experience.' (Radzinowicz 1961: 178-9) Research is needed on just how much, and in what form, the criminological belief system percolates through to policy makers and becomes part of the common sense rhetoric. Finally, in terms of mutual impact, clearly the sociology of deviance is too mistrustful of British criminology to admit to being influenced in other than a negative direction. In fact though, as I have suggested, it will remain somewhat parasitic on criminological knowledge, partially dependent on the same resources and subject to some of the

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same pressures. It is beginning to look more on the legal - as opposed to the psychiatric side - of the discipline. One might speculate that the sociology of deviance as a whole, and the way it has appeared in this country, is having some impact on criminology. A number of the York group have taught on the Cambridge post-graduate course and gave papers at the Fourth National Conference on Teaching and Research in Criminology. The more cynical talk about power politics, being lured by the Establishment and so on. I do not agree that such contacts should be avoided, although I do think that the 'Establishment' sees the newer perspective as being simply a fashion which will eventually pass over or (more mistakenly) simply consisting of a few interesting ideas which can be swallowed up without changing the existing paradigm at all. A more plausible reception to some of the criticism levelled by sociologists can be seen at some points of a recent text by Hood and Sparks (1970), both Assistant Directors of Research at the Institute of Criminology. Not only does their book contain a pronounced sociological content - subcultural delinquency and the sociology of the prison are included among the 'key issues in criminology' - and a nearly complete exclusion of clinical interests, but 'traditional' interests are raised in such a way that their relationship to sociology is made fairly explicit. Thus, attention on self-report studies and hidden delinquency - which in Britain has seemed to be related to a desire to root out all those recalcitrant contributors to the 'dark figure' who refuse to become detected - is justified in terms of the light it may shed on problems of discretion, control, and labelling. The book is still somewhat pragmatic: as the authors admit, no single theme or theory underlines the subject and the justification for singling out the eight 'key issues' is that a lot of research has been done on them in recent years, in most of them some progress has been made and important questions remain. There are other subjects, they state, '... in particular so called labelling or transactional theory in which too little empirical research has been done. Work in this area ... seems likely to develop rapidly in the future.' As far as policy matters go, Hood and Sparks submit that while most of the subjects they have chosen have implications for penal policy, this is not the reason for their inclusion. They disagree that criminology is the study of the ways of preventing crime and is professionally interested in reforming offenders. Criminology is not a kind of social work and

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there is scope for 'disinterested and purely scientific research' on such matters as the operation of the penal system: 'This is not, of course, to say that criminology cannot make any contribution to penal policy. What it cannot do is decide what the aims of penal policy should be. But by discovering how much crime is committed and by showing how and why it was committed, criminology can help to show what policy goals are reasonable; and if given certain aims, they can try to discover by research the best means of accomplishing them. It is unfortunately true, however, that at the present time much too little is known... to permit us to draw definite practical conclusions concerning questions of penal policy.' (1970: 9) The uncharitable might call such a line defensive, and its model of finding out the facts in a 'disinterested' way, drawing the 'definite practical conclusions' and showing what policy goals are 'reasonable', while attractive, does not confront the fact-value-interest problems that have bedevilled sociology. But at least it is a form of selfconsciousness which criminology has not shown very conspicuously in the past. (2) Relevance Criminology has often chosen to deal with areas which society - or its elected representatives or mass media - have defined as most relevant. This is a theoretically indefensible basis of choice, but it does give criminology its strength: it is seen to be relevant. In contrast, sociologists of deviance, while making a lot of pious noises about 'other' criteria of relevance, have often opted for the esoteric, the catchy, the hip - precisely those areas which seem less relevant. This is due partly to personal preference, but more importantly due to the fact that the interactionist type of approach seems better able to cope with forms of deviance such as homosexuality, drugtaking, certain kinds of behaviour defined as mental illness, which are ambiguous, marginal and already subject to widespread normative dissensus. Until attention is focused on what to the public seem more relevant areas such as violence or a coherent case is made for choosing these other areas, this type of sociology will always be at a disadvantage.

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(3) Commitment I have probably said more than enough on the problem of values and a whole session in this Conference was devoted to the 'political and ethical implications of deviance theory'. Let me repeat that mainstream criminology has compromised itself too far and too much because of its close connexions with the institutions and ideology of the correctional system. It has complacently thought that there are no problems of competing values and interests. At worst, this has led to an unquestioning acceptance of official goals and policies; at best it has led to sustained and well informed criticism of these policies if not the goals. The sociology of deviance has been complacent in another way, though, by sometimes giving the impression that it has solved these problems. At worst this has led to a self-indulgent romanticism, at best it has been simply good sociology. I started off this paper by noting one danger in self-reflective social science; let me end with another: the danger of tilting at windmills. This is not to say that the divisions I have indicated are not real; students who had accused me of exaggerating have come back from occasions such as Institute of Criminology conferences reproaching me for underplaying such divisions. The point is that the impact (of the theories at least - as opposed to that of powerful groups) is not as massive and monolithic as some attacks on it credit it with being. This is the same point that Bottomore (1971) makes against Gouldner's The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology: why the excessive attention to functionalism when it is very doubtful that it enjoyed the preeminence attached to it? This would all be unimportant if not for the further argument that Bottomore levels against reflexive sociology in general and Gouldner in particular: 'In the end, it achieves the opposite of what Wright Mills advocated at the beginning of the radical revival: instead of turning personal troubles into public issues, it turns public issues into personal troubles, by exhorting the sociologist to give his attention narcissistically to the problem of the relationship "between being a sociologist and being a person" and to worry about his relation to his work. I do not believe that such pre-occupations have ever in-

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Stanley Cohen spired a critical analysis of society or ever will. They are a symptom of an intellectual malaise, not a remedy.'

They can be both symptom and partial remedy though, in areas and contexts where they have hardly ever appeared. It is in these terms that papers of this sort can be justified - if only very slightly.

Notes 1 See the Introduction and Readings in Section A 'The Development of a Sociological Perspective on Crime in Britain' in Carson and Wiles (1971). For an evaluation of nineteenth-century ecological studies see Chapter 3 of Morris (1957) and for a particularly interesting perspective on Mayhew, see Yeo and Thompson (1971). 2 For parallel defences of an appreciation see 'The Defence of Meaning* (Cohen, 1971: Introduction) and Young (1969). For comments on the subjective viewpoint in the context of the Becker-Gouldner debate, see Taylor and Walton (1970). 3 For an important general argument about these convergences, see Horowitz and Liebowitz (1968) and a specific application to the study of violence, Cohen (1969 and 1971). 4 Thus, our criticisms of criminology might be something like those of industrial sociologists writing about a specific institution such as the Human Relations school - see, for example, Brown (1967). 5 The accounts of Goring's work I am mainly relying upon are those by Mannheim (1965: 227-8) and Driver (1960). 6 This is not to say that such bodies ultimately get different treatment from the political structure. Compare President Nixon's reaction to the Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography with the Home Office's reaction to the 'Wootton Report' on cannabis when both came up with the 'wrong' results. 7 For fuller accounts of Mannheim's work see Chorley (1970), Grygier et al. (1965) and Morris (1966). 8 See, for example, the collections of papers published in connexion with the centenary of the Howard League for Penal Reform (Klare 1966; Klare and Haxby 1967). 9 Some indication of his approach to the subject is given in his note in the Twentieth Anniversary Number of the BJC. See Mannheim (1970). 10 When it added a group of assistant editors, one was a clinical psychologist, one a psychiatrist, one a lawyer and one a sociologist. 11 See Wootton (1959: 69) for a misuse of the concept of anomie.

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12 Such as the Gibson Maze Test; the Body Sway Test (most of the boys apparently hardly swayed at all, while others found this test unpleasant and anxiety provoking); and the Tapping Test (tapping a pencil on a blank piece of paper for 10 seconds; this apparently reveals extra-punitive personality types and it could be expected that 'boys with delinquent personalities would tend to scatter their dots more widely'. Sceptics will note that the scores did reveal a slight but significant positive correlation with bad conduct as rated by teachers : r = o-i7). 13 For a convincing treatment of this explanation as a form of demonism, see Sarbin and Miller (1970). 14 The classic documentation is still to be found in C. Wright Mills (1945). 15 I am relying on three versions of the report of this survey: one is circulated by its author, M. P. Carter, to members of the BSA in 1967, a longer version reproduced by the SSRC at about the same time and a re-draft of this a year later. Another version is in preparation. See also Carter (1968). 1 6 I would strongly recommend Horowitz's whole essay 'The Sociology of Social Problems: A Study in the Americanization of Ideas' (Horowitz 1969: 80-100), particularly the section entitled 'The metaphysical predispositions of sociologists of social problems'. This is not a simple argument in favour of 'importance'; he points to the considerable dangers of applied sociology and the central contradictions involved in the 'God-like' role of sociologists as therapist. I need hardly add that much deviance research is quite unimportant anyway, compared to, say, the sociology of development.

References ANDERSON, P. 1968. Components of the National Culture. New Left Review 50: 3-57. BECKER, H. S. (ed.) 1964. The Other Side: Perspectives on Deviance. New York: Crowell Collier Macmillan. - 1967. Whose Side Are We On ? Social Problems 14: 239-47. BOTTOMORE, T. 1971. Has Sociology a Future? New York Review of Books 1 6 (4): 37-40. BROWN, R. K. 1967. Research and Consultancy in Industrial Enterprises: A Review of the Contribution of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations to the Development of Industrial Sociology. Sociology i : 33-60. CARSON, w. G. & WILES, P. (eds.) 1971. Crime and Delinquency in Britain: Sociological Readings. London: Robinson.

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CARTE, G. E. 1969. Dialogue with Jerome H. Skolnick. Issues in Criminology 4: 109-22. CARTER, M. P. 1968. Report on a Survey of Sociological Research in Britain. Sociological Review 16: 5-40. CHORLEY, Rt Hon. Lord. 1970. Hermann Mannheim: A Biographical Appreciation. British Journal of Criminology 10: 324-47. COHEN, s. 1969. Ideological and Criminal Violence: Convergences in Labels or Behaviour ? Paper given at British Sociological Association Conference (Teachers' Section). (ed.) 1971. Images of Deviance. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1971. Directions for Research on Adolescent Group Violence and Vandalism. British Journal of Criminology: 319-40. CRESSEY, D. R. 1954. The Differential Association Theory and Compulsive Crimes. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science 45: 29-40. 1962. Role Theory, Differential Association and Compulsive Crimes. In A. Rose (ed.) Human Behaviour and Social Processes: An Interactionist Approach. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. CROFT, j. 1965. Hermann Mannheim - A Biographical Note. In T. Grygier et al. (eds.) Criminology in Transition: Essays in Honour of Hermann Mannheim. London: Tavistock Publications. DEBRO, j. 1970. Dialogue with Howard S. Becker. Issues in Criminology 5: I59-79DOUGLAS, j. D. (ed.) 1970. The Impact of Sociology: Readings in the Social Sciences. New York: Appleton Century Crofts. DRIVER, E. D. 1960. Charles B. Goring. In H. Mannheim (ed.) Pioneers in Criminology. London: Stevens. GIBBENS, T. c. N. 1970. Identification of Key Problems of Criminological Research. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. GLOVER, E. 1970. 1950-1970 - Retrospects and Reflections. British Journal of Criminology 10: 313-16. GOFFMAN, E. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor. GOULDNER, A. 1968. The Sociologist as Partisan: Sociology and the Welfare States. American Sociologist 3: 103-16. GORING, c. 1913. The English Convict. London: HMSO. GRYGIER, T. J. H., JONES, H. & SPENCER, j. c. (eds.) 1965. Criminology in Transition: Essays in Honour of Hermann Mannheim. London: Tavistock Publications. HALLORAN, J. D. et al. 1970. Television and Delinquency. Leicester: Leicester University Press. HOME OFFICE RESEARCH UNIT AND STATISTICAL DIVISION. 1969.

Summary of Research and of Research Supported by Grants.

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HOOD, R. & SPARKS, R. 1970. Key Issues in Criminology. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. HOROWITZ, I. L. 1969. Professing Sociology: Studies in the Life Cycle of Social Science. Chicago: Aldine. HOROWITZ, i. L. & LIEBOWITZ, M. 1968. Social Deviance and Political Marginality: Toward a Redefinition of the Relationship Between Sociology and Politics. Social Problems 15: 280-96. JONES, H. 1965. Crime and the Penal System. London: University Tutorial Press. KLARE, H. j. (ed.) 1966. Changing Concepts of Crime and Its Treatment. Oxford: Pergamon. KLARE, H. j. & HAXBY, D. (eds.) 1967. Frontiers of Criminology. Oxford: Pergamon. KRAUSZ, E. 1969. Sociology in Britain: A Survey of Research. London: Batsford. LEMERT, E. M. 1967. Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall. MANNHEIM, H. 1965. Comparative Criminology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1970. 1950-1970: Retrospects and Reflections. British Journal of Criminology 10: 317-20. MATZA, D. 1964. Delinquency and Drift. New York: Wiley. 1969. Becoming Deviant. Englewood Cliffs, N J.: Prentice Hall. MILLS, c. WRIGHT 1945. The Professional Ideology of Social Pathologists. American Journal of Sociology 49: 165-80. MORRIS, T. P. 1957. The Criminal Area: A Study in Social Ecology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1965. The Sociology of the Prison. In T. Grygier et al. (eds.) Criminology in Transition. London: Tavistock Publications. 1966. Comparative Criminology: A Text Book. Howard Journal XII: 61-4. NUTTAL, j. 1968. Bomb Culture. London: MacGibbon and Kee. POLSKY, N. 1967. Research Method, Morality and Criminology. In Hustlers, Beats and Others. Chicago: Aldine. RADZINOWICZ, L. 1962. In Search of Criminology. London: Heinemann. 1966. Ideology and Crime: A Study of Crime in its Social and Historical Context. London: Heinemann. SARBIN, T. R. & MILLER, j. E. 1970. Demonism Revisited: The XYY Chromosomal Anomaly. Issues in Criminology 5: 195-207. SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL. 1968. Review of Research in Sociology. Unpublished. TAYLOR, I. & WALTON, P. 1970. Values in Deviancy Theory and Society. British Journal of Sociology 21: 362-74.

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WALKER, N. 1965. Crime and Punishment in Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. WEST, D. j. 1967. The Young Offender. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1969. Present Conduct and Future Delinquency. London: Heinemann. WOOTTON, B. 1959. Social Science and Social Pathology. London: Allen and Unwin. WRIGHT, M. 1970. Twenty Years of the British Journal of Delinquency/ Criminology. British Journal of Criminology 10: 372-82. YEO, E. & THOMPSON, E. P. 1971. The Unknown Mayhew. London: Merlin Press. YOUNG, j. 1969. The Zookeepers of Deviancy. Anarchy 98: 101-8.

HOWARD S. BECKER

Labelling theory reconsidered1 Deviant phenomena have long provided one of the foci of sociological thought. Our theoretical interest in the nature of social order combines with practical interest in actions thought harmful to individuals and society to direct our attention to the broad arena of behaviour variously called crime, vice, non-conformity, aberration, eccentricity, or madness. Whether we conceive it as a failure of socialization and sanctioning or simply as wrongdoing and misbehaviour, we want to know why people act in disapproved ways. In recent years, a naturalistic approach to these phenomena (Matza 1969) has come to centre on the interaction between those alleged to be engaged in wrongdoing and those making the allegations. A number of people - Frank Tannenbaum (1938), Edwin Lemert (1951), John Kitsuse (1962), Kai Erikson (1962), and myself (Becker 1963), among others - contributed to the development of what has rather unfortunately been called 'labelling theory'. Since the initial statements, many people have criticized, extended, and argued over the original statements; others have contributed important research results. I would like to look back on these developments and see where we stand (cf. Schur 1969). What has been accomplished? What criticisms have been made? What changes in our conceptions must we make? Three topics especially deserve discussion: the conception of deviance as collective action; the demystification of deviance; and the moral dilemmas of deviance theory. In each case, I intend the point I make to apply to sociological research and analysis generally, reaffirming the faith that the field of deviance is nothing special, just another kind of human activity to be studied and understood. I might begin by disposing of some seemingly difficult points rather summarily, in a way that will make clear my dissatisfaction with the expression 'labelling theory'. I never thought the original statements by myself and others warranted being called theories, at least not

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theories of the fully articulated kind they are now criticized for not being. A number of authors complained that labelling theory did not provide an aetiological explanation of deviance (Gibbs 1966; Bordua 1967; Akers 1968), did not tell us how the people who commit deviant acts come to do that and, especially, why they do it while others around them do not. Sometimes critics suggest that a theory was proposed, but that it was wrong. Thus, some thought the theory attempted to explain deviance by the responses others made to it. After one was labelled a deviant, according to this paraphrase, then one began to do deviant things, but not before. You can easily dispose of that theory by referring to facts of everyday experience. The original proponents of the position, however, did not propose solutions to the aetiological question. They had more modest aims. They wanted to enlarge the area taken into consideration in the study of deviant phenomena by including in it activities of others than the allegedly deviant actor. They supposed, of course, that when they did that all the questions students of deviance conventionally looked at would take on a different cast, as new sources of variance were included in the calculations. Further, the act of labelling, as carried out by moral entrepreneurs, while important, cannot possibly be conceived as the sole explanation of what alleged deviants actually do. It would be foolish to propose that stick-up men stick people up simply because someone has labelled them stick-up men, or that everything a homosexual does results from someone having called him homosexual. Nevertheless, one of the most important contributions of this approach has been to focus attention on the way labelling places the actor in circumstances which make it harder for him to continue the normal routines of everyday life and thus provoke him to 'abnormal' actions (as when a prison record makes it harder to earn a living at a conventional occupation and so dispose its possessor to move into an illegal one). The degree to which labelling has such effects is, however, an empirical one, to be settled by research into specific cases rather than by theoretical fiat. (See Becker 1963: 34-5; Lemert 1951: 71-6; Ray 1961; and Lemert 1967.) Finally, the theory, when it focuses attention on the undeniable actions of those officially in charge of defining deviance, does not make an empirical characterization of the results of particular social institutions. To suggest that defining someone as deviant may under certain circumstances dispose him to a particular line of action is not

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the same as saying that mental hospitals always drive people crazy or that jails always turn people into habitual criminals. Labelling achieved its theoretical importance in quite another way. Classes of acts, and particular examples of them, may or may not be thought deviant by any of the various relevant audiences which view them. The difference in definition, in the label applied to the act, makes a difference in what everyone, audience and actor alike, does subsequently. What the theory did, as Albert Cohen (1965, 1966, 1968) has pointed out, was to create a four-cell property space by combining two dichotomous variables, the commission or noncommission of a given act and the definition of that act as deviant or not. The theory is not a theory about one of the resulting four cells, but a theory about all four of them and their interrelations. In which of those cells we actually locate deviance proper is less important (merely a matter of definition though, like all such matters, not trivial) than understanding that we lose by looking at any one cell alone without seeing it in connexion with the others. My own original formulation created some confusion by referring to one of those variables as 'obedient' as opposed to 'rule-breaking' behaviour. The distinction implied the prior existence of a determination that rule-breaking had occurred though, of course, it was just that that the theory proposed to make problematic. I think it better to describe that dimension as the commission or non-commission of a given act. Ordinarily, of course, we study those acts others are likely to define as deviant should they discover that they have occurred; this maximizes our chances of seeing the complicated drama of accusation and definition that is the centre of our field of study. Thus, we may be interested in whether a person smokes marihuana, or engages in homosexual acts in public lavatories, in part because these acts are likely to be defined as deviant when discovered. We also, of course, study them as phenomena which are interesting in other ways as well. Thus, by studying marihuana use, we can study the way people learn through social interaction to interpret their own physical experience (Becker 1963). By studying homosexual encounters in public lavatories, we can study how people coordinate their activities through tacit communication (Humphreys 1970). We can also ask how the high probability that the act will be defined as deviant affects learning the activity and continuing it. It is useful to have a term that indicates others are likely to define such activities as deviant without making

44 Howard S. Becker that a scientific judgement that the act is in fact deviant. I suggest we call them 'potentially deviant'. Labelling theory, then, is neither a theory, with all the achievements and obligations that go with the title, nor focused so exclusively on the act of labelling as some have thought. It is, rather, a way of looking at a general area of human activity, a perspective whose value will appear, if at all, in increased understanding of things formerly obscure. (I will indulge my dislike of the conventional label for the theory by referring to it from now on as an interactionist theory of deviance.) DEVIANCE AS COLLECTIVE ACTION

Sociologists agree that what they study is society, but the consensus persists only if we don't look into the nature of society too closely. I prefer to think of what we study as collective action. People act, as Mead (1934) and Blumer (1966, 1969) have made clearest, together. They do what they do with an eye on what others have done, are doing now, and may do in the future. One tries to fit his own line of action into the actions of others, just as each of them likewise adjusts his own developing actions to what he sees and expects others to do. The result of all this adjusting and fitting in can be called a collective action, especially if it is kept in mind that the term covers more than a conscious collective agreement to, let's say, go on strike, but also extends to having a school class, having a meal together or crossing the street, each of these seen as something being done by a lot of people together. I don't mean, in using terms like adjustment and fitting in, to suggest an overly peaceful view of social life or any necessity for people to succumb to social constraints. I mean only that people ordinarily take into account what is going on around them and what is likely to go on when they decide what they will do. The adjusting may consist of deciding that since the police will probably look here> I'll put the bomb there,, as well as of deciding that since the police are going to look, I guess I won't make any bombs at all or even think about it. Neither do I mean, in the foregoing discussion, to imply that social life consists only of face-to-face encounters between individuals. Individuals may engage in intense and persistent interaction though they never encounter one another face-to-face; the interaction of

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stamp collectors takes place largely through the mail. Further, the give and take of interaction, the fitting in and mutual adjustment of lines of activity, occur as well between groups and organizations. The political processes surrounding the drama of deviance have that character. Economic organizations, professional associations, trade unions, lobbyists, moral entrepreneurs, and legislators all interact to establish the conditions under which those who represent the state in enforcing laws, for example, interact with those alleged to have violated them. If we can view any kind of human activity as collective, we can view deviance so. What results? One result is the general view I want to call interactionist. In its simplest form, the theory insists that we look at all the people involved in any episode of alleged deviance. When we do, we discover that these activities require the overt or tacit cooperation of many people and groups to occur as they do. When workers collude to restrict industrial production (Roy 1954), they do so with the help of inspectors, maintenance men, and the man in the tool crib. When members of industrial firms steal they do so with the active cooperation of others above and below them in the firm's hierarchy (Dalton 1959). Those observations alone cast doubt on theories that seek the origins of deviant acts in individual psychology, for we have to posit a miraculous meeting of individual forms of pathology to account for the complicated forms of collective activity we observe. Because it is hard to cooperate with people whose realitytesting equipment is inadequate, people suffering from psychological difficulties don't fit well into criminal conspiracies. When we look at all the people and organizations involved in an episode of potentially deviant behaviour, we discover too that the collective activity going on consists of more than acts of alleged wrongdoing. It is an involved drama in which making allegations of wrongdoing is a central feature. Indeed, Erikson (1966) and Douglas (1970), among others, have identified the study of deviance as essentially the study of the construction and reaffirmation of moral meanings in everyday social life. Some of the chief actors do not themselves engage in wrongdoing, but rather appear as enforcers of law or morality, as people who complain that other actors are doing wrong, take them into custody, bring them before legal authorities, or administer punishments themselves. If we look long enough and close enough we discover that they do this sometimes, but not all the time; to some people but not others; in some places but not others. Those discrepancies cast doubt on simple notions about when something is,

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after all, wrong. We see that the actors themselves often disagree about what is deviant and often doubt the deviant character of an act. The courts disagree, the police have reservations even when the law is clear, those engaged in the proscribed activity disagree with official definitions. We see, further, that some acts that, by commonly recognized standards, clearly ought to be defined as deviant are not defined that way by anyone. We see that enforcers of law and morality often temporize, allowing some acts to go undetected and unpunished because it would be too much trouble to pursue the matter, because they have limited resources and can't pursue everyone, because the wrongdoer has sufficient power to protect himself from their incursions, because they have been paid to look the other way. If a sociologist looks for neat categories of crime and deviance and expects to be able to tell clearly when someone has committed one of these acts, so that he can look for its correlates, he finds all these anomalies troublesome. He may hope that they will be disposed of by improved techniques of data gathering and analysis. The long history of attempts to provide those devices ought to tell us the hope is misplaced; that area of human endeavour will not support a belief in the inevitability of progress. The trouble is not technical. It is theoretical. We can construct workable definitions either of particular actions people might commit or of particular categories of deviance as the world (especially but not only the authorities) defines them. But we cannot make the two coincide completely, because they do not coincide completely empirically. They do not coincide empirically because they belong to two distinct, though overlapping, systems of collective action. One consists of the people who cooperate to produce the act in question. The other consists of the people who cooperate in the drama of morality by which 'wrongdoing' is discovered and dealt with, whether that procedure is formal and legal or quite informal. Much of the heated discussion over interactionist theories comes from an equivocation in which the word deviance is made to stand for two distinct processes taking place in those two systems (a good example is Alvarez 1968). On the one hand, some analysts want 'deviance' to mean acts which, to any 'reasonable' member of a society or by some agreed-on definition (such as violation of an allegedly existent rule, statistical rarity, or psychological pathology), are wrong. They want to focus on the system of action in which those acts occur. The same analysts also want to apply the word to the

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people who are apprehended and treated as having committed that act. In this case, they want to focus on the system of action in which those judgements occur. This equivocation on the term causes no inaccuracy if and only if those who commit the act and those apprehended are the same. We know they are not. Therefore, if we take as our unit of study those who committed the act (assuming we can identify them) we necessarily include some who have not been apprehended and labelled; if we take as our unit those apprehended and labelled we necessarily include some who never committed the act but were treated as if they had (Kitsuse and Cicourel 1963). Neither alternative pleases. What interactional theorists have done is to treat the two systems as distinct, noting whatever overlap and interaction occurs between them, but not assuming their occurrence. Thus, one can study the genesis of drug use, as Lindesmith (1968) and I did, and deal with aetiological questions, never supposing, however, that what the people studied do has any necessary connexion with a generalized quality of deviance. Or one can, as many recent studies have done (e.g. Gusfield 1963), study the drama of moral rhetoric and action in which imputations of deviance are made, accepted, rejected, and fought over. The chief effect of interactionist theory has been to focus attention on that drama as an object of study and especially to focus on some relatively unstudied participants in it, those sufficiently powerful to make their imputations of deviance stick: police, courts, physicians, school officials, and parents. I intended my own original formulations to emphasize the logical independence of acts and the judgements people made of them. That formulation, however, contained ambiguities that bordered on selfcontradiction, especially in connexion with the notion of 'secret deviance'.2 Examining those ambiguities and some possible resolutions of them shows us that fruitful development of the theory probably lies in a more detailed analysis than we have yet made of deviance as collective action. If we begin by saying that an act is deviant when it is so defined, what can it mean to call an act an instance of secret deviance? Since no one has defined it as deviant it cannot, by definition, be deviant; but 'secret' indicates that we know it is deviant, even if no one else does. Lorber (1967) partially resolved this paradox by suggesting that in an important class of cases the actor himself defined what he did as deviant, even though he managed to keep others from finding out

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about it, either believing that it was really deviant or recognizing that others would believe that. But what if the actor failed to make that definition? What if, even more telling, there were no acts that scientists would recognize as capable of being so defined? (I have in mind here such offences as witchcraft (Selby, in press); we cannot imagine a case of a secret witch, since we 'know' that no one can actually copulate with the Devil or summon demons.) In neither case can we count on self-definition to resolve the paradox. But we can extend Lorber's idea by seeing that it implies a procedure which, were it applied by the appropriate people, would lead them to make such a judgement, given the 'facts' of the particular case. People who believe in witches have ways of deciding when an act of witchcraft has been committed. We may know enough about the circumstances to know that, if those people use such methods, what they discover will lead them to conclude that witchcraft has occurred. In the case of less imaginary offences, we may know, for instance, that a person has in his pocket materials which, should the police search him, would make him liable to a charge of possession of drugs. In other words, secret deviance consists of being vulnerable to the commonly used procedures for discovering deviance of a particular kind, of being in a position where it will be easy to make the definition stick. What makes this distinctively collective is the collectively accepted character of the procedures of discovery and proof. Even with this addition, difficulties remain. In another important class of cases - the construction of rules ex post facto - there can have been no secret deviance because the rule did not exist until after the act in question was alleged to have been committed (Katz 1972). Case-finding procedures might elicit the facts someone later uses to prove commission of a deviant act, but the person was not deviant, secret or otherwise, because the rule did not exist. Yet he may well be defined as deviant, perhaps when what he may have done becomes public and someone decides that if there was no rule against it, there ought to be. Was he then secretly deviant before? The paradox resolves itself when we recognize that, like all other forms of collective activity, the acts and definitions in the drama of deviance take place over time, and differ from one time to the next. Definitions of behaviour occur sequentially and an act may be defined as non-deviant at ti and deviant at t2 without implying that it was both simultaneously. Making use of our previous result, we see that

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an act might not be secretly deviant at h because no procedure then in use would produce evidence of an act competent judges would take to be deviant. The same act might be secretly deviant at t2 because, a new rule having been made in the interim, a procedure now existed which would allow that determination. The last formulation reminds us of the important role power plays in interactionist theories of deviance (Horowitz and Liebowitz 1968). Under what circumstances do we make and enforce ex post facto rules? I think empirical investigation will show that it occurs when one party to a relationship is disproportionately powerful, so that he can enforce his will over others' objections, but wishes to maintain an appearance of justice and rationality. This characteristically occurs in the relations of parents and children, and in similarly paternalistic arrangements, such as welfare worker and client, or teacher and student. By viewing deviance as a form of collective activity, to be investigated in all its facets like any other form of collective activity, we see that the object of our study is not an isolated act whose origin we are to discover. Rather, the act alleged to occur, when it has occurred, takes place in a complex network of acts involving others, and takes on some of that complexity because of the way various people and groups define it. The lesson applies to our studies of every other area of social life. Learning it will not free us from error fully, however, for our own theories and methods present persistent sources of trouble. DEMYSTIFYING DEVIANCE

Sociologists have made trouble for themselves by their virtually unbreakable habit of making common events and experiences mysterious. I remember - one of my first experiences in graduate school - Ernest Burgess warning our class of novices against being led astray by common sense. At the same time, Everett Hughes enjoined us to pay close attention to what we could see and hear with our own eyes and ears. Some of us thought there might be a contradiction between the two imperatives, but suppressed our worry to save our sanity. Both injunctions have a substantial kernel of truth. Common sense, in one of its meanings, can delude us. That common sense is the traditional wisdom of the tribe, the melange of 'what everybody knows' that children learn as they grow up, the stereotypes of every-

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day life. It includes social science generalizations about the nature of social phenomena, correlations between social categories (e.g. between race and crime, or class and intelligence), and the aetiology of problematic social conditions like poverty and war. Common sense generalizations resemble those of social science in formal structure; they differ largely in their immunity to contradictory observations. Social science generalizations, in principle and often in fact, change when new observations show them incorrect. Common sense generalizations don't. This kind of common sense, particularly because its errors are not random, favours established institutions. Another meaning of common sense suggests that the common man, his head unencumbered by fancy theories and abstract professorial notions, can at least see what is right there in front of his nose. Philosophies as disparate as pragmatism and Zen enshrine a respect for the common man's ability to see, with Sancho Panza, that a windmill is really a windmill. To think it a knight on horseback is, however you look at it, a real mistake. Sociologists often ignore the injunctions of this version of common sense. We may not turn windmills into knights. But we often turn collective activity - people doing things together, to be plain - into abstract nouns whose connexion to people doing things together is tenuous. We then typically lose interest in the more mundane things people are actually doing. We ignore what we see because it is not abstract and chase after the invisible 'forces' and 'conditions' we have learned to think sociology is all about. Novice sociologists frequently have great trouble doing field research because they do not recognize sociology, as they have read it, in the human activity they see all around them. They spend eight hours observing a factory or a school and return with two pages of notes and the explanation that 'nothing much happened'. They mean that they observed no instances of anomie or stratification or bureaucracy or any of the other conventional sociological topics. They don't see that we invented those terms to enable us to deal conveniently with a number of instances of people doing things together which we have decided are sufficiently alike in specific ways for us to treat them as the same for analytic purposes. Disdaining common sense, novices ignore what happens all around them. Failing to record the details of everyday life in their notes, they cannot use them to study such abstractions as anomie or others they might themselves construct. An important methodological problem is to systematize the

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procedure by which we move from an appreciation of ethnographic detail to concepts useful in addressing problems we have come to our research with or become aware of as it progresses. The people sociologists study, conversely, often have trouble recognizing themselves and their activities in the sociological reports written about them. We ought to worry about that more than we do. We should not expect laymen to make our analyses for us. But neither should we ignore those matters laymen habitually take into account when we describe or make assumptions about how they carry on their activities. Many theories of deviance posit, implicitly or explicitly, that a particular set of attitudes underlies commission of some potentially rule-violating act, even though the theory bases itself on data (such as official records) which cannot speak to this point. Consider the descriptions of the actor's state of mind found in theorizing about anomie, from Durkheim through Merton to Cloward and Ohlin. If the people studied cannot recognize themselves in those descriptions without coaching, we should pay attention. It is not only the descriptions of their own mental states actors cannot recognize. They often cannot recognize the acts they are supposed to have engaged in, because the sociologist has not observed those acts closely or paid any attention to their details when he has. The omission has serious results. It makes it impossible for us to put the real contingencies of action into our theories, to make them take account of the constraints and opportunities actually present. We may find ourselves theorizing about activities which never occur in the way we imagine. If we look closely at what we observe we will very likely see the matters to which interactionist theory calls attention. We see that people who engage in acts conventionally thought deviant are not motivated by mysterious, unknowable forces. They do what they do for much the same reasons that justify more ordinary activities. We see that social rules, far from being fixed and immutable, are continually constructed anew in every situation, to suit the convenience, will, and power position of various participants. We see that activities thought deviant often require elaborate networks of cooperation, such as could hardly be sustained by people suffering from disabling mental difficulties. Interactionist theory may be an almost inevitable consequence of submitting our theories of deviance to the editing of close observation of the things they purport to be about.

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Insofar as both common sense and science enjoin us to look at things closely before we start theorizing about them, obedience to the injunction produces a complex theory that takes into account the actions and reactions of everyone involved in episodes of deviance. It leaves for empirical determination (instead of settling by assumption) such matters as whether the alleged acts actually occurred, and whether official reports are accurate and to what degree. In consequence (and a source of great difficulty to older styles of deviance research) great doubt arises as to the utility of the various statistical series and official records researchers have been accustomed to use. I will not rehearse the major criticisms of official records, the defences that have been made of them, and the new uses suggested for them, but simply note that a closer look at people acting together has made us aware that records are also produced by people acting together and must be understood in that context. (See Kitsuse and Cicourel 1963; Bittner and Garfinkel 1967; Cicourel 1968; Biderman and Reiss 1967; Douglas 1967.) The connexion between an interactionist theory of deviance and a reliance on intensive field observation as a major method of data gathering can hardly be accidental. On the other hand, I think it is not a necessary connexion. Interactionist theory grows out of a frame of mind that takes the commonplace seriously and will not settle for mysterious invisible forces as explanatory mechanisms. That frame of mind undoubtedly flourishes when one continually confronts the details of the things one proposes to explain in all their complexity. It is easier to construct mythical wrongdoers, and give them whatever qualities go best with our hypothesized explanations, if we have only such fragments of fact as we might find in an official folder or in the answers to a questionnaire. As Gaining (1965) has suggested in another connexion, mythical constructs cannot defend themselves against the onslaught of contrary fact produced by intimate acquaintance. Some people have noted that too great an emphasis on first-hand observation may cause us unintentionally to limit ourselves to those groups and sites we can easily get access to, thus failing to study the powerful people and groups who can defend themselves against our incursions. In this way, preference for an observational technique could work against the theoretical recommendation to study all parties to the drama of deviance, and undo some of the advantages of an interactionist approach. We can guard against this danger both by

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varying our methods and by being more ingenious in our use of observational techniques. Mills (1956), among others, demonstrates the variety of methods that can be used to study the powerful, especially the study of those documents that become public through inadvertence, by virtue of the workings of governmental agencies, or because the powerful sometimes fight among themselves and provide data for us when they do. Similarly, we can make use of techniques of unobtrusive entry and accidental access (Becker and Mack 1971) to gather direct observational data. (Relevant problems of access and sampling are discussed in several papers in Habenstein 1970.) Sociologists have generally been reluctant to take the close look I have recommended here at what sits in front of their noses. That reluctance has especially infected deviance studies. Overcoming it has produced the same gain in studies of deviance that similar moves produced in studies of industry, education, and communities. It also increased the moral complexity of our theories and research, and I turn to those problems now. MORAL P R O B L E M S

Moral problems arise in all sociological research but are especially provocatively posed by interactionist theories of deviance. Moral criticism has come from the political centre and beyond, from the political Left, and from left field. Interactionist theories have been accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, be the enemy those who would upset the stability of the existing order or the Establishment. They have been accused of openly espousing unconventional norms, of refusing to support anti-Establishment positions, and (the left field position) of appearing to support anti-Establishment causes while subtly favouring the status quo. Interactionist theories as subversive Many critics (not necessarily conservative, though some are) believe that interactionist theories of deviance openly or covertly attack conventional morality, wilfully refusing to accept its definitions of what is and is not deviant and calling into question the assumptions on which conventional organizations dealing with deviance operate. These critics think the principled determination to treat official and conventional viewpoints as things to be studied, instead of accepting

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them as fact or self-evident truth, a mischievous assault on the social order (Bordua 1967). Consider again the criticism that 'labelling theory' irremediably confuses what it proposed to explain with its explanation. If it treats deviance solely as a matter of definition by those who react to it but simultaneously posits a deviant-something-to-which-they-react, then the deviance must somehow exist prior to the reaction. Some critics do not focus on the real logical difficulties I considered earlier, but rather insist that there must be some quality of an act that can be taken as deviant, independent of anyone's reaction. They usually find that quality in the act's violation of an agreed-on rule (e.g. Gibbs 1966, Alvarez 1968). They think theorists who will not admit that some acts are really deviant, at least in the sense of rule violation, perverse. But interactionist theorists, not especially perverse, have emphasized the independence of act and reaction, creating a property space of four cells by combining the commission or non-commission of a potentially deviant act with a deviance-defining reaction or its absence. What seems to have bothered critics in this procedure is that the term deviance has then more often been applied to the pair of cells characterized by acts defined as deviant, whether the alleged acts occurred or not. The choice probably reflects the analysts' unwillingness to seem to approve the derogatory classification of the potentially deviant acts. The unwillingness arises out of their recognition of the intrinsically situational character of rules, which exist only in the perpetually renewed consensus of one situation after another rather than as persisting specific embodiments of basic values (see the concept of 'negotiated order' in Strauss, et al. 1964). In any event, had interactionists typically called deviant the commission of potentially deviant acts, whatever the reaction to them, fewer would have complained. Many of us used the term loosely to cover all three cases in which deviance might be implicated: commission of a potentially deviant act without deviance-defining, deviance-defining without commission, and their coexistence. That sloppiness deserves criticism, but the important point is that no one of these is itself the whole story of deviance. That lies in the interaction between all the parties involved. To return to the larger point, the real attack on the social order is to insist that all parties involved are fit objects of study. The earlier definition of the field of deviance as the study of people alleged to

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have violated rules respected that order by exempting the creators and enforcers of those rules from study. To be exempted from study means that one's claims, theories, and statements of fact are not subjected to critical scrutiny (Becker 1967). The interactionist reluctance to accept conventional theories has led to a critical attitude toward the assertions of conventional authority and morality, and to a hostility toward interactionist analyses on the part of their spokesmen and defenders. Thus, police officials assert that most policemen are honest except for the few rotten apples found in every barrel. Sociological investigations, showing that police misbehaviour results from structural imperatives built into the organization of police work, provoke 'defences' of the police against social scientists. Similarly, the assertion that mental illness is a matter of social definition (e.g. Scheff 1966) provokes the reply that people in mental hospitals are really sick (Gove 19703, I97ob), a reply which misses the point of the definitional argument but hits at the implied moral one by suggesting that psychiatrists, after all, know what they're doing. Interactionist theories as Establishmentarian For the reasons just suggested, interactionist theories look (and are) rather Left. Intentionally or otherwise, they are corrosive of conventional modes of thought and established institutions. Nevertheless, the Left has criticized those theories, and in a way that mirrors more middle-of-the-road objections.3 Just as people who approve existing institutions dislike the way interactionist theories call their assumptions and legitimacy into question, people who think existing institutions rotten complain that interactionist theories fail to say that those institutions are rotten. Both complain of an ambiguous moral stance, locating the trouble in an unfortunate 'value-free' ideology which pretends to neutrality while in fact espousing either a 'radical' or 'merely liberal' ideology, as the case may be (Mankoff 1970). The trouble evidently comes from some equivocation over the notion of being value-free. I take it that all social scientists agree that, given a question and a method of reaching an answer, any scientist, whatever his political or other values, should arrive at much the same answer, an answer given by the world of recalcitrant fact that is 'out there' whatever we think about it. Insofar as a Left wing sociologist proposes to base political action on his own or others' research find-

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ings, he had better strive for this and hope it can be done. Otherwise, his actions may fail because of what his values prevented him from seeing. That simple formulation cannot be objectionable. But all social scientists miss that goal to some degree, and the missing may result in one way or another from the scientist's values. We may miscount black citizens in the census because we do not think it worth the extra trouble it may take, given their life-style, to look for them. We may fail to investigate police corruption because we think it unlikely that it exists - or because it would be unseemly to call attention to it if it did. We may suggest that we can understand political protest by examining the personalities of protestors, thereby implying that the institutions they protest against play no part in the development of their acts of dissidence. We may do work that will be helpful to authorities in dealing with troublemakers, as would be the case were we to discover correlates of radicalism that school authorities, employers, and police could use to weed out potential troublemakers. The moral questions become more pressing as we move from the technical notion of value freedom to the choice of problems, ways of stating problems and uses to which findings can be put. Some of these troubles follow from sociology's failure to take itself seriously by following the injunction almost every version of our basic theory contains, but which is perhaps clearest in interactionist theory (Blumer 1967): to study all the parties to a situation and their relationships. Following that injunction automatically leads us to police corruption where it exists and has anything to do with what we are studying. Following it, we could not study political protest as though it involved only the protesters. A value-free sociology which rigorously followed its own precepts would not trouble the Left this way. The question of the use of the findings cannot be settled so easily, however. Nor can the question which has plagued many professional associations as to whether professional sociologists have any right to a special opinion, by virtue of being sociologists, on moral and political questions. We can see that they might, where it is warranted, claim expertise with respect to the consequences of various policies. And we can see that they might be especially concerned about whose interests they were serving. But we find it harder to substantiate the assertion that the sociologist, by virtue of his science, has any special knowledge or claim on our attention with respect to moral questions. Why? Because science, we say, is value-free. We then go on to make

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tenuous distinctions, impossible to maintain in practice, between the sociologist as scientist and the sociologist as citizen. For we all agree that the citizen-sociologist not only may take moral positions, but cannot avoid doing so. We cannot maintain these distinctions in practice because, as Edel4 (1955) has so tellingly argued, ascertaining facts, constructing scientific theories and arriving at ethical judgements cannot be so neatly separated. While you cannot logically deduce what ought to be done from premises about what is, responsible ethical judgements depend very much on our assessment of the way the world and its components are constructed, how they work, what they are capable of. Those assessments rest on good scientific work. They colour our ethical decisions by making us see the full moral complexity of what we study, the particular way our general ethical commitments are embodied in a given situation, how our contingent ethical commitments to values like justice, health, mercy, or reason intersect, converge and conflict. Our work speaks continuously to ethical questions. It is continually informed and directed by our ethical concerns. We don't want our values to interfere with our assessment of the validity of our propositions about social life, but we cannot help their influencing our choice of propositions to investigate or the uses to which we put our findings. Nor should we mind that they do. Simultaneously, our ethical judgements cannot help being influenced by the increasing knowledge our scientific work confronts them with. Science and ethics interpenetrate. Take marihuana use. Our judgement must change when we shift our view of it from a picture of unbridled indulgence in perverse pleasure to one of a merciless psychic compulsion to tranquillize inner conflict, as psychiatric theories and data proposed. Our judgement changes again when we view it as a relatively harmless recreation whose worst consequences, social and individual, seem to arise from how non-users react to the users they discover. (See Kaplan 1970; Goode 1970.) Those of us concerned with maximizing human freedom will now concentrate on the question of the relative harm caused by the indulgence of pleasure as opposed to its repression. We might study the operation of enforcement systems, the development of vested interests among the bureaucrats and entrepreneurs who operate them, the forces that divert them from their intended aims, the irrelevance of their intended aims to the situations and consequences of use - all this by way of pursuing the value of freedom. We would

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be prepared to discover that the premises on which our inquiries were based were incorrect, that enforcement systems operated efficiently and honestly to deal with serious troubles for individuals and communities, and would conduct our research so as to make it possible to discover that if it were so. Sociologists beginning from other ethical positions might investigate the pressures of peers, mass media, or others, that lead to drug use and thus to the breakdown of social order via the mechanism of release from moral constraints. They might look into the subtle way those pressures force people to use drugs and thus limit freedom in the general way feared by earlier psychological theories, even though the mechanism involved differed. They too would be prepared to discover their premises and hypotheses invalid. Sociologists who failed to look into the matter at all would thereby indicate and enact their belief that it was morally proper to ignore it. Interacdonist theories of deviance come under fire when critics find this complex picture of the relations between scientific research and ethical judgement overly subtle and insufficiently forthright. Just as centrist critics complain of interactionist theory's perverse unwillingness to acknowledge that rape or robbery or murder are really deviant, so Left critics complain that it refuses to recognize that class oppression, racial discrimination, and imperialism are really deviant, or that poverty and injustice are really social problems, however people define them (Mankoff 1968). Both sides want to see their ethical preconceptions built into scientific work in the form of uninspected factual assertions relying on the implicit use of ethical judgements about which there is a high degree of consensus. Thus, if I say that rape is really deviant or imperialism really a social problem, I imply that these phenomena have certain empirical characteristics which, we would all agree, make them reprehensible. We might, by our studies, be able to establish just that; but we are very often asked to accept it by definition. Defining something as deviant or a social problem makes the empirical demonstration unnecessary and protects us from discovering that our preconception is incorrect (when the world isn't as we imagine it). When we protect our ethical judgements from empirical tests by enshrining them in definitions we commit the error of sentimentalism.5 Scientists often wish to make it appear that some complicated combination of sociological theories, scientific evidence, and ethical judgements is really no more than a simple matter of definition.

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Scientists who have made strong value commitments of whatever political or moral variety seem especially likely to want that. Why do people want to disguise their morals as science? Most likely, they realize or intuit the contemporary rhetorical advantage of not having to admit that it is 'only a moral judgement' one is making and pretending instead that it is a scientific finding. All parties to any major social and moral controversy will attempt to gain that advantage and present their moral position as so axiomatic that it can be built into the presuppositions of their theory, research, and political dogma without question. I suggest to the Left, whose sympathies I share, that we should attack injustice and oppression directly and openly, rather than pretend that the judgement that such things are evil is somehow deducible from sociological first principles or warranted by empirical findings alone. Our ethical dispositions and judgements, while they properly play a part in our scientific work, should play a different part in the various activities that constitute a sociologist's work. When we test our hypotheses and propositions against empirical evidence we try to minimize their influence, fearing that wishful thinking will colour our conclusions. When we select problems for research, however, we take into account (along with such practical matters as our ability to gain access and such theoretical concerns as the likelihood of achieving powerful general conclusions) the bearing of our potential findings on ethical problems we care about. We want to find out whether our initial judgements are correct, what possibilities of action are open to us and to other actors in the situation, what good might be accomplished with the knowledge we hope to gather. When we decide what actions to take on the basis of our findings, and when we decide who to give advice to, our ethical commitments clearly dominate our choices, though we still want to be accurate in our assessment of the consequences of any such act. Finally, we sometimes begin with the actions we want to take and the people we want to help as a basis for choosing problems and methods. The criticism from Left field Some critics (Gouldner 1968) have argued that interactionist theories of deviance, while appearing anti-Establishment, in fact support the Establishment by attacking lower-level functionaries of oppressive institutions, leaving the higher-ups responsible for the oppression

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unscathed and indeed assisting them by blowing the whistle on their unruly underlings. In the present state of our knowledge, we can only deal with such questions speculatively. No evidence has been adduced to support the criticism, nor could one readily find evidence to refute it. The criticism speaks to the general moral thrust of interactionist theories, as well as to factual questions of the consequences of research and theorizing, and can be challenged on that ground. Interactionist theories of deviance, like interactionist theories generally, pay attention to how social actors define each other and their environments. They pay particular attention to differentials in the power to define, in the way one group achieves and uses the power to define how other groups will be regarded, understood, and treated. Elites, ruling classes, bosses, adults, men, Caucasians superordinate groups generally - maintain their power as much by controlling how people define the world, its components and possibilities as by the use of more primitive forms of control. They may use more primitive modes of control to establish a hegemony and moral legitimacy based on control of definitions and labels, but the latter works more smoothly and costs less. Superordinates prefer it, and the attack on hierarchy begins with an attack on definitions, labels, and conventional conceptions of who's who and what's what. History has moved us increasingly in the direction of disguised modes of control based on control of the definitions and labels applied to people. We exert control by accusing people of deviant acts of various kinds. In the United States, we indict political dissidents for using illegal drugs. Almost every modern state makes use of psychiatric diagnoses, facilities, and personnel to confine politically troublesome types as varied as Ezra Pound or Z. A. Medvedev (Szasz 1965). When we study how moral entrepreneurs get rules made and how enforcers apply those rules in particular cases, we study the way superordinates of every description maintain their position. Put another way, we study some of the forms of oppression and the means by which oppression achieves the status of being 'normal', 'everyday', and legitimate. Most research on deviance in the interactionist mode has concentrated on the immediate participants in localized dramas of deviance: those who engage in various forms of crime and vice and those enforcers they meet with in their daily round. We have tended more to study policemen, mental hospital attendants, prison guards, psy-

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chiatrists, and the like, and less their superiors or their superiors' superiors. (There are exceptions: Messinger's (1969) study of prison administration, Dalton's (1959) study of industrial managers, Skolnick's (1969) application of deviance theory to the politics of protest in the United States.) But the focus on lower-level authorities not only is neither exclusive nor inevitable, its actual effect is to cast doubt on higher level authorities who are responsible for the actions of their subordinates. They may explicitly order those actions, order them in ^Esopian language so that they can deny having done it if necessary, or simply allow them to occur through incompetence or oversight. If the actions are reprehensible, higher authorities, one way or another, share in the blame. Even if no general is ever brought to trial for the killings at My Lai, those events shook such faith as people had in the moral correctness of the military action in Vietnam and of those at the highest levels responsible for it. Similarly, when we understand how school psychiatrists operate as agents of school officials rather than of their patients (Szasz 1967), we lose some of whatever faith we had in the institutions of conventional psychiatry. The rapidity with which official spokesmen at the highest levels move to counter analyses of even the lowest level corruption, incompetence, or injustice should let us see at least as clearly as they do the degree to which those analyses attack institutions as well as their agents, superiors as well as their subordinates. Such research has special moral sting to it when it allows us to inspect the practice of an institution in the light of its own professed aims and its own preferred descriptions of what it is about. Because of that, our work invariably has a critical thrust when it produces anything that can be construed as an evaluation of the operations of a society or any of its parts. CONCLUSION The interactionist approach to deviance has served not only to clarify the phenomena that have conventionally been studied under that rubric but also to complicate our moral view of them. The interactionist approach begins that double task of clarification and complication by making sociologists aware that a wider range of people and events need to be included in our study of deviant phenomena, by sensitizing us to the importance of a wider range of fact. We study all the participants in these moral dramas, accusers as well as accused,

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offering a conventional exemption from our professional inquiries to no one, no matter how respectable or highly placed. We look carefully at the actual activities in question, attempting to understand the contingencies of action for everyone concerned. We accept no invocation of mysterious forces at work in the drama of deviance, respecting that version of common sense which focuses our attention on what we can see plainly as well as on those events and interests which require more subtle data-gathering and theoretical analysis. At a second level, the interactionist approach shows sociologists that a major element in every aspect of the drama of deviance is the imposition of definitions - of situations, acts, and people - by those powerful enough or sufficiently legitimated to be able to do so. A full understanding requires the thorough study of those definitions and the processes by which they develop and attain legitimacy and takenfor-grantedness. Both these levels of analysis give the interactionist approach, under present circumstances, a radical character. Interactionist analyses, by making moral entrepreneurs objects of study as well as those they seek to control, violate society's hierarchy of credibility. They question the monopoly on the truth and the 'whole story' claimed by those in positions of power and authority. They suggest that we need to discover the truth about allegedly deviant phenomena for ourselves, instead of relying on the officially certified accounts which ought to be enough for any good citizen. They adopt a relativistic stance toward the accusations and definitions of deviance made by respectable people and constituted authority, treating them as the raw material of social science analysis rather than as statements of unquestioned moral truths. Interactionist analyses of deviant phenomena become radical in a final sense by being treated as radical by conventional authorities. When authorities, political and otherwise, wield power in part by obfuscation and mystification, a science which makes things clearer inevitably attacks the bases of that power. The authorities whose institutions and jurisdictions become the object of interactionist analyses attack those analyses for their 'biases', their failure to accept traditional wisdom and values, their destructive effect on public order. These consequences of interactionist analysis complicate our moral position as scientists by the very act of clarifying what is going on in such moral arenas as courts, hospitals, schools, and prisons. They make it impossible to ignore the moral implications of our work.

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Even if we want to do that, those authorities who feel themselves under attack destroy the illusion of a neutral science by insisting that we are responsible for those implications - as of course we are. This discussion of recent developments in deviance theory makes a beginning on a consideration of the moral import of contemporary sociology. We can make further progress on that knotty problem by similar examinations in such other fields of sociology as the study of educational institutions, health services, the military, industry and business, and all the other areas in which sociologists clarify the activities of people in society and thereby affect our moral evaluation of those activities and institutions.

Notes 1 This article is reprinted from my book Outsiders (New York: The Free Press. Revised edition 1973) and is copyright by Howard S. Becker. A number of friends have provided helpful comments on an earlier draft. I especially want to thank Eliot Freidson, Blanche Geer, Irving Louis Horowitz, and John I. Kitsuse. 2 Jack Katz and John I. Kitsuse helped me greatly in the re-analysis of the problem of secret deviance. 3 Richard Berk has suggested to me that the chronic difficulty in deciding who is 'Left' or 'radical' leads to a situation in which the criticisms I am discussing, while they may come from people who so identify themselves and are so identified by some others, nevertheless do not flow out of a Marxist analysis of society that has perhaps a better claim to the label. He suggests further that such a line of criticism might focus on the degree to which it is possible to establish a continuity between the analysis of society-wide class groupings characteristic of that tradition and the more intensive study of smaller units characteristic of interactionist theories of deviance. I think the continuity exists, but am not in a position to argue the point analytically at the present time. 4 Irving Louis Horowitz prompted my belated acquaintance with the work of Abraham Edel. 5 At least one critic (Gouldner 1968) has misread my criticism of sentimentalism as a fear of emotion. The definition given in the text of 'Whose Side Are We On?' (Becker 1967: 245) makes my actual meaning quite clear: 'We are sentimental, especially, when our reason is that we would prefer not to know what is going on, if to know would be to violate some sympathy whose existence we may not even be aware of.'

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References AKERS, R. L. 1968. Problems in the Sociology of Deviance: Social Definitions and Behavior. Social Forces 46 (June): 455-65. ALVAREZ, R. 1968. Informal Reactions to Deviance in Simulated Work Organizations: A Laboratory Experiment. American Sociological Review 33 (December): 895-911. BECKER, H. s. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. 1967. Whose Side Are We On ? Social Problems 14 (Winter): 239-47. BECKER, H. s. & MACK, RAYMOND w. 1971. Unobtrusive Entry and Accidental Access to Field Data. Unpublished paper presented at a conference on Methodological Problems in Comparative Sociological Research, Institute for Comparative Sociology, Indiana University. BIDERMAN, A. D. & REiss, A. j., Jr. 1967. On Exploring the Dark Figure. The Annals 374 (November): 1-15. BITTNER, E. & GARFINKEL, H. 1967. 'Good' Organizational Reasons for 'Bad' Clinic Records. In H. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. BLUMER, H. 1966. Sociological Implications of the Thought of George Herbert Mead. American Journal of Sociology 71 (March): 535-44. 1967. Threats From Agency-Determined Research: The Case of Camelot. In I. L. Horowitz, editor, The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, pp. 153-74. 1969. The Methodological Position of Symbolic Interactionism. In Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1-60. BORDUA, D. 1967. Recent Trends: Deviant Behavior and Social Control. The Annals 369 (January): 149-63. CICOUREL, A. v. 1968. The Social Organization of Juvenile Justice. New York: Wiley. COHEN, A. K. 1965. The Sociology of the Deviant Act: Anomie Theory and Beyond. American Sociological Review 30 (February): 5-14. 1966. Deviance and Control. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1968. Deviant Behavior. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 4, 148-55. COHEN, s. (ed.) 1971. Images of Deviance. Harmondsworth: Penguin. DALTON, M. 1959. Men Who Manage. New York: Wiley. DOUGLAS, J. 1967. The Social Meanings of Suicide. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1970. Deviance and Respectability: the Social Construction of Moral Meanings. In J. Douglas (ed.), Deviance and Respectability. New York: Basic Books.

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EDEL, A. 1955. Ethical Judgment: the Uses of Science in Ethics. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. ERIKSON, K. T. 1962. Notes on the Sociology of Deviance. Social Problems 9: 307-14. 1966. Wayward Puritans. New York: Wiley. GALTUNG, j. 1966. Socio-cultural factors and the development of Sociology in Latin America. Informations sur les Sciences sociales 5 (September): 7-33. GARFINKEL, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. GIBBS, j. 1966. Conceptions of Deviant Behavior: The Old and the New. Pacific Sociological Review 9 (Spring): 9-14. GOODE, E. 1970. The Marihuana Smokers. New York: Basic Books. GOULDNER, A. w. 1968. The Sociologist as Partisan: Sociology and the Welfare State. The American Sociologist 3 (May): 103-16. GOVE, w. 19703. Societal Reaction as an Explanation of Mental Illness: An Evaluation. American Sociological Review 35 (October): 873-84. I970b. Who is Hospitalized: A Critical Review of Some Sociological Studies of Mental Illness. Journal of Health and Social Behavior II (December): 294-303. GUSFIELD, j. 1963. Symbolic Crusade. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. HABENSTEIN, R. w. (ed.) 1970. Pathways to Data: Field Methods for Studying Ongoing Social Organizations. Chicago: Aldine. HOROWITZ, i. L. & LIEBOWITZ, M. 1968. Social Deviance and Political Marginality: Toward a Redefinition of the Relation Between Sociology and Politics. Social Problems 15 (Winter): 280-96. HUMPHREYS, L. 1970. Tearoom Trade. Chicago: Aldine. KAPLAN, j. 1970. Marihuana: The New Prohibition. New York: World. KATZ, j. 1972. Deviance, Charisma and Rule-defined Behavior. Social Problems 20 (Winter): 186-202. KITS USE, j. i. 1962. Societal Reaction to Deviant Behavior: Problems of Theory and Method. Social Problems 9 (Winter): 247-56. KITSUSE, j. i. & CICOUREL, A. v. 1963. A Note on the Uses of Official Statistics. Social Problems n (Fall): 131-9. LEMERT, E. 1951. Social Pathology. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1967. Human Deviance, Social Problems, and Social Control. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. LINDESMITH, A. R. 1968. Addiction and Opiates. Chicago: Aldine. LORBER, j. 1967. Deviance and Performance: The Case of Illness. Social Problems 14 (Winter): 302-10. MANKOFF, M. 1968. On Alienation, Structural Strain, and Deviancy. Social Problems 16 (Summer): 114-16.

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MANKOFF, M. ipyo. Power in Advanced Capitalist Society. Social Problems 17 (Winter): 418-30. MATZA, D. 1969. Becoming Deviant. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. MEAD, G. H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press. MESSINGER, s. L. 1969. Strategies of Control. Unpublished PhD dissertation. University of California at Los Angeles. MILLS, c. WRIGHT. 1956. The Power Elite. London: Oxford University Press. RAY, M. 1961. The Cycle of Abstinence and Relapse among Heroin Addicts. Social Problems 9 (Fall): 132-40. ROY, D. 1954. Efficiency and the 'Fix': Informal Intergroup Relations in a Piecework Machine Shop. American Journal of Sociology 60 (November): 255-66. SCHEFF, T. j. 1966. Being Mentally III. Chicago: Aldine. SCHUR, E. M. 1969. Reactions to Deviance: A Critical Assessment. American Journal of Sociology 75 (November) : 309-22. SELBY, H. Not Every Man is Humble. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. SKOLNICK, j. 1969. The Politics of Protest. New York: Ballantine Books. STRAUSS, A. L., et al. 1964. Psychiatric Ideologies and Institutions. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. SZASZ, T. s. 1965. Psychiatric Justice. New York: Macmillan. - 1967. The Psychiatrist as Double Agent. Trans- Action 4 (October) : 16-24. TANNENBAUM, F. 1938. Crime and the Community. New York: Ginn.

W. G. CARSON

The sociology of crime and the emergence of criminal laws A review of some excursions into the sociology of law THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF CRIME

In his introduction to the translation of Law in Economy and Society, Max Rheinstein (1967) takes considerable pains to absolve Weber from the charge of failing to achieve what he did not set out to do, namely write a comprehensive and systematic sociology of law. According to Rheinstein, such an undertaking would include but would not be co-terminous with Weber's interest; it would 'have to comprise an investigation into the relationship between all legal and all other social phenomena' (1967: xxxix). Dauntingly broad as this specification of a comprehensive sociology of law may be, it docs something less than justice to the claims that the law and its institutions can legitimately make upon the attention of sociologists. For law is not merely something that by dint of its relationship with other social phenomena may justifiably be subjected to sociological analysis, it also converges at many points with central sociological concerns. One need only examine Durkheim's use of law to distinguish types of social solidarity or indeed, Weber's discussion of the emergence of formal rationality in law, to see that questions relating to legal organization, development, and thought hold more than passing relevance for the sociologist. Schwartz and Skolnick have summarized the close connexion in a neat set of juxtaposed statements: 'Sociology is committed to the understanding of social order; law provides the framework of formal norms within which complex societies function. Sociology concerns itself with the processes of social control and social change; legal institutions comprise a major

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W. G. Carson agency through which society seeks authoritatively to exercise its control function and to limit or direct social change. Sociology studies the forms of organisation through which men seek to accomplish their collective purposes; legal organisation provides a fascinating mixture of purposive action and unanticipated consequence.' (Schwartz and Skolnick 1970: 3)

Given the immense potential of this subject, not to mention its formidable classical antecedents, the sociology of law has been surprisingly slow to develop. Only in the last two decades or so has it begun to flourish in the United States as a professional sociological undertaking rather than as an offshoot, albeit an invaluable one, of legal philosophy and legal realism (Skolnick 1965). How successfully it has developed in that country from what Selznick (1960) depicts as a 'primitive or missionary stage' into a second phase which ideally involves 'a double intellectual commitment, to problems of greatest theoretical concern in sociology and to problems that are truly important to the legal order itself', still remains to be seen. In Britain, however, we have scarcely begun and consequently have still to face the whole gamut of dangers and inviting distractions which confront any newly emergent subject in the social sciences. More specifically, there is a danger that in the current climate the sociology of law will become prematurely harnessed to the demands of immediate legal applicability and will not be 'effectively guided by significant theoretical concerns or even by matters of the greatest long run importance to the client himself (Selznick 1960: 525). The plight from which British criminology is still extricating itself could all too easily become the fate of the sociology of law. Although, as I have already suggested, the analysis of law involves questions of sufficient sociological centrality to merit increased attention from sociologists in general, this paper is focused more specifically upon some important issues in the circumscribed area of the sociology of criminal law which are the particular concern of those interested in the sociology of crime and deviance. Narrower as this perspective undoubtedly is,1 there is ample precedent for suggesting that the pressing theoretical problems in the more highly developed of these two subjects frequently lead on, almost inexorably, to comparatively unexplored areas in the other. Thus for example, after some initial hesitation,2 the study of white-collar crime raised crucial questions about how and why certain

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kinds of law are enacted, confronting the investigator with the need 'to cast his analysis not only in the framework of those who break laws, but in the context of those who make laws as well' (Newman 1958: 746). More recently, the whole shift of emphasis epitomized in Erikson's assertion that 'the critical variable in the study of deviance ... is the social audience rather than the individual actor' (1964: n) has given prominence to the sociologically problematic nature of rulemaking in general and of processes whereby individuals are assigned to deviant roles. Despite the disparaging comments of those who see the use of terms like deviance as the sociologists' somewhat petulant response to a 'diffuse and complicated criminal law system, a system which they neither created nor can control' (Geis 1959: 45), the adherents of this perspective have not been particularly prone to shrink from the acknowledgement of legal implications. Increasingly, their approach to criminality becomes indistinguishable from an incipient sociology of the criminal law and of the consequences, intended and unintended, of its enforcement. It is with one of the underlying themes which in varying degrees unites these forays into the field of law that the remainder of this paper is concerned, although it is not necessarily an approach that I endorse without any qualification. CONFLICT, POWER, AND THE EMERGENCE OF C R I M I N A L LAWS

The dominant theme '... it must at once be granted that in matters of legislation men are guided in the main by their real or apparent interest. So true is this, that from the inspection of the laws of a country it is often possible to conjecture, and this without much hesitation, what is the class which holds, or has held predominant power at a given time.' (Dicey 1962 ed.: 12) Professor Dicey was neither the first nor the last observer to postulate a connexion between law, interest, and power. In recent years, however, those sociologists whose approach to crime has focused upon the problems inherent in societal reactions, upon the social construction of criminal definitions or, more broadly, upon the two-sided nature of 'criminalization' processes, have tended to favour the twin themes of conflict and power as the main organizing framework for their analyses of criminal laws. Though conceding in varying degrees

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the existence of some legislation reflecting consensus or interests transcending the particularistic concerns of identifiable social groups, on balance their emphasis is upon criminal law as mirroring diversity of interests, shifting distributions of power and the maintenance of social order through use of the state's most efficient apparatus of coercion. Thus, for example, while Turk concedes that conflict and coercion are not the sole bases of social order, he nonetheless espouses conflict as the most relevant perspective for the analysis of law, and unequivocally attributes the determination of legality to political power. For his purposes it is more useful 'to view social order as mainly a pattern of conflict rather than the expression either of consensus or of sovereign wisdom and will' (1969: 50). Similarly, William Chambliss, in his introduction to some of the best known case studies in the emergence of criminal laws, acknowledges the extremeness of the view that legal norms are 'simply a device by which persons in positions of power maintain and enhance their advantaged position by using state power to coerce the mass of the people...' (1969: 8). He alludes, moreover, to the existence of substantial consensus about the punishment of most crimes against the person, and to the passing of laws which are 'antithetical to the interests of those in power'. Nevertheless, when summarizing the evidence adduced, he is driven to conclude that 'many, if not most of the laws emerge through the efforts of vested interest groups'. Indeed, so close is the link between emergent criminal law and power that such efforts need not even be anything more than remotely activist in nature. 'More often than not,' Chambliss argues, 'the views of the groups in power will be expressed in criminal legislation simply because their perspective prevails among those who make the laws' (1969: 10). A more extreme position is adopted by Richard Quinney who sees criminal law as 'formulated and administered by those segments of society which are able to incorporate their interests into the creation and interpretation of public policy'. Far from advancing general or transcendent social concerns, according to Quinney the law secures the interests of particular segments, supporting one point of view at the expense of others. Nor is he disposed to have much dalliance with the possibility of compromise in law-making, a notion which he tells us 'is a myth perpetuated by a pluralistic model of polities' (1970: 39ff.). Influence from a more broadly-based disenchantment with func-

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tionalism aside, it is not particularly surprising that those who approach law with a prior and continuing interest in crime should adopt the kind of perspective that I have crudely outlined. For as even Durkheim acknowledged, the very existence of criminal behaviour imposes ultimate limits upon the lengths to which ideas of consensus can be taken.3 A similar point is succinctly stated by Paul Rock when he says 'law presupposes some dissent from a universal moral perspective and thereby tacitly recognises its own weakness'.4 Moreover, the recent tendency to concentrate upon relatively marginal and frequently controversial areas of criminality has possibly fostered neglect of the consensus which may still prevail in more central regions of the criminal law. Added to accumulating evidence of crime's prevalence and of its pervasiveness throughout the social structure, this tendency has encouraged us in viewing the law as bereft of any very substantial foundation in social agreement. Nor is the tendency to link the emergence of criminal laws to power a particularly surprising one. If power involves the ability of some individuals or groups to impose their will on others,5 then law with an organized and authoritative apparatus of coercion6 might seem to provide a highly expedient mechanism for its exercise. Furthermore, while provision for organized coercion without physical force may invest 'extra-state' proscriptions with the quality of law,7 the criminal law shares the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. It 'commands the people under threat of force, to obey the rules laid down by the supreme political authority' (Aubert 1958: 104). Even those most anxious to avoid the crudest extremes of the power/law relationship do not totally deny its relevance for an understanding of the substantive content of laws: 'Positive law is a product of both will and reason; the mixture is variable and unstable. Although positive law cannot be merely an expression of social power, neither is it free of that element.' (Selznick 1969: 17.) The empirical ramifications of the postulated connexion between criminal law and the intertwined social phenomena of conflict and power stretch far beyond description and analysis of the emergence of specific criminal laws. In general, the corollary of Svend Ranulf's association of the 'disinterested tendency to inflict punishment' with the social significance of the lower middle class (1964 ed.: 2) may not yet be empirically redundant in modern western societies.8 More

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specifically, the factors which determine the access of interest groups to legislative processes, the empirical differentiation of authoritative from influential elites, and the impact of institutionalized innovation in constantly restructuring the order of value satisfaction in technologically advanced societies9 are issues which have already received some attention in this context (Truman 1970; Lenski 1966; Turk 1969; Lemert 1967). But instead of pursuing these and other lines of inquiry I wish to turn now to a number of the more obvious objections, some less forceful than others, which can be raised against the conflict/power model of criminal law. Criminal laws inimical to powerful interests As I have already noted, commentators who favour the perspective focusing on power and conflict have nonetheless been alive to the existence of criminal legislation which places proscriptions upon the behaviour of groups in positions of power. Quite apart from sharing as individuals everyone else's subjugation to the general rules of criminal law, such groups appear to be singled out from time to time as the object of specific legislation governing conduct in the institutionalized spheres of their occupational behaviour. While American anti-trust legislation is probably the best known example of this, criminal liability is also imposed upon powerful interest groups in this country - though not perhaps with quite the same abandon - under a variety of statutes such as the Companies Act, the Pure Food and Drugs Act, and the Factories Act. One possible means of attempting to accommodate this apparent anomaly within the power/conflict model of criminal law is to emphasize the infrequency of criminal proceedings under such statutes, relying upon the pronounced divergence between the law in books and the law in action in these areas of criminal behaviour. Thus the contrast between the objectives of the early anti-trust movement and its actual achievements in controlling business has been characterized as so sharp as to tempt our powers of satire (Hofstadter 1965: 554).10 Equally, the extent of officially recorded violation of the Factories Acts in contemporary Britain is scarcely matched by the number of criminal prosecutions for such offences (Carson 1970: 391). Another possibility is that barriers to the efficient implementation of such laws may be built in at the legislative stage itself. Vilhelm Aubert sees such legislative compromise as part of the law's wider

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function of resolving social conflicts through a process which borrowing Thurman Arnold's honest, if pessimistic phrase - acknowledges 'the necessity of pretending to do one thing while actually doing another' (Aubert 1966: 109). Thus Aubert interprets the emergence of Norwegian price-control and rationing legislation as 'giving the ascendant group (labour) a feeling of possessing the economic power corresponding to its political supremacy'. But at the same time he admits that the legislation was directed at a Norwegian business group which, though no longer in the ascendant, still contained 'a large segment of people with high socio-economic status'; he is not therefore surprised to find traces of resistance to efficient implementation in the enforcement machinery that was provided (Aubert 1952: 269).11 Aubert's analysis alerts us to the fact that although the power/ conflict connotations of emergent criminal law cannot be ignored, they do not consist simply in the uncompromising victories of any one homogeneous elite. If, however, such barriers to enforcement can arise even when the instigators of legislation have a preponderance, if not a monopoly on power, how much more likely are they to occur when those who initiate legislative changes are relatively powerless. As Paul Rock puts it, 'although the initiative for making changes in the legal system does not always have to emanate from those in higher positions of the social structure, power can manifest itself in the way in which the fate of that initiative is resolved.' A final and less frequently acknowledged dimension of these anomalies in a criminal law system dominated by power and conflict is the possibility that statutes which overtly constrain the powerful may not, in fact, be all that antithetical to their interests. In the case of the legislation of the so-called Progressive Era in the United States, Gabriel Kolko (1967) has suggested that such a radical reinterpretation may be justified. Far from reflecting the triumph of small business over the monopolistic power of the economic giants, the legislation of the period represents, he suggests, 'the victory of big businesses in achieving the rationalization that only the federal government could provide'. While specific clauses and provisions did indeed excite opposition, Kolko argues, this should not be allowed 'to obscure the more important fact that the essential purpose and goal of any measure of importance... was not merely endorsed by key representatives of businesses involved; rather such bills were first proposed by them' (1967 ed.: 283ff.).

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An investigation which I carried out some time ago into the beginnings of factory legislation in Britain led to somewhat similar conclusions about the role of manufacturers, particularly some of the more substantial among them, in supporting and encouraging limited governmental interference in the affairs of industry through the application of criminal law.12 Of course, the emergence of this legislation has to be viewed against the wider political, social, and economic background of the first half of the nineteenth century, a period in which working-class and humanitarian movements were becoming vociferous, and one in which, moreover, issues such as factory legislation and repeal of the Corn Laws came to symbolize a very basic struggle for political dominance between well-matched interest groups. In consequence, it is not surprising that the early Factory Acts conformed more closely to Newman's characterization of regulatory laws as 'compromise bills to lessen the dissatisfaction of multiple interest groups' than to any notion of legislation as the embodiment of outright victory (1958: 750). Whatever the diversity of interests and the legislative compromises involved, however, it is clear that from the outset some leading manufacturers in the cotton industry were prepared to support some sort of legislation to control the duration and conditions of factory employment. As early as 1796, a group of Manchester doctors who were concerned about the conditions prevailing in some factories surrounding that city were able to count upon the support of certain liberal proprietors 'in proposing an application for Parliamentary aid... to establish a general system of laws for the wise, humane, and equal government of all such works' (Parliamentary Papers 1816: iii: 139). But it would be erroneous to conclude that an altruistic concern for the welfare of employees was the sole motivating factor behind this support from some manufacturers. Writing some forty years later, an astute commentator was able to discern additional possibilities: 1

Some from benevolence, some from emulation, some from shame, and more, perhaps, than all from conviction that it would actually tend to profit may follow the examples set... I believe the conviction is strengthening and spreading that it is eminently the INTEREST [sic] of a manufacturer to have a moral, sober, wellinformed, healthy and comfortable body of workers.' (Baines 1835: 483) Nor were some of the proprietors themselves unduly reticent about

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the advantages which might accrue from legislation. In 1837, Henry Ashworth, a member of one of the leading manufacturing families was able to write to Nassau W. Senior explaining that his firm had 'found so much advantage from our people being able to read and write, that... we are anxious to see a law of the nation, a general law, enforcing education on all trades...' (Senior 1837: 44). That the particularistic 'advantages' to be derived from control could lead some employers not only to acquiescence in legislation but even to some enthusiasm for efficient enforcement had not escaped the Factory Commissioners who in 1833 laconically reported: 'the necessity of the appointment of inspectors has been most urgently stated by those manufacturers who have had chiefly in mind the restriction of the hours of labour in other factories to the level of their own' (Parliamentary Papers 1833: xx: 72). It would seem then that the emergence of criminal laws apparently antithetical to the interests of powerful groups is something which should be interpreted with considerable caution. While legislative compromises and a heterogeneity of elites must indeed be allowed for, this does not mean that the existence of overt attempts to regulate the activities of powerful interest groups automatically undermines the entire power/conflict model of emergent criminal law. This is moreover a field in which there are exciting opportunities for contemporary as well as historical research. It would not be in the least surprising if, for example, investigation of the current pressure for legislation which may well impose criminal sanctions upon pollution was to reveal that the competitive interests of some large industrial combines were every bit as significant in this movement as any universal awakening to the imminence of man's self-destruction. Criminal laws irrelevant to power To postulate some connexion between the emergence of many criminal laws and factors such as conflict and power is not, at least a priori, untenable as a working hypothesis. Indeed, it can be argued that the strength of this relationship is such that its cumulative, historical effect leaves an indelible imprint upon the general tenor of the criminal laws extant at any given time. Thus, with reference to the criminal law on property, Hermann Mannheim observes: 'the history of criminal legislation in England and many other countries, shows

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that excessive prominence was given by the law to the protection of property against comparatively minor depredations, which of course means that the types of offences likely to be committed by members of the lower social classes figure more predominantly than others in criminal statutes and, therefore, also in the criminal courts and criminal statistics' (1965: 460). But there are other criminal laws the emergence of which would not, on the face of it, seem to have any immediate bearing upon dominant interests or prevailing ideologies. In particular, this might appear to be an extremely salient feature of the enactment of laws relating to morality where, more often than not, violation may seem to involve no damage to the interests of anyone other than the offender himself. How can such laws as these be fitted into the power/conflict model? The most significant contribution to the resolution of this apparent dilemma has come from Joseph Gusfield who, disavowing Durkheim's disinclination to attach significance to the conscious intentions of lawmakers and law-enforcers, has analysed the implications which the public designation of deviance may hold for the designators (Gusfield 1970). In particular, he has pointed out that such implications are not merely derivatives of the likelihood that a law will be enforced; for the very act of legislating can be symbolically significant, and this no less in the realm of morality than in any other. As Skolnick summarizes the argument, concern with a moral issue may be symbolic 'of the preservation or assertion of a style of living that represents a configuration of values ... For those who affirm a strong moral position, the capacity to regulate public morality may document their status in society...' (1970: 85ff.). That very deep-seated forms of social conflict can be relevant at this symbolic level is clear from Gusfield's own description of the wider issues at stake in the fluctuating fortunes of the American temperance movement: c

... the issue of drinking and abstinence became a politically significant focus for the conflicts between Protestant and Catholic, rural and urban, native and immigrant, middle class and lower class in American society. The political conflict lay in the efforts of an abstinent Protestant middle class to control the public affirmation of morality in drinking. Victory or defeat were consequently symbolic of the status and power of the cultures opposing each other. Legal affirmation or rejection is thus important in what it

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symbolizes as well or instead of what it controls. Even if the law was broken, it was clear whose law it was.' (1970: 67)13 The situation which Gusfield describes is not one in which the legal norm is the enunciation of any consensus within the community. Quite the reverse, he argues, it is when consensus is least attainable, when moral movements mirror a concern about threats to the values of a way of life, that legislation relating to morality is most likely to be enacted. Thus, his view of the symbolic, affirmative nature of such criminal laws adds a further dimension to the argument advanced by Ranulf who, it has been noted, paid less attention than he might have done to 'the defensive indignation of declining social formations' (1964 ed.: xii). Moreover, there is little comfort to be derived from Gusfield's argument by those who, like Lord Devlin (1965) would justify legislating for morality on the grounds that such action may be necessary to preserve society from disintegration. For the issue at stake was not disintegradon but change and a newly emergent form of integration which - with the development of counter movements - did eventually culminate in a less 'criminalized' moral status for the drinker. As H. L. A. Hart has pointed out, even if the supporters of the enforcement of morality fall back on an 'unexciting tautology depending... on the identification of society, not with the whole of its morality, but only with its central core', they would do better to 'rest their case candidly on the conservative rather than on the disintegration thesis' (Hart 1967: n). Once again, then, the anomaly of laws irrelevant to powerful interests may seem more apparent than real, a conclusion substantially borne out by Troy Duster's more recent work on the development of narcotics legislation in the United States (Duster 1970). For although the major thrust of Duster's argument is that the law itself can contribute to the emergence of meaningful moral categorizations - an issue to which we shall return later - he nonetheless reiterates the view that certain classes of persons are more susceptible to having the immorality of their behaviour legislatively underlined than are others. It was when, for whatever reasons, the addict population of America came to be perceived as young, male, working-class and Negro that 'the bridge between law and morality was drawn' (1970: 9-23).

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Consensus and criminal law As has already been noted, the punishment of at least some types of behaviour under the criminal laws of contemporary society can probably be quite confidently described as a matter of substantial consensus. That such should be the case would, of course, be quite consistent with Durkheim's specification of the relationship between crime, punishment, and collective sentiments. The centrality of the latter is, for one thing, quite explicit in his definition of crime which cannot be stated more succinctly than in his own maxim that 'we must not say that an action shocks the common conscience because it is criminal, but rather that it is criminal because it shocks the common conscience' (1964 ed.: 81). Moreover, for Durkheim, many forms of behaviour are not punished as crimes on account of any inherently damaging consequences that they may have for society14: collective sentiments may relate, he tells us, to objects having little to do with the vital interests of a society or with a minimum of justice. Rather, it is simply in its capacity as a threat to the prevailing collective conscience - however needless in origin or indeed irrational the actual constituent sentiments - that an act qualifies for definition as crime (1964 ed.: 107). It is not my intention to embark in this section upon any lengthy critique of the above thesis although it is tempting to pursue, among other things, the essential conservatism of Durkheim's approach (Coser 1967) and his remarkable penchant for hedging his bets against the possibility that subsequent researchers might reach very different conclusions.15 Rather, my first object is to underline the obvious enough point that the existence of consensus over a range of criminal law means that adequate analysis of the laws extant at any given point in time requires a conceptual scheme which permits the location of laws on a continuum running between the extremes of consensus and conflict. Far from forcing an irreparable breach in the model under discussion, the admission of such a continuum challenges the proponents of the power/conflict model to specify more precisely how these variables articulate with the maintenance of social order. If we concede that most criminal laws originate in conflict, can we not go on to hypothesize about processes through which some of them may subsequently become the object of consensus? Thus, for example, if we take Lemert's useful dichotomy between 'active' and 'passive' social

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control - a distinction which he admits would, at its most pretentious, open the way to subsume deviance in a theory of social change (1967: 26) - can we not remove one of the more obvious lacuna from his argument by suggesting that, over time, there may be movement from die active to the passive sector?16 More important, if legal norms are to be mainly conceived within a framework of power and conflict must we not allow that law, with its coercive and authoritative connotations, may have some part to play in this process? That the enactment and enforcement of criminal laws can lead to changes in overt behaviour is not a proposition which need long detain us at this point.17 After all, with the possible exceptions of the purely symbolic and the effectively 'toothless' laws already mentioned, this is usually the intended consequence of criminal legislation. Even when proscriptions are imposed upon aspects of unreflective, subcultural conduct, persistent enforcement is likely to introduce new costs and valuational criteria to the behaviour of the group in question (Lemert 1967: 8). Moreover, it seems plausible to suppose that overt conformity to the law, whatever the latter's origins, brings with it some degree of inherent pressure towards attitudinal conformity as a means of averting the moral dissonance involved in believing one thing while doing another (Rose 1956: 62). As Duster puts it, 'one can explain why he does something for just so long, before he is driven to a position where he simply must assert that it is "right" or "wrong"' (1970: 5). In this process, the erstwhile situational exigencies created by the legal 'facts of life' may crystallize into part of society's moral order. But the self-compelling pressure allegedly exerted through actual obedience to law does not exhaust the possible roles in which the latter and its enforcement may be cast with regard to the emergence and maintenance of some consensus. Without relying solely on any summary assertion that 'coercive power can often be used to create a new consensus' (Lenski 1966: 53), it can be argued that the enactment and enforcement of criminal law contributes substantially to social order through its powerful effect upon the operating consensus of reality in society. To start with, the very act of legislatively defining activity as 'crime' may not only provide one of the sources from which, as Duster claims, 'men in the community obtain validation for their treatment of the immoral' (1970: 97); it also imposes a structure of meaning upon the social world by creating one of the most significant and coherent

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identities that men can impute to their fellows. More than many other deviant categorizations, the distinctively criminal purveys the moral connotation of intention and thereby supplies some basis for agreement about what the behaviour in question must involve.18 While there are perceptible strains between our official post-conviction 'treatment' of the criminal as in some sense pathological, and the law's emphasis upon intention as a necessary component in most forms of crime, it is the legal interpretation which most substantially pervades the common sense understanding of what 'being a criminal really involves'.19 As Duster once again has argued with specific reference to the theme of mental pathology, despite all the paradoxes and inconsistencies 'Western men do try to live with the idea of a mentally healthy criminal' (1970: 219). In achieving and sustaining agreement at this level, the force of law cannot be ignored. Seen from the opposite point of view, a similar function may be attributed to the way in which the law does permit some excuses, thereby 'dignifying certain motives as lawful' (Scott and Lyman 1970: 113). In extreme situations, even this protection afforded to the defendant need not be completely unaffected by ramifications of power: 'To the extent that there is a culturally homogeneous power elite presiding over a society, one set of account forms will have a greater precedence and rectitude over others.' (1970: 112) These aspects of the law in books are not the only respects in which law and its enforcement contribute to the operating consensus of social reality. Thus, for example, several writers have pointed to the role of enforcement agencies in helping to shape public perceptions of what crime and deviance are 'really' like (Becker 1963; Lindesmith 1965; Cohen 1967). In these and other sources we have a reminder that the 'collective excitement, irrelevant symbolism, or misinformation' that can mar the quality of decisions by a popular majority are not always unrelated to the extent of bureaucratic control over the flow of information in complex societies (Selznick 1969: 17). Similarly, legal and judicial decision-making have themselves been interpreted as processes 'in which power and mystification are combined in complex ways to provide a general sense of justice in spite of the fact that some of the participants inevitably feel a sense of injustice' (Douglas 1970: 14). The same point is made with even greater acerbity by Scott and Lyman:

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'Abstruse legal rhetoric is itself used to mystify so that the inevitable gaps between different value and belief positions in the conflictful pluralistic society will appear to be bridged. The language of law like a magical incantation - creates the illusion of consistency and coherence.' (1970: 108) THE LIMITS OF P O W E R AND CONFLICT

This paper has thus far been devoted to the description and substantially to the possible defence of one view of emergent criminal law. Although, as I stated early on and subsequently by implication reiterated, this perspective is not one to which I subscribe without reservation, the balance that has been struck is nonetheless quite deliberate. For one still encounters in this country the peculiarly insular belief that whatever the vagaries of other legal systems, our own stands above reproach in any basic respect and requires only occasional exercises in legal and social engineering to ensure fairer access to its justice and better guarantees of its efficacy. However crude or invalid the model I have been outlining, its application to this country is appropriate, even if only to confirm our fonder beliefs about British criminal law! Such an application is all the more imperative because so much of the work to which I alluded in the preceding section was carried out in the United States. Where our insularity with regard to law may foster feelings of superiority, the growing American energy for research in this field could give rise to unwarranted generalizations about law in complex western societies. Thus, the sociology of criminal law in both countries could benefit from such comparative research. Having thus acknowledged the slant and indeed part of the motivation of my approach, it would be inappropriate to conclude without underlining and expanding upon some of the limitations that I can see. To begin with, I must repeat that I do not subscribe to a view of emergent criminal law in complex societies as merely a function of the exercise of power by a homogeneous power-elite. For me the process may be more accurately portrayed as one in which many powerful groups compete and from time to time coalesce, giving rise to legislation frequently distinguished by compromise rather than by outright victory. I do not believe that Quinney's interpretation of this view as a myth can stand up to rigorous historical analysis. Similarly, I find it somewhat fruitless to disregard the existence of substantial

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consensus over a range of criminal laws at any stage in time; for me, this situation raises the need for a meaningful sociological differentiation between types of criminal law, for an approach which treats the emergence of consensus as problematic and for a sociology of law that concedes the centrality of problems of social change. Perhaps more than anything else, however, I must acknowledge that to posit a connexion between power and emergent criminal law does not, on its own, constitute a sociologically adequate explanatory hypothesis. For the distribution of power is obviously itself a dependent variable, a fact which must ultimately draw the sociologist of law back to a wider analysis of the social order. As with any other sub-division of the field of sociology, the sociology of law will only realize its true potential by maintaining its allegiance to the mainstream of sociological thought. On another level we must also avoid imputing invariably ulterior motives to those who crusade for the enactment of criminal legislation. Thus, for example, the medical men of Manchester who pressed for factory legislation in the early years of the nineteenth century shared a genuine professional concern about the prevalence of contagious fever in the cotton mills. Interestingly, Troy Duster concedes a similar motivation on the part of doctors who pressed for narcotics legislation in the United States. Far from being driven by any deep moral conviction, he tells us, 'their explicit intention was to prevent the widespread distribution of morphine and heroin to a public that was unsuspecting of its addicting qualities' (1970: 22). Even where moral connotations are more central to the issue, crusaders for law are not always just campaigning for some form of moral autocracy. As Becker reminded us nearly a decade ago, the crusader believes that if people do what is right cit will be good for them' (1963: 148). While a degree of cynicism could present much disinterestedness of this kind as nothing more than a technique of legitimation, I have not yet developed this capacity to the point where I can completely reject Dicey's view that, even where self-interest is involved, a man's judgement is more frequently corrupted than his heart: 'Individuals indeed, and still more frequently classes, do constantly support laws or institutions which they deem beneficial to themselves, but which certainly are in fact injurious to the rest of the world. But the explanation of this conduct will be found, in nine cases out of ten, to be that men come easily to believe that arrangements agreeable to themselves are beneficial to others. A man's

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interest gives a bias to his judgement far oftener than it corrupts his heart... a delusion, however largely the result of self-interest, is still an intellectual error, and a different thing from callous selfishness.' (Dicey 1962 ed.: 14-16) Further difficulties arise in connexion with our earlier approach when it is realized that despite the forcefulness of law, there are nonetheless limits upon the extent to which it can induce change. At the level of overt behaviour, we must remember that law comprises only one among a number of systems of social control. Thus, where newly enacted legal norms find some degree of support in strongly entrenched 'extra-legal' systems of values, this may facilitate the process of change; where, however, the nature of the relationship more closely approximates that of head-on collision, the overt behavioural change is likely to be limited (Dror 1957: 45iff.).20 At the covert level of the possibility that legal norms may ultimately be introjected into common socialization processes there are no less substantial problems about the extent to which 'the legislation of one generation might become the morality of the next' (Walker 1964: 2i4).21 But in my view the most cogent arguments against the cruder ramifications of the model which I have been outlining still stem from the self-defeating properties of criminal law when used merely as a coercive means to the ends of acquiring and retaining power. The diminishing returns from force itself have been succinctly described by Lenski with reference to post-revolutionary situations: 'Force is, at best, the means to an end. That end, the establishment of a new social order, can never be fully attained until most members of society freely accept it as their own' (1966: 52). Even in situations not so fraught with issues of total change, however, the less extreme exercise of coercion through the enactment and enforcement of criminal law has inherent limitations as a means of arbitrarily wielding power. For, as Weber pointed out long ago, any form of domination has a need to justify itself 'through appealing to the principles of its legitimation' (Rheinstein 1967: 336); more than that, when rulers 'fail to live up to the standards by which they justify their domination', they are likely to undermine public belief in those very standards (Bendix 1960: 300). As far as the criminal law is concerned, the salience of the above argument derives from the possibility that in societies such as our own, the commonest form of legitimacy derives from belief in legality

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itself - 'acquiescence in enactments which are formally correct and which have been made in the accustomed manner' (Rheinstein 1967: 9).22 Legality, or the rule of law as distinct from the rules of law, imposes 'an environment of constraint, of tests to be met, standards to be fulfilled' (Selznick 1969: n). Failure to submit to these constraints by the indiscriminate manipulation of criminal legislation and capricious interference with existing laws involves strong risks of becoming counter-productive. Thus, while the contents and perceptible movements of criminal law are not unaffected by conflict and power, neither do they mirror them exactly. In a context of relative stability, an attempt to make them do so would to a substantial extent be hoist with its own petard. Where societies approximate to the legalrational, claims to authority cannot be divorced from legality, nor can the constraints which the latter imposes upon the exercise of authority be ignored. To talk of legality as distinct from the substantive content of specific criminal laws leads into realms of legal thought in which contemporary sociologists have not been notably prone to wander.23 But while we as sociologists may see a bounded system of legal thought as blinkered against the intruding light of social reality, we should be mindful of the fact that it also comprises a relatively autonomous value-system within which legality can become an ideal to be striven for. To acknowledge this is not to abdicate from our responsibilities either as sociologists or citizens. As Selznick, one of the few venturers, has observed: 'Properly understood, the concept of legality is more critical than celebrationist... An affirmative approach to legal values need not accept the defensive rhetoric of men in power. On the contrary, it offers principles of criticism to evaluate the shortcomings of the existing system of rules and practices' (1969: 14).

Notes i In thus narrowing the focus of discussion, I recognize that I am imposing artificial boundaries upon the subject, a limitation which conveniently coincides moreover with my own particular interests. However, it is not perhaps too pretentious to assume that the inclusion of this topic under the general heading of 'deviance, dissent and control' indicates that others who share my interest in crime and deviance may also share my particular curiosity about the sociology of the criminal law.

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2 One of the most tragic aspects of Sutherland's pioneering work in this field was that having realized the significance of differential lawmaking and law-enforcement, he nonetheless remained preoccupied with pursuing a theory of criminal behaviour and failed to follow the logic of his argument further into the sociology of law. 3 'In fact, the sentiments thus in question derive all their force from the fact that they are common to everybody. They are strong because they are uncontested. What adds the peculiar respect of which they are the object is that they are universally respected. But crime is possible only if this respect is not truly universal. Consequently, it implies that they are not absolutely collective' (Durkheim 1964 ed.: 103). 4 This paper is indebted at several points to Paul Rock's Deviant Behaviour (Rock 1973)3 which includes an excellent section on the sociology of law. 5 See, for example, the definition given by Weber (1964 ed.: 152). 6 This definition including authority and the provision of coercive apparatus is adopted from Selznick's view of the authority component implicit in Weber's work. 7 Thus Weber is able to extend his definition of law beyond the political community (Selznick 1969: 7). 8 That is, that the not noticeably diminishing predilection of such societies for the use of repressive criminal sanctions reflects psychological concomitants of this group's position, though not any conscious or organized pursuit of its self-interest. 9 Edwin Lemert's delineation of 'active social control' revolves around the continuing processes of competition, conflict and coalition between associations attempting to advance their values or to maintain them in favoured positions. In addition to seeing organized innovation as a crucial part of the background to these processes, he suggests that active social control does pervade the criminal law and its enforcement (Lemert 1967). 10 An interesting development, and one to which Hofstadter directs his main attention, is that after a period of such comparative inactivity, the Sherman Act has recently been quite vigorously enforced. This he attributes to the fact that institutions of enforcement are 'commonly less fragile than creeds' and can incorporate vague and forgotten public ideas into their self-preserving roles, functions and procedures (1965: 558). There is an obvious parallel here with the 'ends orientation' observed in law enforcement agencies by other writers such as Lemert (1967: 21-3) and Hartung (1950: 25-34). 11 For an interesting discussion of some of the stratagems which may be used to exploit such legislative deficiencies, see Denis Chapman (1968: Chapters).

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12 This summary is based on an unpublished paper given at the London School of Economics in 1970. 13 This is, of course, a summary of Gusfield's more extensive analysis of the American Temperance Movement (Gusfield 1963). 14 In its functionalist orientation, though not necessarily in its emphasis on consensus, Durkheim's view comes close to that of legal theorists like Jerome Hall whose 'value-expression' theory has been summarized by Chambliss as follows: 'The crux of this position is that the legal norms are an expression of those societal values which transcend the immediate interests of individuals or groups. Legal norms are seen as emerging through the dynamics of cultural processes as a solution to certain needs and requirements which are essential for maintaining the fabric of society* (1969: 8). 15 Thus, for example, investigators who, like Hartung (1953) would see surveys of the social disapproval of offences as an adequate test of Durkheim's thesis, would do well to remember that his discussion of the directive power's function in relation to the collective conscience enables him to account for the fact that some actions are more severely repressed than they are reproved (1964 ed.: 82ff.). Equally, as Schwartz and Miller (1970: 136) have pointed out, Durkheim's narrow specification of the kind of organization needed for non-penal law virtually ensured that restitutive law, as he defined it, would only be found in complex societies. 16 This is a rather curious omission in view of his much earlier statement: 'Standards of behaviour and approximations to them in overt behaviour of group members, such as customs, folkways, mores and laws are not self-perpetuating. They have no mystical or coercive power which prevents deviations in behaviour although many writers seem to imply this ... Attitudes basic to the continuity of culture must be developed and re-embodied within individuals and groups. There is no automatic transference of such attitudes. The existence of a mediating process must be indisputably postulated' (1942: 397). 17 For a discussion of British 'breathalyser' legislation in this context see Ross et al. (1970). As Dror (1957: 446) points out, this result is often facilitated by the fact that extra-legal systems of values may emphasize the obligation to obey secular law unless it is countermanded by a more basic directive. 18 I dissent from Peter McHugh's view that what he calls the 'theoreticity and conventionality of acts' are 'fundamental common-sense rules for deciding what is deviant and what is not...'. (1970: 62ff.). Under such a view many types of people commonly regarded and discussed as deviants would be excluded. His criteria seem to me

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much more characteristic of deviant activities falling inside the ambit of criminal law. 19 Interesting exceptions here are those 'strict liability' offences where no intention is required. Contrary to the widely held view that this doctrine imposes a severe and even unfair degree of legal vulnerability upon some offenders, I would argue that one of its unintended consequences is the protection of certain classes of offence (and of offender) from the full process of criminalization. By dispensing with the requirement of intention, strict liability may impede the emergence of any shared understanding of the behaviour in question as morally opprobrious or truly criminal. In this context it would be interesting to investigate both the origins of strict liability and its distribution within the structure of the criminal law. It is possibly significant that in a recent case involving drugs, strict liability was held to be inapplicable because, among other things, 'a stigma still attaches to any person convicted of a truly criminal offence' (Reid 1969: 2). In my view, this decision could be interpreted as indicative of resistance to any edecriminalization' of drug offences through extension of the doctrine of strict liability. The determination of 'true criminality' being both legally and sociologically problematic, the judge's statement could be taken to mean that the offence in question is and should remain a 'truly criminal' one, and that the issue of intention should not therefore be permitted to become irrelevant. 20 For a very useful discussion of law and social change in Marxist Africa see Hazard (1970: 575ff.)^ 21 Walker's point here is that although legislation may have an effect upon child-rearing practices in some contexts, limits are imposed by the fact that many statutes relate to areas of behaviour for which there is no childhood equivalent or, indeed, analogy. One example that he gives is income tax evasion. An interesting and more general extension of the argument is touched on but not developed by Smigel and Ross when they point out the disjunction between the extent of bureaucratization in complex societies and the ethical unpreparedness of men in such societies for coping with cthe problem of the relationship between the individual and the corporation' (1970: 7). For a discussion and bibliography on the deeper issues involved in the internalization view of authority, see Turk (1970: 4off.). 22 Weber did, of course, make a further sub-division within this type of ascribed legitimacy, distinguishing legality emanating from agreement on the part of all concerned, and legality deriving from acquiescence in the imposition of a legitimated domination. But he also conceded that in practice, this distinction is far from clear (Rheinstein 1967: 9). 23 See, for example, the somewhat acid comments of H. Jones (1965).

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References AUBERT, v. 1952. White Collar Crime and Social Structure. American Journal of Sociology 58 (3): 263-71. 1958. Legal Justice and Mental Health. Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 21 (2). 1966. Some Social Functions of Legislation. Acta Sociologica 10 (1-2): 98-120. BECKER, H. 1963. Outsiders. New York: Free Press. BAINES, E. 1835. History of Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain. London: Fisher, Fisher & Jackson. BENDIX, R. 1960. Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. London: Heinemann. CARSON, w. 1970. White Collar Crime and the Enforcement of Factory Legislation. British Journal of Criminology 10 (4): 383-98. CHAMBLISS, w. 1969. Crime and the Legal Process. New York: McGrawHill. CHAPMAN, D. 1968. Sociology and the Stereotype of the Criminal. London: Tavistock Publications. COHEN, s. 1967. Mods, Rockers and the Rest: Community Reactions to Juvenile Delinquency. The Howard Journal 12 (2): 121-30. COSER, L. 1967. Continuities in the Study of Social Conflict. New York: Free Press. DEVLIN, P. 1965. The Enforcement of Morals. London: Oxford University Press. DICEY, A. 1962 edition. Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century. London: Macmillan. First published 1905. DOUGLAS, j. 1970. Deviance and Respectability. New York: Basic Books. DROR, Y. 1957. Values and the Law. Antioch Review 17 (4): 440-54. DURKHEIM, E. 1964 edition. Division of Labour in Society. New York Free Press. First published 1893. DUSTER, T. 1970. The Legislation of Morality. New York: Free Press. ERIKSON, K. 1964. Notes on the Sociology of Deviance. In H. S. Becker (ed.) The Other Side. New York: Free Press. GEIS, G. 1959. Sociology, Criminology and Criminal Law. Social Problems 7(1): 40-47. GUSFIELD, j. 1963. Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1970. Moral Passage: The Symbolic Process in Public Definitions of Deviance. In C. Bersani (ed.) Crime and Delinquency. New York: Macmillan.

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HART, H. 1967. Social Solidarity and the Enforcement of Morality. University of Chicago Law Review 35 (i): 1-13. HARTUNG, F. 1950. White-Collar Offences in the Wholesale Meat Industry in Detroit. American Journal of Sociology 56 (25): 25-34. I953- Common and Discrete Group Values. Journal of Social Psychology 38 (i): 3-23. HAZARD, j. 1970. Law and Social Change in Marxist Africa. American Behavioural Scientist 13 (4): 575-84. HOFSTADTER, R. 1965. What Happened to the Anti-Trust Movement. In J. Gusfield (ed.) Protest, Reform and Revolt. New York: Wiley. JONES, H. 1965. A View from the Bridge. Social Problems 13 (i): 39-46. KOLKO, G. 1967. The Triumph of Conservatism. New York: Quadrangle Books. LEMERT, E. 1942. The Folkways and Social Control. American Sociological Review 7 (3): 394-9. 1967. Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control. Englewood CUffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. LENSKI, G. 1966. Power and Privilege. New York: McGraw-Hill. LINDESMITH, A. 1965. The Addict and the Law. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. MANNHEIM, H. 1965. Comparative Criminology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. MCHUGH, p. 1970. A Common-sense Conception of Deviance. In Douglas (1970). NEWMAN, D. 1958. White Collar Crime. Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems 23 (Autumn): 735-53. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS. l8l6 and 1833.

QUINNEY, R. 1970. The Social Reality of Crime. Boston: Little, Brown. RANULF, s. 1964 edition. Moral Indignation and Middle Class Psychology. New York: Schocken Books. First published 1938. REID, 1969. Sweet (A.P.) v. Parsley: Report of Appellate Committee, House of Lords. RHEINSTEIN, M. 1967. Weber on Law in Economy and Society. New York: Simon and Schuster. ROCK, p. Deviant Behaviour. London: Hutchinson. ROSE, A. 1956. The Use of Law to Induce Social Change. Transactions of the Third World Congress of Sociology 6: 52-63. ROSS, H. et al. 1970. The British 'Breathalyser' Crackdown of 1967. American Behavioural Scientist 13 (4): 493-509. SCHWARTZ, R. & MILLER, J. 1970. Legal Evolution and Societal Complexity in Schwartz and Skolnick (1970). SCHWARTZ, R. & SKOLNICK, j. 1970. Society and the Legal Order. New York: Basic Books.

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SCOTT, M. & LYMAN, s. 1970. Accounts, Deviance and Social Order. In Douglas (1970). SELZNICK, P. 1960. The Sociology of Law. Journal of Legal Education 12(4): 521-31. 1969. Law, Society and Industrial Justice. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. SENIOR, N. 1837. Letters on the Factory Act Addressed to the Rt Hon. The President of the Board of Trade. SKOLNICK, j. 1965. The Sociology of Law in America: Overview and Trends. Social Problems 13: 4-39. SMI GEL, E. & ROSS, H. I97O. Crimes against Bureaucracy. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. TRUMAN, D. 1970. The Dynamics of Access in the Legislative Process. In Schwartz and Skolnick (1970). TURK, A. 1969. Criminality and Legal Order. Chicago: Rand McNally. WEBER, M. 1964 edition. Theory of Social and Economic Organisation. New York: Free Press. First published in translation 1947. WALKER, N. 1964. Morality and Criminal Law. The Howard Journal ii (3): 209-19.

ROLAND ROBERTSON and LAURIE TAYLOR

Problems in the comparative analysis of deviance A survey and a proposal In various domains of sociology the last decade has seen an increasing concern with problems of comparative analysis - in particular the domains of the sociology of politics, economic behaviour, social stratification, socialization and patterns of kinship, and development or modernization processes.1 The various approaches to these domains have often produced essays on the methodological problems of comparative analysis per se. However, within sociology - as conventionally demarcated - the study of crime, deviance, conformity, and so on, has not been prominent in comparative analysis; students of deviance have not typically concerned themselves in any explicit, ongoing sense with problems of comparative analysis in relation to the substantive foci of their own work. Prima facie this is a deficiency of the current state of the study of deviant behaviour - although the nature of this deficiency needs elaboration. In this essay we are primarily concerned to provide this, to explore what we regard as the more salient aspects of this shortfall in the study of deviance, and to look at the cultural and social variables which we argue ought to be attended to in any form of analysis which attempts to go beyond the ideographically descriptive. For we would maintain that comparative analysis has the effect of forcing the researcher beyond the ideographically descriptive. It can hardly help but raise general sociological questions about the equivalence of structures and cultures, about the relative nature of crime and deviance, and about the historical changes in the relationship between deviant and social controller. Within the domain of the study of deviance, Matza has probably done more than most in recent years to pinpoint the nature of the ideographic bias which stands as an obstacle in the way of developing an appropriate generalizing stance. Although attracted to some cen-

92 Roland Robertson and Laurie Taylor tral attributes of what he calls 'naturalism', Matza has rightly argued that that style of analysis has been an 'anti-philosophical philosophy' (1969: 8). No philosophy, he says, 'can succeed in being antiphilosophical. A countertendency to abstract, classify, and generalize appeared partly because it was inevitable' (1969: 9). In the present context the significance of this observation lies in its implication that abstraction, classification, and generalization occur whether we like them or not - and thus such exercises might as well be of as good a quality as is possible. The central question then becomes: what should these processes of abstraction, classification, and generalization look like in the field in question? What, in other words, are the most salient factors which should enter into all studies of deviant behaviour? Having posed such problems we should quickly add that we do not thereby commit ourselves and do certainly not try to commit all other students of deviant behaviour to working simply and only at high levels of abstraction, in terms of complex taxonomic schemata, and towards the attainment of rigidly stipulated law-like statements. Such a programme would undoubtedly stultify the analysis and discussion of the phenomenon of deviance at one blow. However, the discreteness and atomism which has marked so much of the study of deviant behaviour - even though much of that work has been highly suggestive and rich in its findings and theses - has, we maintain, to be balanced by work of a more comprehensive kind, work which attempts to coordinate discretely generated 'discoveries'. Classically, the significance of 'the comparative method' has been central to the sociological tradition. In the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century, there seem to have been two main forms of sociological comparison. What Nisbet calls 'the' comparative method was, in the hands of its unilinearly and 'progressively' inclined evolutionists, little if anything more than setting side by side different societies and then placing them on an evolutionary scale - in terms of such broad criteria as degree of cultural sophistication and degree of structural differentiation.2 In the period of Weber and Durkheim elements of this comparative style lingered on - but in the hands of the sociologists of that time there was an injection of specialized concern with the methodological problems and theoretical implications of comparative analysis per se. Quite apart from the more or less technical prescriptions relating to comparative analysis advanced by Durkheim, in particular, we see also in that same sociologist's work the beginnings of an explicit concern with the problems

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of social and cultural universals. The most obviously relevant example of this preoccupation in the present context is Durkheim's thesis about the normality of crime (Durkheim 1938). This strand of Durkheim's work has, of course, been the subject of controversy but there can be no denial of the proposition that the thesis has raised crucial problems which have genuinely comparative implications. This in the sense that any proposition concerning the universality of a phenomenon in and of itself generates a sociological problem which can only be tackled on a comparative basis. This is not to say, however, that autonomously theoretic generalizations about universal attributes or properties of societies, or any other kind of sociocultural collectivity, are in themselves comparative. They merely pose problems which are capable of forming the basis for comparative inquiry. Such exercises may in fact be useful precisely because they illuminate what ranges of sociocultural phenomena are comparable and those which are not easily or appropriately treated in comparative terms. The 'genuine' comparative problem produced by Durkheim's thesis concerning the normality of deviance consists in the exploration of the respects in which deviance or crime rates remain relatively constant over time in particular societies or types of societies; the particular nature of this constancy - that is, content of the deviance the kinds of deviance, and so on; and the social and cultural processes by and through which the constancy - if it obtains - is 'accomplished'.3 Each of these three facets of the problem hypothetically involves ranges of empirical variation - variation, that is, respectively in rates (not necessarily in the empiricist 'official' crime-rate sense); deviance content; and the concrete institutional and symbolic processes of 'accomplishment'. We will have occasion at a later stage to consider the modern status, significance and ramifications of this kind of approach. This Durkheim-based example clearly indicates the kinds of comparative problem which emerged from the work of one of the earliest sociologists to advance a functional-universal approach to social and cultural phenomena. The period of Durkheim and Weber, fruitful as it was in terms of concern with problems of comparative analysis, was also the culmination of a long-drawn-out era of focusing upon the comparison of social and cultural phenomena in different societal settings. From about 1920 until as late as the early 19605, sociologists paid relatively little attention to problems of comparison. With but a

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few exceptions the nearest that sociologists came to comparing in any meaningful sense was the setting side by side of findings derived from two or more societies. During this period, of course, a strong element of relativism had diffused across the sociological and anthropological scenes - a development which had important implications for the study of crime and deviance generally. The last decade or so has, in contrast, witnessed a rapidly developing explicit concern with the methodology and logic of comparative inquiry. The return to comparative perspectives has been in part propelled by a cluster of social and cultural factors, including particularly the increasing transnationalization of social science, which do not directly concern us here. But it should be noted - since it is pivotal to much of this essay - that these newer forms of comparative analysis have involved calculated attempts to overcome the problem of relativity, in the sense of cultural uniqueness. One tack has been to obliterate the relativity problem by resurrecting some of the tenets of the unilinear evolutionists of the nineteenth century.4 Although more sophisticated methodologically than nineteenth-century evolutionism in its attention to such themes as intra-system variation versus inter-system variation, the inclination to include multi-variate procedures, the exploration of the level-of-analysis problem, and so on, a lot of recent comparative work has operated from an objectivist standpoint. This kind of approach thus tends to ignore the principles of subjectivity and culturally - principles which have been closely adhered to by the more insightful students of deviancy of the past decade or so. Objectivism tends to ignore not only the meaning which is attributed to the structural or 'rate' characteristics which are itemized and collated, it also underplays social-relational dynamics which mediate between variables. This is not to say that such forms of inquiry are completely wrong or unsociological. They simply fail to provide a complete enough picture or in some cases misdirect our sociological foci. Some very recent specialists in the methodology of comparative research have at least become conscious of the significance of subjective and/or cultural factors, in their procedural arguments. Among the more conspicuous of such specialists are Przeworski and Teune (i9yo),5 who have tackled specifically the problem of equivalents an issue which lies at the heart of many forms of comparative analysis, as the continuing debate initiated by Peter Winch strikingly demonstrates6 - in highly technical terms. They argue in fact that the problem of establishing the equivalence of items in different socio-

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cultural contexts is almost entirely one of measurement; and, although their argument is technically important, they fail to explore the more intuitive and speculative compromises which any comparative analyst has to make in deciding whether for example the factional complexes and clique clusters which one observes in ostensibly one-party political systems (and indeed in non-party systems) are sociologically comparable to the ostensibly two- or multi-party situations which obtain in liberal-democratic societies. Przeworski and Teune argue that the development of general, empirically-based theories is not possible in sociology except on the basis of comparative research. In their case the argument is couched with specific reference to the contention that 'the role of social science is to explain social events' (our italics). 'Explanation in comparative research is possible if and only if particular social systems observed in time and space are not viewed as finite conjunctions of constituent elements, but rather as residua of theoretical variables. General lawlike sentences can be utilized for explanatory purposes. Only if the classes of social events are viewed as generalizable beyond the limits of any particular historical social system can general law-like sentences be used for explanation' (1970: 30). Przeworski and Teune base their arguments very much upon the Popper-Hempel argument about covering-law requirements of theory and their necessity for explanation. A somewhat 'softer' and more liberal view of the significance of comparative research may be found in the considerations of those like Bendix who maintain that comparative studies consist in the attempt to develop concepts and generalizations 'at a level between what is true of all societies and what is true of one society at one point in time and space' (1963: 532). The kinds of concern exhibited by Przeworski and Teune in connexion with the search for equivalents needs relating to philosophical discussions concerning culturality and, in particular, to the recent conjoining of anthropological and sociological insights. Thus, although the study of deviant behaviour may have something to learn from recent developments in the techniques of comparative analysis, it is evident that the highest priority must be accorded to the substantive linking of discretely undertaken work on deviance, including not only anthropological and sociological, but also historical studies. Many recent comparative studies - notably those in the domain of political sociology - have confined their attention to societies which have a great deal in common, in terms of being in some sense com-

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plex societies. And yet whether or not a particular comparative approach is ultimately worthwhile depends, we would contend, on its applicability to a very wide range of societal types. As we have already hinted, some studies of political-party systems have almost certainly lost sociological richness in concentrating so much on societies which - phenomenally speaking - have political parties; whereas the study of factions, cliques and so on might all be accommodated to a sufficiently sophisticated frame of analysis. It must be conceded, however, that if the intention is, for example, to comprehend only the development of party systems in the conventional sense then we would not really object too much. We would only say that such spatio-temporal restriction hinders the long-term interests of sociology and political science.7 Sometimes, of course, the problem works the other way round - as in the case of the study of religion. Sociological analysis of religion has tended to be too universalistic, too 'generous' in according religiosity to societies which have no readily ascertainable forms of religious belief and/or practice.8 In talking about deviance we have thus to be highly conscious of the fact that not only etymologically and semantically, but also much more important - culturally, the notion of deviance in any phenomenal sense has a restricted range of societal reference. And yet at the same time it is clear that at a sufficiently high level of abstraction) all societies have a 'deviance problem'. There is something of a Scylla-Charybdis situation here. Adherence to Bendix's dictum about operating between what is true of all societies and what is true of one society clearly implies putting some rather strict limitations upon the search for equivalents in terms of high levels of abstraction. As Campbell (1962: 45) has remarked, there are two relatively distinct levels of discourse in contemporary social science which seeks to be comparative: one that is genuinely cross-cultural but which is 'virtually impervious to empirical test' and a second that is empirically based but that is culturally particularistic.9 As Frey puts it, 'the first cross-culturally-comparative-but-metaphysical level of discourse seems to be that which normally prevails at our conferences on comparative politics ... whereas the second more often that of our empirical journal articles and academic monographs. Between the two levels is a considerable chasm' (1970: 189). The first major section of the present essay is addressed in large part to the weaknesses of the 'low level', particularistic kind of work in the field of deviance. (As we have implied, the latter area of study

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is in a more worrying condition than the comparative analysis of politics, with which Frey is mainly concerned.) Subsequently, we focus positively on the need for a 'higher' level of discourse. But it should be emphasized that in so doing we are concerned in particular to introduce a form of comparative-analytic 'benchmark' - a frame of reference in terms of which the discussion of equivalents can be fruitfully conducted. We tend to concur with Prey's views (expressed mainly in reference to problems of survey analysis) that too much can be made of the quest for equivalence and thus we seek to establish some substantive guidelines which would facilitate discussion of the extent to which the quest should be undertaken. DEFICIENCIES OF C O M P A R A T I V E RESEARCH IN CRIME AND DEVIANCE

In what precise respects has the study of comparative aspects of deviance been deficient? Many of what have now come to be regarded as basic inadequacies of the orthodox criminological approach to the phenomenon of deviance are particularly evident when questions of a comparative nature are raised. Sociologists in recent years have taxed criminologists with their lack of sophistication in relation to such matters as the conceptual status of crime and deviance; they have stressed the necessity of looking at the role of the agents of social control in the creation of deviance; they have demanded that attention be paid to the meaning of the deviant act lest apparently similar overt behaviour be regarded as sociologically homogeneous. Such attacks upon criminological orthodoxy have not simply been made in theoretical terms, they have been reinforced by detailed empirical research. The significant point about this critical work for our present discussion is that it has been primarily conducted with reference to one society. There has been a feeling that earlier criminologists, and indeed sociologists, said too much too soon, that they constructed empirical generalizations about crime and deviance that would serve for intra-societal and inter-societal comparison, without recognizing the questionable validity and reliability of the specific details out of which their abstractions were fashioned. There was, therefore, a need to start again, to unpack the generalizations and take a more sensitive view of the day-to-day deviance in the world that one knows from personal experience. Clarity was thought to begin at home. So such

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matters as the initial labelling of deviance, the processing of the deviant and the examination of the meaning of the deviant act have all received detailed attention from Lemert, Cicourel, Goffman and Becker, but their attention has mainly been devoted to getting it right in a domestic situation. Indeed we might think that there was something slightly absurd in expecting say Ned Polsky (1967) or Laud Humphreys (1971) to have anything specific to say about French hustlers, or about Italian closet-queens respectively, in that we recognize that their full attention and sensitivity has been demanded by the need to describe and interpret things as they are in their own culture. What marks out contemporary sociologists of deviance is their ability to call to account common-sense (or perhaps one should say traditional criminological) assumptions about deviance, and this very act has come to mean a hyper-involvement in one specific culture. Nevertheless, 'orthodox' criminologists have persisted with their comparative concerns, although they do appear at times to be chasing a disappearing rabbit in that no sooner have they caught up with one sociological critique of their data or methods than they are confronted with another by sociologists. The statistical approach to crime and deviance provides an example. For many years it was considered appropriate to mock attempts to compare crime rates by pointing to the lack of concordance between the legal categories in different cultures. Pascal's thoughts upon the relativity of crime became a standard reservation in any chapter on the problems of comparison. Not only were legal categories likely to lack equivalence but so was deviant behaviour. In Merton's terms: 'Is one homicide to be equated with 10 petty thefts? 100? 1000? We may sense that these are incommensurables and so feel that the question of comparing their magnitude is a nonsense question. Yet this feeling is only a prelude to recognition of the more general fact that we have no strict common denominator for social problems and so have no workable procedures for comparing the scale of different problems, even when the task is simplified by dealing with two kinds of criminal acts' (Merton 1961: 703). In addition to these problems of categorical equivalence and equivalence in terms of seriousness of offence, there was the problem which had been recognized by the earliest comparison-inclined statisticians, such as Quetelet and Mayr, the simple problem of the unreliability of the statistics. A peculiar incongruity persisted in the standard criminological texts - the country which had produced the

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most elaborate interpretations of criminal behaviour, namely the USA, could still not produce reliable statistical accounts which marked the incidence, let alone the class or racial distribution of the behaviour which such interpretations purported to encompass. However, the situation has improved. Epidemiological studies can now begin to move forward because of the work which has been done not just by domestic agencies in improving the reliability of their statistics but also by the advances which have been made by such workers as Sellin and Wolfgang (1964) in the construction of indexes of crime, which deal in a sophisticated way with such matters as the seriousness of the compared offences. Not only are there now more likely to be data available, but it is also more likely to be the case that these data will refer to what the lawyers and police in both countries would regard as equivalent behavioural phenomena. But, of course, it has been precisely at this point in time that the attack upon 'method and measurement' has dramatically gained ground among sociologists of deviance. Not only have many sociologists pointed to the biases in data collection - criminologists had often made allowances for such matters in their comparison - but they have suggested that the actual rates of delinquency which have been reported for particular areas should not be understood as indicative of any underlying and differentiated reality but are in fact merely indications of the different ways of generating such rates in particular social contexts.10 Delinquency is in a sense 'produced' by the very methods and techniques which it has all along been assumed were merely ways - albeit imperfect ways - of measuring some behavioural object which lay 'out there'. Truly comparative work then involves not just a comparison of the assembled rates, but a comparison of the background assumptions which inform the compilation and collation of such rates. Statements such as 'Nigeria is beginning to show an increase in delinquency' or 'In West Africa, juvenile delinquency is almost nonexistent as a problem' (and we quote from a recently published cross-cultural survey)11 retain their interest not so much as inviolable statements about trends in different cultures, but rather as indicating the presence of an opportunity to examine the ways in which delinquency is effectively labelled as such by the community and agents of social control in differing cultural contexts. At least this is true of the present situation - but obviously there are circumstances where due attention might be given to problems of equivalence and com-

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parison and which would thereby render subsequent generalizations more sociologically meaningful.12 CONCEPTUAL DIFFUSION

The ambiguity surrounding the meaning of rates of crime, or the recognition that the crime problem needs to be analysed as much by reference to the processes by which such a problem is generated as by reference to the actual behaviour which constitutes it, does not alter the fact that the greatest concentration of social scientists in the area of crime and deviance is to be found in that society which is thought in simplistic terms to have the 'highest rates' and the 'greatest problem' - that is, the United States. The effect of this concentration of academic resources can be seen in many of those so-called cross-cultural studies in which deviant phenomena in societies other than the United States (and perhaps Great Britain) are tentatively harnessed to the conceptual and theoretical apparatus which has been assembled by social scientists in those countries.13 So we may find scholars demonstrating the similarity between street gangs in their native country and the United States. Subcultures will be detected in Hong Kong; violent gangs will emerge in Paris; anomie will be found in Puerto Rico. Of course, one assumption of comparative analysis is that there will indeed be equivalent forms of deviance appearing in societies which share structural and cultural characteristics, which are at similar stages in industrialization, urbanization and so on. But, at the moment, the overpowering conceptual edifice of American criminology, coupled of course with the international prestige which accumulates around its users, means that investigators in distant cultures find their way into the problem area of deviance through concepts developed elsewhere. There may be a certain appropriateness in examining aspects of juvenile delinquency which appear as the result of cultural diffusion by means of the tools which have been used for their analysis in their country of origin but the unlikelihood of such simple transference or replication of deviant phenomena has been adequately highlighted in one of the rare pieces of extended comparative work on subcultures.14 The issue of functional interdependence versus cultural diffusion (Galton's problem) is swept away by many of those single-culture studies which are parasitic upon 'alien' conceptual schemata, whether or not these eventually turn out to be applicable to the phenomena

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under consideration or not. Such studies also tend to ignore many aspects of the social and cultural context - save for such gross features as degrees of industrialization and deterioration of the neighbourhood and so on. Perhaps the saddest example which we have encountered of a 'parasitic' comparative study was written by two Indians who attempted to apply the findings from overcrowding in the United States to the figures for delinquency in Calcutta. The variable which proved difficult to accommodate was that it was not just houses in Calcutta which were overcrowded with residents but also pavements. Few books have been published in which the author (or authors) devote themselves explicitly to cross-cultural problems in the analysis of deviance. Cavan and Cavan have produced one of the best known of these.15 This, for all its commendable intentions, turns out to consist of little more than sketches of particular societies in terms of such variables as degree of industrialization, history of social conflict, and approximate stage of development. Once the societies have been characterized, then their general or specific crime rates are produced and some interpretive links are attempted. At least here we find some justice being done to distinctive forms of deviance. The authors have assembled material on delinquency in twelve countries. The limitations of the studies they have assembled however restricts them to making general statements about the higher rates which accompany the 'breakdown of traditional patterns of social organization'. They are forced to work with global assumptions, to construct correlations between 'social problems' without having any opportunity to examine the ways in which significance has become attached to such aspects of national conduct. Their reliance upon American influenced secondary sources means that they tend to arrive at statements such as: 'At present, city delinquency, like much of city life itself, is in a rudimentary stage of development. It grows out of poverty, dire need, and lack of social organisation in the slums.' The value of such statements is readily undermined by contrasting them with the findings of an anthropologist, who, unfamiliar with deviance theory, simply sets out to describe delinquency in one African city.16 There, the researcher found not only a complete urban history, but also a high degree of social organization, a deviant population whose political involvement paralleled that in some American cities, and a culture of deviance which syncretically involved traditional witchcraft elements and contemporary advertising themes.

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The assumptions which lie behind the work of the Cavans are nevertheless much less disconcerting from a comparative standpoint than those which have informed other recent comparative work. One author introduces his text by the following statement of his belief: 'Allowing for some cultural, economic or politically imposed differences, "delinquent behaviour" is expressed in the same way and causes the same reactions in all countries where the lives of people are ruled by the values and techniques of modern industrial society' (Leissner 1969). Needless to say, the writer does not describe the way in which such differences may be allowed: we are not told the way in which they can be peeled off so as to reveal beneath their surface the homogeneous cultural phenomena of contemporary delinquency. But then the book from which we quote is like many others, an advertisement for a particular correctional method. We need to be aware, in assessing the reliability of particular crosscultural analysis, of the advantages which may ensue for social practitioners if they can show that deviant phenomena in other societies are directly comparable to the domestic variety and, therefore, by definition are amenable to tried, trusted, and institutionalized correctional techniques. Extended reading of the type of studies referred to above tends to induce a desire for some transcending approach, for a perspective which is less temporally specific, which by its global assumptions has pretensions to rise above culture-bound explanatory systems. The basis for such an approach can we believe be perhaps found by a reconsideration of some aspects of the evolutionary perspective. S O M E E V O L U T I O N A R Y PERSPECTIVES

A useful way of differentiating between various comparative studies of deviance lies in the degree of relativity or flexibility which is accorded to the act of deviance and the societal response to it. The more traditional evolutionary perspective tends to take an absolutist stand in relation to deviance but a more flexible attitude to the problem of social control. The argument (by default usually) is that the nature of deviant behaviour does not change greatly in a diachronic perspective - men still want to engage in distinctive types of sexual behaviour, to steal, to murder. What changes are the ways in which such behaviour is dealt with by society. It is as though crime is a permanent problem in human society and that evolutionary perspec-

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tives allow us to see how we have gradually moved towards treating it in a way which - assuming the evolutionary perspective is progressive - will at last bring it to an end or substantially reduce it. In the evolutionary chronology we may find descriptions of periods which are said to be filled with excessive violence or a particular blood-thirstiness but on examination these turn out to be not characteristics of the deviant behaviour at the time - but rather of the agents of social control. In the classical evolutionary treatment of comparative criminal law, we are confronted with the gradual emergence of the ethical view of punishment, with the recognition that 'the criminal, too, has his rights - the right to be punished, but so punished that he may be helped in the path of reform' (Hobhouse 1906: 3). In Hobhouse's formulation, it is not only the deviant act which enjoys a certain stability and continuity over time, it is also the conception of human life. Comparative studies of deviance which include a historical element have often not merely ignored the possibility of differences, in the meaning of the deviant act itself, but also in the meaning of the sanctions which are directed against that act. Hobhouse merely talks of severe punishment characterizing certain periods. The exact nature of the sanctions is no more investigated than the exact nature of the behaviour against which they are directed. This or that sanction is merely accorded an ethical score on the continuum from barbarism to liberality. One of the very few counterexamples to this tendency amongst evolutionistically inclined students of crime and deviance is provided by the work of Nils Christie (1968). Christie argues that it may be misleading to rely upon the means of punishment as a social indicator for it may be that changes in such means are related not to some ongoing, even evolutionary, tendency to liberalization or humanitarianism, but are rather related to the nature of the crime to which they are addressed. It could in other words be 'the values that are destroyed or violated by misdeeds which have changed over time and not the values which inform the punishment.' Unfortunately, as he observes, we do not, like the economists, have a golden yardstick against which we can measure changes in the value of crime and punishment. He illustrates the problem with an example: 'In 1803 a stolen horse was perhaps worth a brand on the forehead plus ten years' penal servitude in irons - or branding on the forehead plus ten years' penal servitude was worth a horse. If we can thus prove that a horse was worth as much measured, for example, in work, clocks, or money in 1803 as in 1853, but that

104 Roland Robertson and Laurie Taylor stealing a horse in the latter year was punished with only three years' imprisonment, we could then say it is the penal value that has altered.' Unfortunately for comparative work this is not easily done. Indeed Christie is forced to admit that we cannot easily discover whether the values actually violated by criminals are now greater or lesser than at other historical times or whether they were considered to be greater or lesser at different points in history. He nevertheless suggests by reference to crimes concerned with material gain that 'crimes are considered as about equally grave evils now as before, and that it is therefore the penal values - not the crime values - that have changed.' This admittedly speculative conclusion which ignores the changing meaning of crime by concentrating upon the economic compatibility of the criminal's gain and the victim's loss over time, at least allows him to proceed to a viable empirical study of possible changes in penal values. Christie's preliminary research into this problem involves a comparison between the number of persons imprisoned in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway over a period of eighty years. There is a striking similarity between the curves which can be drawn for Denmark, Sweden, and Norway for that period. Finland, however, diverges significantly, rising sharply after 1918. The highly important conclusion drawn by Christie is that the Finnish figures 'reflect another frame of reference as regards suffering than is found in the other Nordic countries'. The sudden increase is explained by the different value placed upon suffering in Finland, following the bloody civil war and the break with Russia in 1917. 'Three years' imprisonment in Finland is the counterpart of one year in Norway.' Such perspectives as those described above concentrate then upon changes in penal values, they do not seriously discuss changes in the nature of crime; crime is very much the independent variable which remains uniform, but which by its continued presence provokes a series of ethical reactions which can then be taken as indicative of the general values prevailing at the time. An evolutionary approach which departs from this position concentrates upon the deviant behaviour not as some continuing element which inevitably provokes some reaction - but rather views the behaviour as varying in the extent to which it is tolerable within particular types of society. Again, the behaviour is constant, it has the same nature, it means much the same to the members of society but it has a different meaning at different periods for political and legal 61ites and it is this

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rather than any changes in penal values per se which is responsible for temporarily differentiated responses. The differing social reactions to the deviant behaviour do not ensure that the meaning of the behaviour is thereby changed for the individuals who are engaged in it or who are tempted to be so. According to this perspective it is not possible to make inferences about people's personal motivations from a knowledge of formal or informal sanctions. Yehudi Cohen, who has produced an excellent example of this evolutionary perspective, invokes research in a highland Jamaican community to justify such a position (Cohen 1969). Research into this community, which was characterized by permissive sexual norms, showed that the anxieties experienced there in relation to sex hardly differed from those experienced by people who had been socialized in more restrictive Western circumstances. This is an ethnographic 'put-down' which is necessary if Cohen is to maintain his evolutionary stance.17 For, to allow that the deviant act changes its actual meaning over time, to allow that the motivations which inform it vary, or that the objects of its attention shift, is to blur the mainline evolutionary posture. We can observe a shift in ethical stance, in penal values or moral progress as long as the eliciting object stays still. Cohen does not want to talk about penal values or moral progress but about different styles of political control. He explores the way in which the rulers of some nations 'achieve some of their political ends by imposing unique controls over sexual behaviour'. The research uses a sample of sixty cultures selected from Murdock's 'World Ethnographic Sample' and does not, like many similar anthropological enterprises, stop at a comparison of traditional societies but goes on to propose an explanation for the contemporary political tolerance of sexual deviancy which has interesting - if unacknowledged - affinities with the idea of state relaxation for definite goals which lies behind the Marcusian conception of repressive desublimation. It is, in other words, a comparative study of the political response to one form of deviance which has something to say about the nature of the contemporary reaction to such deviance. There are two important differences between this evolutionarycomparative perspective and that adopted by Marc Ancel and the Social Defence school.18 The first is in the nature of the treatment of deviant behaviour. Ancel's concerns are sufficiently close to everyday social problems so as not to allow him to ignore the fact that an increasingly wide variety of acts are declared deviant by the state. It

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becomes difficult to regard crime as a behavioural constant when one is faced with such relatively diverse and novel behaviour as gluesniffing, vandalism, industrial sabotage, and football hooliganism. He does not therefore so much regard the ways in which the law responds to supposedly homogeneous and traditional deviant phenomena as incest, adultery, or homosexuality and thereby infer changes in the goals of the state from variations in state response. Instead he concentrates upon the changing nature of the response to particular deviant acts. He is thus led to conclude that we can no longer talk in terms of absolutes when discussing the nature of politico-social control. Law now takes into account a wide variety of extra-legal considerations in determining the response to particular forms of deviance. The behaviour may be seen as threatening at one time and therefore incurring severe penalties; at another time, however, it may be assumed to be mere evidence of individualized pathology, and thus be dealt with more tolerantly. The deviant behaviour thus acquires some meaning, and responses to it can only be understood in terms of this meaning. However, the meaning is not the meaning attached to it by the actor but that given to it by the law. The second distinguishing mark of this evolutionary comparative position is introduced by Ancel's stress upon the self-consciousness which is implied by the move from formal penal codes with absolute prohibitions to a situation in which novel responses are readily reacted to in a pragmatic way by a legal authority which contemporaneously defines them as deviant. As we have indicated, Cohen views changes in political control as reflected in the type of behaviour which is considered deviant; in this analysis however there is no reference to the self-conscious use of law to achieve particular societal ends. The analysis is primarily of a functional nature, one in which we can see the functional results for particular groups by retrospective consideration - but not one in which individual rulers self-consciously make plans to achieve certain ends. For example, in the discussion of celibacy, Cohen talks of the way in which priests carry out the state's categorical imperatives 'without intending to do so'. Marc Ancel and the Social Defence group are anxious not merely to record evolutionary trends in the nature of social control, they are also specifically concerned with making certain evolutionary tendencies explicit for lawyers and politicians, so that the law can be given a more fundamentally creative role in social and political matters. One has to capitalize on

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the revolutionary tendencies. One must for this purpose look at 'the whole panorama of European codification in its dynamic evolutions' (Ancel 1958). One perceives then that this evolution is in reality necessitated by new forces, be they unionism, socialism, state control, or concern for protecting the family, youth, and public morality. 'Once more, the weak structure of legalism breaks under the pressure of impelling forces, but these now come from a new conception of criminal policy' (Ancel 1958). The significance of the present evolutionary phase for Ancel is that our attention can now shift from the traditional concern with rules - with the absolutes which were inccorporated in different penal codes - and look instead at the specific responses of a given society to the phenomenon of crime; pure legalism is on the retreat, the law is now being used quite selfconsciously for the realization of certain social needs and concerns. Whereas the 'pure' evolutionary approach to comparative study exemplified by Cohen concentrates upon specific rules - relating for example to adultery, incest, etc. - Ancel is less concerned with offence than response. The offences themselves may change from moment to moment - they only acquire interest when the state reacts to them as threats to certain basic values and goals. The persistent tendency in most of the evolutionary approaches we have described is the imposition of a relatively homogeneous character upon the deviant behaviours. Diversity, change, and development are looked for in areas of penal values, social control, and judicial process. But there are good grounds for believing that this lack of attention to the deviant act may make generalizations about methods of social control precarious. There may be a qualitative difference in the reaction to different forms of deviancy. Nadel comments upon Gluckman's search for invariant characteristics of legal reasoning in the following way: 'Since the courts whose activities he describes do not deal with grave crimes and accusations, e.g. of homicide, assault or witchcraft, we learn nothing about the judicial process appropriate to problems in the case of which reasonableness must prove a very inadequate if not altogether meaningless standard' (Nadel 1956). It is this type of reservation which appears to have pushed comparative studies of deviance and social control towards some consideration of the deviant behaviour itself, that is over and above the mere recording of its occurrence. There are still those like Schwartz and Miller (1964) who confine themselves to evolutionary changes in

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legal characteristics without reference to the characteristics of the behaviour which is the object of the law's attention. But it is now much more common in comparative work to start from the phenomenon itself - whether it be murder, witchcraft, incest, or property theft and then, ideally having established its meaning, to show how such meaning is reflected in the forms of social control which are applied to it. In certain ethnographic studies - both sociological and anthropological - deviance becomes a special 'way into' the society being studied; the deviant act is treated as a significant cultural object which somehow encapsulates central societal themes. What the deviant does and how he does it becomes as much a social indicator as the reaction of others to his behaviour. This type of approach is at least advocated if not constantly adopted by Bohannan (1960) in his study of African homicide and suicide. He takes issue with Durkheim for not paying enough attention to the meaning of the act or, more specifically, to the motives which were offered as the cause of the behaviour by the survivors. In fact, Bohannan is a little uncertain at this point about the significance of these motives. He agrees with Menninger and Durkheim that the motive is unknowable, whilst insisting that the reasons given by surviving kinsmen are important to anthropologists - as long as they differ from society to society - in that they are folk explanations which are 'the popular means of stating moral and evaluational ideas about suicide, homicide and about "life" in general'.19 By paying attention to them we are opening the way for a 'culture pattern' technique of studying either homicide or suicide. For homicide, as Bohannan points out - and he could have made the same point about other kinds of deviance - is a social relationship which takes place in terms of culture: 'Since social relationships, social acts and culture do not take place in vacuo, we are endeavouring to find the concentration of social relationships and the accompanying idiom of culture which are associated with homicide and with suicide in different human groups. It is "culture patterns" in this sense that we are investigating. We are interested in whether or not killings, either of the self or of another, form many or few patterns, how the patterns compare, and whether they vary significantly from one society to another.5 The movement is, in other words, from the meaning of the individual act, out into the social relationships which are associated with it. In this way one finds out how the society works for its members in a phenomenal sense. In Bohannan's terms one initially establishes the folk system. This

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method of operation is to be distinguished from those more evolutionary or global approaches we have already examined which start with an external, a priori interpretive scheme. Bohannan argues for the importance of the subject's own interpretations: 'Events that occur within a social field (however defined) can only be perceived in the company of an interpretation. Obviously, the human beings who participate in social events interpret them: they create meaningful systems out of the social relationships in which they are involved.' These 'folk' (or phenomenal) systems are then confronted with the analytical systems which have been created by sociologists and by social anthropologists to explain the material they have gathered whilst working as ethnographers. To summarize the distinction: 'a folk system is a systematisation of ethnographic fact for the purposes of action', whilst an analytical system 'is a systematisation of ethnographic fact for the purpose of analysis' (Bohannan 1957: 5). Now there is probably no argument about this distinction; similar distinctions have become commonplace in sociology. The mere existence of many examples of confusion of levels of interpretation does not suggest disenchantment with the separation but only the presence of technical divergence with respect to the separation and delineation of the two spheres. Matters become problematic, and the argument begins, when one starts to look at the conditions which, it is said, must be observed in moving from one category to the other and the circumstances under which one is allowed to compare one folk system - or indeed one analytical system - with another. Bohannan repeatedly warns in his discussion of the Tiv about the danger of forcing Tiv concepts into Western categories, about the danger of using distinctions between civil and criminal law, between tort and contract, in describing their folk system. Gluckman, however, has taken public exception to Bohannan's position. He agrees that: 'Tiv law is entitled to independent respect' (Gluckman 1965: ch. 8). But he throws up his hands when confronted with Bohannan's apparent insistence upon the uniqueness of the Tiv folk system. 'The insistence upon uniqueness constantly obscures problems,' he complains. And again: 'The insistence on the cultural uniqueness of folk systems seems to me continually to distract Bohannan's attention from those similarities within differences that enable one to formulate more clearly both the problem of a simple society's law and those of comparative law' (our italics). How can comparative work be done at all, he asks, if uniqueness is insisted upon? He sets out to demon-

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strate that Bohannan is not trying hard enough, by taking some elements from the description of social control amongst the Tiv and showing that they can indeed be compared quite meaningfully with earlier phases of European law. This devotion to comparison of course fits in with his general concerns to discover the extent to which there are any features of the judicial process and legal reasoning invariant throughout the cultures of the world. A close examination of both arguments, however, shows that the differences between the two writers are less extreme than might be expected. What appears to have happened is that each writer has characterized the other's position in an extreme form - a common enough academic fault but such caricaturing has, in the present discussion, the effect of distracting attention from the fact that both parties to the argument are at least partly guilty of failing to conform to the corollaries of their respective standpoints. We can start tidying up by considering the problem of uniqueness. Nowhere does Bohannan make the claim that the Tiv folk system is unique. He merely insists that it be seen in its own terms. Any element can only be understood in relation to other elements, each cultural trait is Valued and understood by the Tiv as part of a system. Comparison is not thus made impossible - it just means that it must be done in a special way... Tiv do not make the distinctions that Europeans make between wrongs which injure the entire community and those which injure individuals. Many of our own jurists have pointed out that there is no delict which is not in some sense harmful to the community and no crime which does not harm some individual's rights. The distinction which Europeans draw is a folk distinction. The distinction which I have drawn between Kwaghboy kwaghdangy and ifer is a folk distinction. We can compare the two sets of distinctions' (Bohannan 1957). The problem which follows from this assertion is that Gluckman can now quite logically argue that the set of distinctions which has been made by Bohannan for the Tiv has also to be made in European legal systems. He can in other words equate distinctions as well as just compare them. Bohannan's only room for manoeuvre is to say that Gluckman is wrong and that the European distinctions are not parallel to those made by the Tiv. By allowing that two sets of distinctions can be compared, he is clearly trying to avoid a situation in which single traits are contrasted, but even his sets of distinctions are elements from the Tiv folk system, they are not somehow autonomous elements.

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Gluckman is certainly not unsophisticated in his quest for items of comparison. It is unfair to describe his search for invariant features as analogous to that of a linguist who attempts comparison by jamming Barotse grammar into Roman Dutch categories. Paradoxically enough, he goes further in one sense than Bohannan by arguing that one cannot stop, even as an ethnographer, at the description of the folk system of legal ideas. He argues that 'thereafter we must try to relate the particularities of a folk system to other elements in the social system'. We take him to mean by this not 'social system' in an analytical but in a folk sense - in other words, he is arguing, if rather uncertainly, for the need to extend the folk system from law to other aspects of Tiv life. Bohannan admitted in a foreword to the second impression of Justice and Judgement that he talked about the law of marriage, divorce, and bridewealth without considering the Tiv institutions of marriage and family. He was, in other words, failing to talk about the whole system and acknowledging that thereby he was circumscribing the meaning of what he was describing. What is troublesome in the situation is that Gluckman really does want to pick ideas (items for comparison) out of folk systems and compare them (for he has a sophisticated theory of cultural universals), whereas Bohannan wants to stop him by asserting that these cultural units can only be understood as part of a system. For Bohannan, the concepts are related to each other - independently they have no meaning. But Bohannan does not know or at least does not reveal the 'fullness' of the folk system; so in order to allow his work some comparative status he admits that related aspects of the system may be used for comparison. Gluckman eagerly seizes upon 'his chance' and demonstrates that there are legal folk sub-system similarities between Africa and early Europe. He 'squeezes' part of the folk system into his interpretive schema. The debate between Gluckman and Bohannan has been extensively treated here because it illustrates so well the dilemma facing those social scientists who are anxious to engage in comparative work on crime and deviance but who at the same time are anxious to avoid the premature imposition of alien interpretative schemes upon the particular entities which are being considered for comparison. Bohannan's approach to his empirical subject matter has some similarities with that adopted by such American sociologists of deviance as Becker and Lemert. Unlike these writers, however, he is selfconsciously working in an anthropological tradition and this means

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that he more readily acknowledges the legitimacy of demands by fellow anthropologists that his work should have comparative potentiality. His struggle to meet such demands whilst at the same time continuing to do justice to the distinctiveness of particular folk systems provides a good model of the basic problems which will be encountered by ethnomethodologists (a category of analyst which we deliberately think of in rather broad terms) who wish to move towards a comparative stance. We have surveyed a wide variety of examples of cross-cultural work on crime, deviance, and social control, ranging from small-scale empirical studies of deviant behaviour which have employed concepts generated in domestic American contexts to macro-theoretical accounts of the development of crime and social control which have relied upon universalistic assumptions. This diversity is in large part responsible for our rather expedient insensitivity to the problem of clarifying the terms adopted by different researchers. We have not, for example, insisted upon a distinction between crime and deviance; nor have we posed questions concerning the range of processes and sanctions encompassed by the term 'social control'. We have, however, attempted to provide some assessment of the limitations of the various approaches, particularly in terms of their readiness to emphasize both sides of the deviance-control relationship, and also in terms of their relative applicability to a wide range of societal types. A B A S I C F R A M E W O R K FOR C O M P A R A T I V E STUDIES

We would like at this stage to suggest an approach to the study of deviance which, we hope, overcomes some of the problems we have encountered in our survey. At an earlier point in this paper we said that at 'a sufficiently high level of abstraction, all societies have a deviance problem'. That is to say all societies express extreme disapproval of the violation of certain normative expectations - deviant behaviour we define simply as that behaviour which elicits such community disapproval. Many of the studies which we have discussed have concentrated upon comparing the actual deviant behaviour juvenile delinquency, murder, etc.; whilst others have compared the forms of social control - humanitarian, retributive, and so on. What has rarely been tackled in a comparative manner are the relationships between controlled and controller, between those who deviate and those who sanction. We have seen that straightforward comparisons

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of types of deviant behaviour and types of social control raise difficult questions about the exact values which inform the deviance and control, they raise questions about the meaning of elements on both sides of the 'equation' in such a way as to provide an unhappy contrast with symbolic interactionist and ethnomethodological studies of deviance and control which have begun to characterize the contemporary sociology of deviance. A concentration upon relationships promises not only a break with the 'social control' unilateralism which we deplored in evolutionary studies, but also with the 'deviant behaviour' unilateralism which characterizes those studies of 'crime in different countries'. Even though for purposes of convenience we can refer to there being deviance in societies other than those in which the concept has been developed, there is an important sense in which we have to focus upon the conditions under which it is possible to be deviant - where it makes sense in a much stricter respect to talk of deviants and the way in which individuals 'become' deviant. The situational sequences which Matza adumbrates in his description of becoming deviant can, for example, only apply straightforwardly to particular kinds of sociocultural setting20 - for to take but one aspect of Matza's presentation, the motion of conversion as understood in Western societies is not easily applicable to primitive societies. It might be said against this that members of so-called primitive societies have been converted in large numbers to different forms of Christianity. But our reply would be that what is involved in such cases is a two-fold conversionary process.21 Primitives when converted to Christianity have to be converted to the idea of being converted. We are not saying that the kind of theoretical work undertaken by Matza on the process of becoming deviant or, to take another example, the work of Becker on moral entrepreneurship, or what Douglas (1970) calls moral provocateurial activity, is without relevance to non-industrial societies. Quite the opposite. We are asking for a more phenomenally egalitarian disposition to knit together conceptually what we can learn from different kinds of society. Given the necessary assumption that Western generated social science provides an analytic leverage on primitive societies - the reverse not holding true22 - the problem consists in trying out in relatively pragmatic ways our Western-based concepts and propositions on non-Western societies with a view not merely to modifying them for specific analytic occasions, but in an attempt to

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generate a higher level or master set of concepts and sociological ideas which more culture-bound concepts and ideas can be referred to. The 'deviants' in pre-industrial societies - in line with this kind of approach - differ markedly from deviants in modern societies by virtue of their degree of self-consciousness and by their 'distance' from agents and agencies of social control. It should be strongly emphasized in this connexion that major consequences flow from this, not merely for the study of deviance (comparative or non-comparative) but for the sociological endeavour as a whole. Parsons's statement that 'the dimension of conformity-deviance [is] inherent in and central to the whole conception of social action and hence of social systems' (Parsons 1951: 249)23 can be read as an invitation to explore the respects in which the relationships between 'deviants', on the one hand, and socializing and order-enforcing agencies, on the other hand, vary from sociocultural setting to sociocultural setting. This, we would argue, is the way in which the well-worn 'problem of order' the Hobbesian problem - can be most fruitfully pursued; in a genuinely sociological, as opposed to a philosophical, manner. The notions of self-consciousness and structural distance - which clearly interpenetrate each other - would seem 'aggregatively' to constitute the most relevant axis of variation in this respect. Thus, in a broadly evolutionary or developmental perspective we can speak of a widening gap between controllers and deviants. By gap we do not mean that societies become progressively disintegrated for disintegration and integration are analytically separable questions from those which we are discussing here.24 The gap has to do with a range of variation from the ideal-typical, undoubtedly reified, primitive case in which norms are relatively clear-cut, phenomenally knowable and where controllers and actual or potential 'deviants' are highly visible, socially speaking, to each other. In great contrast in modern societies these three features do not necessarily obtain and thus the gap is very large. It should be emphasized that, although there is a set of dialectical processes which propel the widening of the gap in a relatively autonomous sense, the widening - the extension of the gap - cannot be accounted for without recourse to analysis of structural and cultural changes which in and of themselves heighten selfconsciousness on both 'sides'. It is in this sense that we have spoken of the interpenetration of self-consciousness and distance - a theme which might fruitfully be coordinated with the work of those anthropologists such as Mary Douglas who have contrasted thought

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styles and self-images in primitive societies with those obtaining in modern societies; the most important aspect of such work in the present context having to do with processes of social and cultural differentiation which yield phenomenal conceptions of selfhood and personal identity.25 Clearly, such a model requires much elaboration, particularly in respect of those kinds of societies - such as the medieval - in which there are, or were, particularly interesting and societally problematic cases where the gap threatened to become intolerably wide from the point of view, particularly, of the control agents. In this connexion, the Catholic institutions of sainthood and monasticism would undoubtedly repay extensive analysis. At later sequences in our model the cultural establishment of the notion of nonconformity (notably, of course, in British society) becomes similarly important. Modern societies - at least in the Western world - have to 'put up with' very much larger gaps than those obtaining in, say, fourteenth-century England. It might be argued that in some respects a period such as the Reformation showed gaps almost as large as those in modern societies. But the latter differ above all in respect of their cultural diversity - a feature which means that there are multiple points of reference available to both control agents and deviants, particularly the latter. This, plus sheer structural complexity, makes it more appropriate to say that modern societies exhibit the largest gaps so far experienced or observed. Structural complexity facilitates a large variety of deviant opportunities and 'temptations', and concomitantly a large array of deviant acts which control agencies are constrained to pay attention to. Thus the gap of which we speak is in large part developed on a 'lateral' or 'horizontal' basis.26 There are some disadvantages in the use of the term 'gap'. We do not mean to imply that controllers and deviants get increasingly out of touch. In many respects the reverse holds true. The gap is in various ways negotiated by individual and collective actors in both categories. Modern societies exhibit a vast range of mediating processes and institutional complexes which connect deviants to control agents. We are not intent upon establishing a scenario consisting in a single set of controllers representing, as it were, the mainline values and norms of any given society lined up against a set of deviants. In modern societies controlling and deviating are particularly socialcontext specific in their occurrence. In fact it is the very diversity and complexity of the mediating and/or overlapping relationships

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which constitute the major challenge for students of deviance in modern societies. The diversity and complexity may take the form of complementarity; it may involve covert or overt antagonism; the relationship may be parasitic or symbiotic. We may find overlap, even congruency between the behaviours evidenced on both sides.27 Once we have conceptualized and delineated the nature of the relationships between deviants and controllers along these lines, then we can consider the complications of such relationships for changes in the nature of deviant behaviour, and changes in the form of social control. The nature of the relationship - complementary, parasitic, symbiotic, and so on - has implications for the ways in which detection of deviants is undertaken (whether for example, spies, informers or the general public are used as sources of information). It promises to tell us about the ways in which crime rates will be generated, the likelihood of crime being generally regarded as a 'problem'. (Obviously in some types of relationship the generation of 'a crime problem' will be resisted by both parties.) This type of approach would allow anthropological work on primitive societies to be considered in conjunction with the analysis of modern societies. Our units of comparison would not then be social phenomena torn from different cultural contexts but rather modes of relationship which are necessarily present in any society we approach. Of course, the nature of relationships between deviants and social controllers has been discussed by sociologists of deviance, but not always in sufficiently explicit manner. One example will suffice. The deviation-amplifying system described by Wilkins (1964) is a useful model to consider because it discusses changes in relationship between controllers and controlled over time. In the first place the model allows for a relationship of tolerance, one in which there is knowledge on both sides of a ban and its defiance but where a state of easy peace exists. The tolerating relationship is disturbed by the mobilization of the controllers by other agencies who claim that it is unsatisfactory for such tolerance to exist. The individuals who are thus pressurized form their own outlaw group, develop their own group ideology, develop a deviant identity and engage in more deviance. More forceful action is therefore taken by the controllers and more acts may come to be defined as deviant. It is clear that a point will be reached where the controllers' resources are totally inadequate to eliminate or terminate the behaviour and a truce has to be tacitly

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established. Tolerance is replaced by an uneasy peace in which the deviant group may have to accommodate itself to intermittent harassment with the occasional selection of scapegoats as indications to the general community that the battle is being won by the controllers. There are a large number of relational variables in the Wilkins analysis which are likely to have different weightings for other cultures, other times in the same culture, and other offences in the same culture. There are several factors whose presence is a necessary precondition for the emergence of the types of relationship described in his model. These include such matters as the development of a conception of privacy, and the acceptance that there are areas of minimum visibility where deviant behaviour may be engaged in and be assured of tolerance from agents of social control. Wilkins' model also presupposes the presence of a third party in the deviant-authority relationship, one who breaks the conspiracy of silence and insists that the previously private deviants are in fact visible and worthy of attention. His model assumes self-consciousness on the part of the deviant, the availability of alternative identities which the deviant may assume, and that there are self-protecting ideologies available for him to embrace, that there are others who accept the idea of collective action in the face of challenge from a central authority. Many of these elements would not be present in a primitive society and many would not be available to particular deviants in contemporary Western society. Sexual deviants, for example, are often denied self -consciousness in our society, imprisoned in a determinist motivational setting. There are not alternative ideologies available for them when they are attacked and the idea of collective retaliation against the agents of social control is not an available cultural option (Taylor We have attempted in the later sections of this paper to pinpoint the most salient or 'master' considerations which ought to go into any analysis of deviant behaviour.29 Our main concern has been in a more general sense to underline weaknesses in the contemporary comparative study of deviant behaviour. The proposed developmental model is only in the relatively early stages of being systematized; but we hope that we have done enough to push the study of deviance more firmly in the direction of a sociologically viable framework - one which would facilitate a common set of references, particularly for comparative studies.

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Notes 1 It is interesting to note in this connexion that Marsh's (1967) useful survey of comparative studies makes no reference to crime or deviance. His bibliographical section includes only fleeting reference to comparative law in conjunction with the comparison of political systems. 2 See Nisbet (1969), Chs. 6-8. 3 Cf. Erikson (1966). 4 Cf. Nettl and Robertson (1968), Part I. 5 See also Berkhofer (1969)3 especially Chs. 5-7. 6 See Wilson (1970). 7 For some of the relevant methodological problems see, in addition to the previous citations, Scheuch (1968: especially I97ff.)> and, more generally, Etzioni and Dubow (1970). For exceptions to our generalizations about the study of parties see Political Systems and the Distribution of Power, ASA Monographs 2 (1965). See also Cohen and Middleton (1967), Bailey (1969), and Rokkan et al. (1970). See in particular Holt and Turner (1970). 8 See Robertson (1970), especially Chapter 3. 9 Campbell is cited in the insightful essay by Frey (1970). See also Frey's extended discussion of equivalence (ibid. 232fF. and passim). 10 See Cicourel (1968). 11 Gibbens and Ahrenfeldt (1966). These comments represent a summary of part of the transactions of the Topeka Conference on Cultural Factors in Delinquency and are, therefore, necessarily somewhat baldly stated. 12 A recent example of an attempt to examine the problems involved in using criminal statistics as social indicators illustrates some of the ways in which issues of equivalence and comparison might be overcome: Avison (1971). 13 There are many examples of this conceptual 'dependence'. In some studies the researcher does little more than apply the concept of anomie, maternal deprivation, social disorganization, delinquent generation, to another culture and remark upon its fit. Other studies start from this point but may introduce reservations upon its applicability as a significant element in the study. The following are merely a sample: Christiansen (1964), Defleur (1967), Hollander (1966), Weinberg (1964), Vaz (1962), Wilson and Wilson (1964), and Wolf (1964). 14 Downes (1966). Downes also attempts to suggest why it is that certain aspects of the American sub-cultural pattern are not replicated in Great Britain. He at least tentatively raises the question of the limits

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upon cultural diffusion. There exists of course a growing literature on the technical aspects of this kind of problem. See Naroll (1968) and Kobben (1968). 15 Cavan and Cavan (1968). We are aware that our statement does not take account of earlier cross-cultural works which relied primarily upon statistical material as the basis for comparison, e.g. Durkheim (1897) and Bonger (1916). Wolfgang and Ferracuti (1967) is sometimes talked of as a cross-culture text in view of its attention to culture case studies, but in fact these only take up nine pages out of three hundred, and do not involve much more than the juxtaposition of descriptive material. 16 La Fontaine (1970 and 1974). The summary of this work we have given, by its simple statement of extremes, does a disservice to a study which is sensitive enough to admit of ambiguities and complexities. 17 Cohen does in fact hold to the position that all cross-cultural hypotheses have evolutionary significance. 18 Ancel (1965). The following discussion relies extensively on Ancel (1958). 19 Cf. Douglas (1967). 20 Compare the sequential approach of Lofland (1969), who places much emphasis upon 'deviance as a type of conflict'; see pp. 13-24. 21 Cf. Horton (1971). 22 But see Horton's (1971) arguments about the analytic sophistication of primitives in Wilson (1970), Chapter 7. Cf. Ross (1971). 23 See also the insistence upon 'the unity between general sociological theory and the study of social disorganization and deviant behaviour' in Winslow (1970: 337). Compare Lofland's argument that 'much conventional socialization is at the same time an inverse education for deviant acts' (Lofland, 1969: 83). 24 Compare the distinctions of Lockwood (1969). 25 See in particular Douglas (1966: especially 74-93), Douglas (1970), and Robertson (1971). 26 Cf. Smelser (1962). 27 This naming of types of relationships would have obvious affinities with the characterization of balances and imbalances in social relationships described in the work on reciprocity, notably Gouldner (1960). 28 Taylor (1972). See also Taylor (1971). 29 We have not covered enough ground to claim to have represented all differing perspectives. In particular, we have neglected specific anthropological studies. An excellent survey is provided by Nader (1966). See Kobben (1968) for a very useful overview of the general problems of comparative analysis. The study of political violence has

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Roland Robertson and Laurie Taylor become one area of deviance which has developed relatively sophisticated methods for comparative study. See for example Graham and Gurr (1969). For an extended discussion of our model, see Robertson and Taylor (1973).

References ANGEL, M. 1958. The Collection of European Penal Codes and the Study of Comparative Law. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 106: 3. 1965. Social Defence. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. AVISON, N. H. 1971. Criminal Statistics as Social Indicators. Mimeo. BAILEY, F. G. 1969. Stratagems and Spoils. Oxford: Blackwell. BERKHOFER, R. 1969. A Behavioural Approach to Historical Analysis. New York: Free Press. BENDix, R. 1963. Concepts and Generalizations in Comparative Sociological Studies. American Sociological Review 28: 532-9. BOH ANN AN, P. j. 1957. Justice and Judgement Among the Tiv. London: Oxford University Press. BONGER, w. 1916. Economic Conditions and Criminality. Boston: Little Brown. CAMPBELL, A. 1962. Recent Developments in Survey Studies of Potential Behaviour. In A. Ranney (ed.) Essays on the Behavioural Studies of Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. CAVAN, R. S. & CAVAN, J. T. 1968. Delinquency and Crime. Philadelphia: Lippincott. CHRISTIANSEN, K. o. 1964. Delinquent Generations in Denmark. British Journal of Criminology 4: 259. CHRISTIE, N. 1968. Changes in Penal Values. Scandinavian Studies in Criminology 2: 161-72. CICOUREL, A. v. 1968. The Social Organization of Juvenile Justice. New York: Wiley. COHEN, R. & MIDDLETON, J. (eds.). 1967. Comparative Political Systems. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press. COHEN, Y. 1969. Ends and Means in Political Control: State Organisation and the Punishment of Adultery, Incest and the Violation of Celibacy. American Anthropologist 71: 658-87. DEFLEUR, L. B. 1967. A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Juvenile Offenders and Offences: Cordoba, Argentina and the United States. Social Problems 14: 483-92. DOUGLAS, j. 1967. The Social Meanings of Suicide. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1970. Deviance and Order in a Pluralistic Society. In J. C. McKinney & E. A. Tiryakian (eds.) Theoretical Sociology. New York: Appleton Century Crofts.

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DOUGLAS, M. 1966. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1970. Natural Symbols. London: Barry & Rockcliffe. DOWNES, D. 1966. The Delinquent Solution. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. DURKHEIM, E. 1938. The Rules of the Sociological Method (trans. S. A. Solovay and J. H. Mueller). Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. First published 1895. 1952. Suicide (trans. George Simpson). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. First published 1897. ERIKSON, K. T. 1966. Wayward Puritans. New York: Wiley. ETZIONI, A. & DUBOW, F. L. 1970. Comparative Perspectives. Boston: Little Brown. FREY, F. w. 1970. Cross-Cultural Research in Political Science. In Holt & Turner (1970). GIBBENS, T. C. N. & AHRENFELDT, K. H. (eds.). 1966. Cultural FaCtOTS

in Delinquency. London: Tavistock Publications. GLUCKMAN, M. 1965. Ideas in Barotse Jurisprudence. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. GOULDNER, A. w. 1960. The Norm of Reciprocity: a Preliminary Statement. American Sociological Review 25: 161-79. GRAHAM, H. D. & GURR, T. R. (eds.). 1969. The History of Violence in America. Washington: United States Government Printing Office. HOB HO USE, L. T. 1906. Morals in Evolution. London: Chapman & Hall. HOLLANDER, p. 1966. A Converging Social Problem: Juvenile Delinquency in the Soviet Union and the United States. British Journal of Criminology 9: 49-67. HOLT, R. T. & TURNER, J. E. (eds.). 1970. The Methodology of Comparative Research. New York: Free Press. HORTON, R. 1971. African Conversion. Africa 41: 85-108. HUMPHREYS, L. 1971. Tearoom Trade. London: Duckworth. KOBBEN, A. J. F. 1968. In Rokkan et al. (1968). LA FONTAINE, J. s. 1970. City Politics: a Study of Leopoldville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1970. Two Types of Youth Group in Kinshasa (Leopoldville). In Philip Mayer (ed.) Socialization: the Approach from Social Anthropology. London: Tavistock Publications. LEISSNER, A. 1969. Street Club Work in Tel Aviv and New York. London: Longman. LOCKWOOD, D. 1964. Social Integration and System Integration. In G. K. Zollschan & W. Hirsch (eds.) Explorations in Social Change. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. LOFLAND, J. 1969. Deviance and Identity. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

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MARSH, R. M. 1967. Comparative Sociology. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. MATZA, D. 1969. Becoming Deviant. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. MERTON, R. K. 1961. Social Problems and Sociological Theory. In R. K. Merton & R. A. Nisbet (eds.) Contemporary Social Problems. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. NAD EL, s. F. 1956. Reason and Unreason in African Law. Africa 26 (2): 160-73. NADER, L. 1966. Anthropological Study of Law. American Anthropologist (special issue). NAROLL, R. 1968. Some Thoughts on Comparative Method in Social Research. In H. M. & A. B. Blalock (eds.) Methodology in Social Research. New York: McGraw-Hill. NETTL, j. P. & ROBERTSON, R. 1968. International Systems and the Modernization of Societies. London: Faber. NISBET, R. A. 1969. Social Change and History. New York: Oxford University Press. PARSONS, T. 1951. The Social System. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. POLSKY, N. 1967. Hustlers, Beats and Others. Chicago: Aldine. PRZEWORSKI, A. & TEUNE, H. 1970. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry. New York: Wiley. ROBERTSON, R. 1970. The Sociological Interpretation of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell. 1971. The Sociology of Religion: Problems and Desiderata. Religion I (2): 109-26. ROBERTSON, R. & TAYLOR, L. 1973. Deviance, Crime and Socio-legal Control. London: Martin Robertson. ROSS, G. 1971. Neo-Tylorianism: a Reassessment. Man 6: 105-16. ROKKAN, s. (ed.). 1968. Comparative Research Across Cultures and Nations. Paris, The Hague: Mouton. ROKKAN, s. et al. 1970. Citizens, Elections, Parties. Oslo. SCHEUCH, E. 1968. The Cross-Cultural Use of Sample Surveys: Problems of Comparability. In Rokkan (1968). SCHWARTZ, R. D. & MILLER, j. c. 1964. Legal Evolution and Societal Complexity. American Journal of Sociology 70 (2): 159-69. SELLIN, T. &WOLFGANG, M. E. 1964. The Measurement of Delinquency. New York: Wiley. SMELSER, N. j. 1962. Theory of Collective Behaviour. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. TAYLOR, L. 1971. Deviance and Society. London: Michael Joseph. 1972. The Significance and Interpretation of Motivational Accounts. Sociology 6 f 23-39.

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VAZ, E. w. 1962. Juvenile Gang Delinquency in Paris. Social Problems 10: 23-31. WEINBERG, s. K. 1964. Juvenile Delinquency in Ghana. A Comparative Analysis of Delinquent Non-Delinquents. American Sociological Review 55: 471-81. w ILK INS, L. T. 1964. Social Deviance. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. WILSON, B. R. (ed.). 1970. Rationality. Oxford: Blackwell. WILSON, H. c. & WILSON, A. j. c. 1964. Juvenile Delinquency in Japan. British Journal of Criminology 4: 259. WINSLOW, R. w. 1970. Society in Transition: a Social Approach to Deviancy. New York: Free Press. WOLF, P. 1964. Crime and Social Class in Denmark. British Journal of Criminology 4: 259. WOLFGANG, M. E. & FERRACUTI, F. 1967. The Subculture of Violence. London: Tavistock Publications.

MICHAEL PHILLIPSON and MAURICE ROCHE

Phenomenology, sociology, and the study of deviance1 INTRODUCTION

The subjects of this paper are phenomenology2 and sociology, the general implications of the former for the latter, and its particular implications in the field of the sociology of deviance. These subjects call for a deeper and more detailed articulation of philosophical problems and perspectives than can be presented within the limits of this kind of paper. So the account offered here is no more than a preliminary sketch of the field. Ethnomethodology3 is the most substantive body of sociological work informed by a phenomenological perspective to have emerged in recent years. So the bulk of this paper is concerned to outline the ethnomethodological critique of more conventional sociological concepts and methods. The field of deviance provides a useful focus for, and instance of, this critique. However, to begin with, some account must be given of the basic themes of phenomenology, as a philosophical method and movement. Although our main concern is with the sociological wing of the movement, this cannot be understood in isolation from the philosophical wing. BASIC THEMES IN P H E N O M E N O L O G I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y

The basic themes of phenomenological philosophy have a reputation for being difficult to excavate from its notoriously verbose literature. But, once excavated, they can be seen to cluster around two methodological imperatives. These imperatives, in spite of their complex content and complex implications, are themselves simple enough to state. The first is contained in the slogan 'back to the phenomenon', and the second is contained in the slogan 'show how the phenomenon is built up'. The former can be called

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descriptive imperative, and the latter a constitutive imperative. The meaning of these two imperatives can best be explained by considering the concept 'phenomenon'. This concept refers to that which appears to be the case, that which is given in perception or in consciousness, for the perceiving and conscious subject. The term 'phenomenal given' can be used as an equivalent for 'phenomenon' whenever the subjective reference of the latter term needs to be emphasized in the face of its more usual objective interpretation. We tend, in intellectual matters as in most others, to assimilate what we want to understand, the unfamiliar, to what is familiar. Phenomenology is unfamiliar to a British intellectual climate coloured, from Hume to Russell, by empiricism. And since both philosophies make much use of the concept 'phenomenon' the temptation might arise to assimilate phenomenology to empiricism. But such an ethnocentric manoeuvre here is at best superficial and premature. The two philosophical contexts and uses of the term are very different.4 They involve a different account of mind and of behaviour, and have very different implications for psychological, psychiatric, and sociological accounts of human behaviour. The empiricist context is that of a sceptical, but not on that account scientific or adequate, view of mind as a receptacle and of behaviour as determined. Thus mind and action are ultimately held to be determined by the human organism's sensory receptions, the associations that occur between them, and the responses they evoke. For empiricism the 'phenomenon' or 'phenomenal given' is the sensing by the subject organism of an impinging stimulus. The phenomenological context is very different. It provides no endorsement, as does the empiricist, for a deterministic account of mind and action in terms of gross physiological and environmental factors. Rather phenomenology takes the view that mind and action are intentional and not determined. The intentionality of action is a straightforward concept, familiar to commonsense, to sociological theory, and more recently to existential psychiatry and the post-war conceptual analytic or linguistic philosophy school of British philosophy.5 To say that action is intentional is to say that men behave in terms of goals, projects, reasons, motives, purposes, and so on, that they entertain. This is related to the concept that mind or consciousness is intentional, which is perhaps less familiar. To say that consciousness is intentional is, according to phenomenology, to point to the fact that all consciousness is consciousness

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of something or about something. We cannot conceive of consciousness in the abstract, unrelated to what it is about. It has been a traditional failing of rationalist philosophy to conceive of consciousness and of the subject in some limbo of abstraction. The phenomenological distance from rationalism is no less than its distance from empiricism, particularly on this issue of the nature of human consciousness. Mind is neither an 'illusion concocted by organic reality' (empiricism), nor a 'self-contained spiritual reality' (rationalism). Rather it is best understood as some relation between a subject and object. It is this relation that the concept of the intentionality of consciousness describes. Anything that consciousness is of or about is called an 'intentional object'. This is necessarily a unity of meaning of some kind; for instance, at the most basic level we can always name, or give some kind of linguistic characterization to, what it is that we are conscious of. Even in the limiting cases when we say that we are 'puzzled', 'unsure' and that what we are aware of is 'meaningless', these also are intentional objects and unities of meaning. As Merleau-Ponty put it 'we are condemned to meaning' (1962: xix). The intentionality of mind and of action are clearly intimately related. Men act intentionally or purposively in terms of what they wish, believe, see, fear, know (or whatever) to be the case. Thus what is wished, believed, seen, feared, or known is already the intentional object of the prospective actor's consciousness. The actor's mind is no more or less than a subject pole in his field of intentional objectivities. He lives in this field, amongst its objects. Thus a basic phenomenological concept is that a man's mind is not 'in' some part of his body such as his brain. It is not 'in' anywhere; rather man is 'in' his mind, in the sense that he lives, and is situated within, a field of objects that are meaningful to him.7 But just as mind is the ground of action, so action is the ground of mind. The field of intentional objects of any subject is necessarily a social one, including the social realities of organization, rules, and other persons. The subject's field is meaningful for him, but not created by him at his whim. Since it is constantly in historical flux and changes with or without his assistance, then the subject's experienced situation is open to change and flux. Just as important, in the immediate field around him the subject necessarily interacts with others. The subject's plans and projects, and their reception, modification, endorsement or defeat by others with whom he acts, inevitably

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change the way he sees the world, change his 'state of mind', and affect the field of meanings he sees himself within. The intentionalities of mind and of action are, therefore, inextricably linked, and their distinction is something of an analytical one. Bearing this in mind we can now return to the two basic themes of phenomenological method mentioned earlier, the descriptive and the constitutive imperatives. Phenomenological description attempts to record the field of intentional objectivities, or meanings, experienced by a given subject or subjects. Further, it attempts to record the mode, as well as the object, of intentionality, the form of the subject's intentional relation to objects as well as the objects themselves. Of course the mode is implicated necessarily in the object of intentionality, and vice versa. For instance, where the mode of intentionality is that of believing, the intentional object is that which is believed; where the mode is that of perceiving or fearing, the object is that which is perceived, or feared. Phenomenological constitution, on the other hand, attempts to reveal how meanings, the intentional modes and objects, are constructed by the subject. Naturally this attempt is dependent upon the prior phenomenological description. It requires an analytical manoeuvre, taking the intentioning and meaning-constituting activity of the subject to pieces, and a constitutive manoeuvre, putting it all back together again. The description, insofar as it involves an identification of the subject's activities and objects, already carries with it some analytical features. The constitutive move uses the description and the analysis to reconstruct the process by which the specific meanings, and types of meanings, arise in the subject's mind and action. Such a reconstruction is easier to illustrate, and more relevant to sociology, in respect of action than it is in respect of mind. Thus, the actions in any interaction sequence can be related back to the views and understandings about the emerging situation held by the actors at different stages of the sequence. And the criterion of a successful and valid constitutive account of such a sequence would be in whether it would be possible to rehearse actors in terms of the account and to produce the same over-all consequences and results.8 Ethnomethodologists and deviance sociologists such as Matza take over this recipe or cookbook criterion of a valid account from the phenomenologists' imperative to provide a constitutive account of the phenomenon.9 We will look more closely at their adoption of this criterion later. First

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some account must be given of the development of phenomenological ideas in relation to the themes, of description and constitution, and of the intentionality of mind and action, which we have isolated so far. THE D E V E L O P M E N T OF P H E N O M E N O L O G I C A L IDEAS

Broadly speaking the trajectory of ideas within the phenomenological movement has described a parabola.10 It began with a descriptive and existential emphasis, in the work of Brentano and the early work of Husserl.11 It soared into metaphysical realms in the main body of Husserl's work. And it came back to a more descriptive and existential emphasis in the later works of Husserl, and of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Schutz, and others. The field is inevitably more complicated and confusing than this broad picture allows for, but a detailed historical account would take us too far afield. The trajectory of ideas, then, can be traced from what will be called 'existential realism', to what will be called 'transcendental idealism', and back to a more informed and developed existential realism. The latter move involved a more or less substantive break with the main body of Husserl's work. However, the continuity of the movement was sustained in spite of this break by the fact that Husserl himself had begun to re-orient himself in his later writing. And also his concepts of bracketing or reduction, and of constitutive accounting for meaning, were taken up and used in modified form by existential phenomenologists and even more significantly by Schutz. The main issues at stake between the existential realist and the transcendental idealistic interpretations of phenomenology can be seen to centre on three points: (1) First, they differ over what it is that experiences or is conscious of things; (2) Secondly, they differ over the nature of that which is experienced; and (3) Thirdly, they differ over whether, in the study of experience, experiencing activity can be analysed in isolation from the world of experienced and existent objects. Husserl, in his transcendental idealist phase, held the following:12 (la) It is ultimately the pure ego (or everyman's mind in the abstract) that experiences the world, and that engenders the meaningfulness of the world for the subject.

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(2a) The pure ego, besides experiencing the mundane world, can experience the principles and deep structure of its own meaningconstituting activity. (3a) The third aspect of Husserl's position was that the study of experience, consciousness, and meanings must ignore immanent consciousness and discover man's meaning-constituting activity in its presumed mental deep, the pure ego, an abstract and self-contained realm. The procedure Husserl advocated for phenomenological explorers of consciousness was called the 'epoche', 'reduction', or 'suspension'. It is aimed to 'bracket-off' the existential and real aspects of the intentional objects of consciousness.13 If we are looking at a table, we can make the decision to ignore the existence of the table, and concentrate instead on concept of the table as a 'pure' structure of meaning, having no existential implications, location, or context. This would serve as a rough example of Husserl's reduction method.14 As opposed to this, existentially realistic phenomenology, in the main, took a very different line.15 (ib) First, it held that it is the mundane ego, and not the pure ego, which experiences the world. And the mundane ego is simply the ordinary organically embodied and socially situated self; a concrete person and not an abstract entity. (2b) The mundane self experiences the mundane world, and has no necessary access to any more ultimate or important mental realms than those of the immanent field the subject experiences himself within. The world that the pure ego experienced was all too easily interpreted as a solipsistic one, in which there was the possibility of there being no other reality external to itself. Husserl tried very hard to patch up this leak into solipsism in his analysis, in his later writings. But existential realism rejected this possibility from the very beginning, as the mundane and everyday world is an intersubjective or social one.16 The world of intentional objectivities in terms of which the self plans and enacts its practical actions has an intersubjective structure. It has at the very least the social structure provided by a language, a fact which must ultimately defeat the most determined 'reduction' attempts by pure phenomenologists. If the latter is seriously concerned with the meaningfulness of experience he cannot 'bracket-off', and 'think away' language, and the linguistic structuring of experience. (3b) The phenomenological study of experience must be oriented to a meaning-constituting activity that is socially and organically

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located and is actively related to a social and material world. It cannot be oriented to the self-contained, abstract, and isolated activities of a dis-embodied and dis-located pure ego. The self's meanings arise in interaction with a field of others, at the very least. No account of a subject's experiences and meanings, therefore, can afford to abstract and isolate the subject from his existential location in his field of human, social, and physical facts. While breaking with Husserl's transcendental idealism, the existential realists like Sartre, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and arguably Schutz, remained in contact with Husserl's concepts. Husserl had advocated the reduction, or bracketing of what he had called the 'natural attitude'. Under the guises of investigation of the 'perceived world' (Merleau-Ponty), the 'ordinary, everyday, taken-for-granted world of common sense' (Schutz), and the Lebenswelt, or livedworld (Husserl himself in his later writings),17 phenomenology turned away from transcendental reduction and bracketing. What was to be bracketed, and what Husserl had considered originally to be marginal and uninteresting, came to be the focus of their attention and efforts. This overall interpretation is not inconsistent with the facts that Husserl never gave up the transcendentalist position, even in his later work; that Merleau-Ponty continued to attempt to discover 'essences', but at the existential level; and that Schutz endorsed some concept of bracketing and constitutional analysis. The detailed development of existential phenomenology from pure phenomenology is necessarily far more complicated than our account has allowed for.18

THE 'NATURAL ATTITUDE': A FOCUS FOR PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIOLOGY Before we come to the specific sociological area of the deviance perspective, some comments may be offered on the relationship between phenomenological philosophy and phenomenological sociology, particularly Schutz's analysis of this relationship. It has already been seen that the phenomenological concept of consciousness in the 'natural attitude' refers to the naive realism of everyday life; it refers to the pre-reflective and perceptual awareness of the ordinary mundane subject in the lived-world. The objects or phenomena in the lived-world are intentional objects or meaningful unities in relation to the subject. In its transcendentally idealistic phase phenomenological philosophy's task of the description

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and constitution of the phenomenon required a bracketing of the natural attitude. The focus of attention was thus turned to the constituting activity of a non-situated transcendental ego. In the turn of existential realism, phenomenological philosophy put transcendental concerns in brackets, in the sense of ignoring them. And instead, it stressed particularly the description rather than the constitution of the naively real phenomenon for the situated mundane ego in the natural attitude. What Schutz enabled phenomenological philosophy to see was how the study of the natural attitude pointed unavoidably towards sociology. And further he showed how the study of the natural attitude could be constitutive as well as merely descriptive, and that constitution could proceed within the terms of reference of the mundane level, and not necessarily from the transcendental level.19 Sociology was called for because it was a discipline that studied intersubjective facts about the lived world, at the same time as takingfor-granted its own congruence with the lived-world of its subjects. Once its congruence was clarified, its activity would be useful and informative for any more general philosophy of man's existence and consciousness. Constitution of mundane meanings from within the mundane level, and not from the transcendental level, was called for because of the subjectivity of the latter level as against the inter subjectivity of the former. Thus Schutz recognized that Husserl's basic problem, even in the latter's preoccupation with the constitution of the Lebenswelt in his later writings, was the solipsism inherent in the concept of transcendental subjectivity.20 Once Husserl had bracketed off the intersubjective natural attitude, where others, roles, rules, and relations all appear real and existent, he could not reconstruct their reality from the abstract and isolated sphere of transcendental subjectivity. The trick, as Schutz was to imply, was not to bracket-off and forsake reality so eagerly. The investigator, be he a variety of philosopher or a variety of sociologist, must seek to provide a 'constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude', rather than turning immediately (or even ultimately) to the great labours, nominal rewards and solipsistic traps of pure phenomenology.21 Schutz's attitude to pure phenomenology was admittedly more ambivalent than this gloss would make it appear. He always thought of himself as a disciple of Husserl, but then so did the explicitly existentialist Merleau-Ponty. Similarly, Schutz often deferred to the ultimate Husserlian aim of

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founding and constituting all knowledge and all sciences, including the humanistic and social ones, in terms of transcendental subjectivity. And yet an examination of Schutz's substantive life-work will reveal few attempts at transcendental analysis on the Husserlian model. Leaving this ambivalence aside for the moment, we can say that Schutz saw the relations of the philosophical and sociological dimensions of phenomenology in the following way. He appeared to distinguish between (i) pure phenomenology, (2) a constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude, and (3) mundane sociology. Of pure phenomenology we have already had enough to say; we can concentrate here on the other two. (i) The constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude. Schutz attempted to understand the comtnonsense world of everyday life by inquiring into how social realities are experienced and constructed by interacting subjects. Thus he began where Husserl had faltered with the problem of intersubjectivity. He asked what it is that enables each of us to experience a world which is socially structured, that is, which is fundamentally - (although not necessarily immanently) - meaningful in the same way for all of us. He indicated three dimensions relevant for tackling this problem. Firstly there is the rule, thesis, or idealization which we all take for granted and use appropriately, of what Schutz called the 'reciprocity of perspectives'. Secondly, there is another thesis that we all take for granted and operate upon, which he called 'the thesis of the alter ego\ and which is somewhat different from the foregoing one. And finally there is the fact of language, of socialization into language use, and consequently of the necessarily intersubjective structuring of our thoughts, perceptions, expressions and action in terms of language and of communicable concepts. The 'general thesis of the reciprocity of perspectives' involves two 'idealizations'.22 One of these is that of the 'interchangeability of standpoints'. Each of us operates on the principle that if he changes places with another person, then he would experience distance from objects, manipulability of objects and so on in exactly the same way as the other did when he occupied the place. The other idealization is that of the 'congruency of relevance'. Here any T presumes that any other he is involved with, in some practical project or purpose, sees and understands the same objects as I do, and vice versa. We presume, until given evidence to the contrary, that 'we', him and I, share a common situation, sufficiently identical 'for all practical purposes'. The 'general thesis of the alter ego'23 was an interesting point, but

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more subsidiary than the foregoing. In it Schutz attempted virtually to reverse the usual tendency, in both amateur and professional postCartesian philosophy, to claim that our knowledge of ourselves is more direct and certain than our knowledge of others. Schutz states that it is just as reasonable to say that there is an important sense in which I know the other and he knows me, in ways that neither of us know ourselves. Thus, in communication, when the Other speaks and I listen, I am absorbed in the Vivid presence' of the Other's expressed thought. Perhaps I can finish a sentence for him, or supply him with an appropriate word, that he cannot think of himself. The Other cannot see his own expressions, nor catch his own thought as a 'nowthought'. To do the latter he would have to make a reflective turn upon his own thought, and even then could not capture it in its immediacy. To do the former he would need a mirror. At the moment that the Other expresses his thought, Schutz's point is that I know him in a very different, and conceivably more direct, way than he knows himself. Of course, the same goes for me when I am the speaker, performer, or communicator, and when the Other is the listening and observing audience. Schutz put this thesis forward as a 'sufficient frame of reference for the foundation of empirical psychology and the social sciences', and he proposed it in the same sort of manner as Parsons (in The Structure of Social Action) had given 'phenomenological status' to the 'action frame of reference'.24 The third intersubjective dimension, that of the fact of the socialization of every social actor into the use of language, was not developed very far by Schutz. His ethnomethodological successors have taken this dimension much further than he did. And indeed the most recent ethnomethodological work has begun to turn towards the kind of fields opened up by the language theorist Noam Chomsky. Such fields include those of the 'deep' as opposed to 'surface' structures of language, and of the 'linguistic competence' of any native speaker to generate, on the basis of such deep structures, strings, sequences, and arrangements of words that he has never heard or seen before.25 The relevance of British linguistic philosophy, or conceptual analysis, might be noted here also. The work of Strawson and Hampshire,26 in particular, contains accounts of the basic structuring of experience by language, which are at least tangential to phenomenological interest in the intersubjective structure of the natural attitude or Lebenswelt. We can, similarly, only mention in passing Schutz's elaborate analysis and classification of the typifications and structures of the

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commonsense world. This substantive analysis was based on the theses of intersubjectivity mentioned above, and it indicates one direction in which a constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude can be and has been developed. (2) Mundane sociology. Until the constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude has clarified the modes of being-in-the-livedworld, Schutz allows sociology only a tentative status, a qualified validity and a suspect authenticity. Much conventional sociology remains, on this view, a documentation of commonsense, undertaken according to unclarified rules of commonsense. Substantive documentation and research in any field, including that of deviance, is almost premature until the rules which societal members (including sociologists) follow in constructing their realities and meanings have been revealed and clarified. But, of course, research will not and cannot wait upon such clarification. That being the case, the requirements of the phenomenological critique of conventional sociology would be met to some extent in the following way. The investigation of substantive areas should give primacy to the revealing of the shared meanings people attach to their situation, and the rules in terms of which they interpret their situation. This at least would ensure some continuity between the more formal level of the constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude, and the more substantive level of mundane sociology. In the absence of clarification on the more formal level, mundane sociology can respect the principle of intentionality, and of the meaningfulness of actors' thoughts and actions, by documenting the actual commonsense meanings men give to their acts. THE S O C I O L O G I C A L P R E S U M P T I O N OR S T I P U L A T I O N OF R A T I O N A L I T Y AND MEANING

Phenomenology calls, in the psychiatric and sociological contexts just as in the philosophical one, for an attempt to describe the actor's or actors' meanings. And it also calls for an attempt to constitute these meanings by analysing and reconstructing their production by, and emergence for, the actor. One interpretation of these manoeuvres would be to say they involve the explication and clarification of the actor's rationales for his thoughts and actions. In revealing the intentionality of, meaningfulness of, and rationales for, the actor's thoughts and actions, the phenomenological investigator is revealing

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the thoughts and actions as in some sense rational. This is so, even in the case of 'mental illness' in which the actor's lay and medical social milieux define him and his acts as 'crazy' and 'irrational'. Thus for the phenomenologist even so-called 'irrationality' is seen as a type of rationality, insofar as it is a comprehensible structure of meaning and of human existence. This clearly involves a very descriptive, as opposed to normative, use of the terms 'rationality', 'rational thought', and 'rational action'. It strips these terms of all their evaluative significance. This use is not far removed from the anthropologist's account of the actions of tribesmen in relation to the tribal institution of magic as a form of rational action. Or, nearer home, it is not far from the sociologist's account of religious, ideological, or value-oriented actions as forms of rational action. It is at least a fundamental preliminary for all sociological research to make clear the types of meanings, rules, and rationality employed by subjects of his study, be they primitive tribesmen, religious believers, ideology accepters, criminals, economic calculators, or whatever.27 But if phenomenology and ethnomethodology have done no more than remind sociology of this fundamental preliminary then it has more than served its purpose; for conventional sociology has allowed itself to forget about it. In cataloguing and analysing the divers types of rules, meanings, and rationalities at large in the social world the problem arises as to what kind of an activity is this? What are its rules of procedure, what kind of rational action is it, what knowledge does it pre-suppose, and what meanings does it employ? There are then two problems of rationality, understood to begin with as empirical problems susceptible of a descriptive answer. First, what is the nature of the observed actor's rationality, and secondly, what is the nature of the sociological observer's rationality? If these questions appear at all odd it is some evidence of our unthinking acceptance and use of a normative conception of rationality. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that unclarified normative conceptions of rationality underlie much sociological theory and research. The model almost appears to be the ethnocentric one that, on the one hand, the sociologist believes that the research and theorizing activity that he engages in comes up to some norm of rationality, whereas, on the other hand, the activities of the subject he investigates and theorizes about must be understood by comparison with rational types modelled on his activity as a 'scientist'. The ethno-

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centrism that it took anthropology a half century to lose has taken sociology half a century to gain. Phenomenology renders rationality and meaning problematic for sociology, a dimension of investigation, and not at all to be taken for granted. It is not Hobbes' problem of order that ought to preoccupy sociology, but rather Husserl's and Schutz's problem of meaning. It may be that the latter can be interpreted as a micro-sociological problem and as a preliminary for the former more macro-sociological one. But preliminary or not it is a necessary focus for sociological activity. Indeed, it is an unavoidable one even if sociology wishes only (perhaps in lieu of the success of its aspiration to be a 'real' science) to talk sense. To render the actors' meanings and rationality problematic, and furthermore to render the sociological observer's meanings and rationality problematic, is an important step to take in the development of a critical and self-aware sociology. And it is this step that phenomenology implies for sociology. It means that the definition or stipulation of some normative and evaluative concept of rationality is inevitably a pre-judgement whether at the theoretical or empirical level. The construction of 'ideal types' means the understanding of social phenomena, not in and for themselves, but by evaluation and comparison with some extrinsic and artificially constructed norm and model. Schutz has shown how the sensitive construction of ideal types is an indispensable sociological tool; but the tool in the hands of Parsons, and even of its originator, Weber, was insensitive, and relatively unself-critical. Sociology has become too unaware of this methodologically stifling legislation of what is rational, and thus what is subjectively meaningful. The legislation is usually in terms of some economic means-ends model of calculation, or else a marginally more interesting, but no more applicable, scientific model of inductive, empirical, and experimental problem-solving.28 Consider the hypothetical case of an observer of a chess game, who wants to believe that the game that he is watching is a game of draughts. He may be more familiar with draughts, but in any case thinks that draughts is a simple and a rational game, and wants to understand every game that he comes across by comparison with it. He has constructed ideal types of moves, sequences, and situations, which are rational in terms of the rules of draughts. Assume that the only method he allow himself of understanding and explaining moves,

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sequences, and situations in the chess game is to be through the degrees of 'empirical fit' and his ideal type constructs. We may be entitled to infer first that what he sees will not appear to be very rational to him; it may even appear confusing and pointless. And secondly his ideal types of move, sequence, and situation will have at best a spurious and artificial fit with the realities of the game (insofar as in both chess and draughts, black and white pieces are moved alternatively on a chequered board, 'capturing a piece' in draughts looks vaguely like that move in chess and so on); more probably they will have no fit at all. The charge against the observer is not that of unwitting ethnocentrism, for he may have selected and constructed his ideal very carefully and self-consciously. The charge is simply that the activity is irrelevant, it is not the way to understand the ongoing reality of the game that he is watching. Our advice to the game observer is similar to that given by phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists to the constructors of rational ideal types, and also of social surveys and questionnaires, in sociology. It is the following. First, 'realize the nature of the game you are playing, the rules and meanings you are invoking in the understanding of the game you are observing'. Secondly, 'realize that the games you observe may have very different natures, in particular, very different rules, and that what constitutes a rational move in one game may be totally irrelevant to what constitutes a rational move in another'.29 And, finally, 'in order to understand these games, forget your pre-suppositions and learn the rules that constitute meaningful and rational action in the game, learn the game in fact'. As Marvin Scott has put it in his study of the organization of American horseracing: 'for a clearer understanding of social interaction, the game's the thing' (1968). PHENOMENOLOGICAL SOCIOLOGY AND METHODOLOGY

From the standpoint of phenomenological sociology, and stemming from the ethnomethodologists' development of Schutz's constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude, a fundamental problem faced in any sociological interpretation is how the observer transforms his observations of the social realities which he investigates and in which he is involved into sociological descriptions or explanations. What is the character of the process by which the observer takes the 'first order constructs' used by members in constituting their worlds and

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uses them as indicators of his 'second order constructs'? What is the correspondence between the formalized second order constructs of sociological description and the intentionalities which accomplish the events described? The problem is that sociologists, like members, can only grasp their own and members' worlds through the medium of commonsense, communicated in its most articulated form in the typifications of language; every stage of a sociological investigation rests on the observer's commonsense understandings of the social world, of the world he takes in indubitable and known-in-common with other men. His construction of data collection techniques, his interaction with the subjects of his investigation, his imputation of meanings to the data obtained, his selection of areas for emphasis in his write-up, and the write-up itself are all accomplished according to his commonsense reasoning. The assumption is that the decisions made and the meanings imputed were those 'everyman' would have made who shared the same system of relevances and stock-of-knowledge at hand (i.e. in this case the relevances and the stock-of-knowledge of the social scientific attitude). Unfortunately in conventional sociology observers' decisions made during the research process rest typically on tacit assumptions about the social world which are presumed to be known to 'everyman'. The non-problematic character of his own and members' commonsense reasoning means that the sociologist's accounts are commonsense accounts, as are those of members, and share the same status as members' accounts as documents of practical reasoning. In this sense most sociology is the unclarified documentation of the researcher's commonsense and must be evaluated as such. Cicourel puts the problem in the following terms: 'The observer and respondent both employ methods for making the social structures of everyday life observable. The observer's task is complicated by his own use of an assumed but unstated common knowledge in entering the respondent's environment, sustaining the social relationship, posing questions, receiving answers, evaluating the respondent's environment and interpreting the findings to others. The observer must also take into account how the respondent evaluates the interviewer, the questions posed, how he formulates answers, all within the background expectancies that operate for the respondent' (Cicourel 1967: 62). The most intractable problem raised for conventional sociology by the

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ethnomethological critique of Cicourel, Garfinkel, and others is the nature of the fit between abstract sociological concepts, which turn out to be convenient short-hand for subsuming 'large masses of unintelligible data' (Cicourel 1968: 332), and the interaction sequences to which they purport to refer. In the event the fit is managed by fiat; correspondence is forced or is merely assumed. The concepts typically used by sociologists to describe assumed underlying patterns (i.e. class, status, role, norm, value, structure, institution, etc.) bear an unknown relationship to the procedures used by members to accomplish events in the social world; such concepts are of 'limited utility for specifying how the actor or observer negotiates everyday behaviour' (Cicourel 1970: 5). In a similar way to Chomsky's distinction in transformational grammar between a deep structure and a surface structure, Cicourel draws an important sociological distinction between basic rules and surface rules; conventional sociology has entirely concerned itself with the latter with the result that we know practically nothing about how members assign meanings to events, themselves, and others. The basic rules are the interpretive rules through which the individual acquires and sustains a sense of 'social structure'. Models or descriptions of the actor, of social structure, and social process which are implicit or explicit in conventional sociological formulations presuppose the basic rules and concentrate on documenting the content of surface interaction; moreover not only are the basic rules presupposed in these models but the procedures followed by sociologists in constructing their models employ these basic rules in a tacit unobservable way. Cicourel makes the distinction between the two levels in the following terms: 'Basic or interpretive rules provide the actor with a developmentally changing sense of social structure that enables him to assign meaning or relevance to an environment of objects. Normative surface rules enable the actor to link his view of the world to that of others in concerted social action and to presume that consensus or shared agreement governs interaction' (1970: 29). The distinction between the two types of rules is analytic and in everyday activities the two are in constant interaction with each other (1970: 30); however, the basic rules provide ways of making sense of the world and attributing meaning which are fundamental for the construction and negotiation of a normative order. A major

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difference therefore between ethnomethodology and conventional sociology is that the former inquires into the construction and maintenance of commonsense meanings, while the latter ignores meaning both as a topic and a resource for investigation. Phenomenological sociology, by viewing meaning as problematic in any context of description, calls into question most of what counts as evidence and theory in conventional sociology.30 PHENOMENOLOGICAL CRITICISMS OF CONVENTIONAL SOCIOLOGY

We have identified, then, a number of points at which phenomenology and ethnomethodology might enter criticisms of more conventional sociology: (1) The notorious lack of connexion and articulation between sociological theories and para-theories on the one hand, and empirical research on the other. (2) The gross inappropriateness and irrelevance of much of the rational ideal type construction, which is the major form used to establish both some such theory-research connexion and also some sense of sociology as interpretive (Weber).31 (3) Sociology's aspiration to be an empirical discipline concerned to understand and explain real and existent social phenomena is not served by its largely ignoring the key fact that such phenomena are meaningful for both the actors and the sociologist. (4) Sociology does not attend, with anything like the necessary sensitivity, detail, and depth, to how meanings are constituted and negotiated by and between actors. And, (5) Sociology has traditionally (apart from gestures in the direction of a socio-historico-cultural 'sociology of sociology'32) been incapable or unwilling to make its own practices and research procedures the subject of research). It has been incapable or unwilling to clarify its presumptions, its taken-for-granted knowledge, its horizon and structure of meanings, its rules for generating meanings and for interpreting the meanings of the actors it studies, and so on. Phenomenology and ethnomethodology discover a theme and a problem in the necessarily intimate relation of the sociological observer-researcher and the observed actors in a common lived world of meanings. The criticism of conventional sociology is not merely that it has never had the imagination to discover this problem, but,

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more important, that the problem is of central significance for sociological research methodology. Until it is tackled the value of most sociological research is in doubt, on trial, guilty until proved innocent. THE DEVIANCE PERSPECTIVE

What are the conceptual and methodological implications of the phenomenological critique for the study of social deviance? We shall argue that, although what we term the 'deviance perspective'33 has a system of relevances which converges with that of a phenomenologically based sociological approach, radical developments within the perspective will not be derived from its own resources but from a reorientation derived from a phenomenological sociological critique of its task. The deviance perspective is an emergent orientation which draws from the radically different traditions of structural-functionalism (especially canomie theory' and its subcultural derivatives), and symbolic interactionism (especially the emphasis on societal reaction, labelling theory, and deviant careers).34 The perspective can also be seen as a reaction to the normative social problem orientation of both traditional criminology and much earlier sociology in which investigation was bound up with prescriptions for doing something about 'the problem'. It is, therefore, an attempt to view deviance as a sociological problem rather than a social problem. The focus increasingly moves towards sociological 'understanding' of the phenomenon of deviance and away from 'correctional' perspectives which are tied in with practical social action programmes. As the 'correctional' perspective is discarded the stance of the emerging deviance perspective thus comes to resemble what Schutz has described as the 'scientific attitude'. Schutz distinguishes between the 'natural' and 'scientific' attitudes as follows. The system of relevances and taken-for-granted assumptions of the scientific attitude (i.e. those factors which orient the observer to certain problems) are quite different from those of the natural attitude (the attitude of men in their everyday practical activities) stance towards the same phenomenon. What is a problem for the scientist (disinterested observer) is quite different to what is a problem for the man in his everyday practical activities. The first move towards the scientific attitude is for the scientist to suspend his belief in the practical problematic character of the phenomenon

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(social deviance); this bracketing of belief in the socially problematic character of the phenomenon leads him to inquire into its problematic character rather than taking it for granted as was done in traditional perspectives. Thus, in moving away from the correctional stance the deviance perspective has come closer to the kind of stance envisaged by Schutz as appropriate for scientific sociological investigation of the social world. Similarly the concern of the symbolic interactionist tradition with the problem of meaning also has a strong affinity with the concerns of phenomenological sociology. However, in spite of this movement towards the scientific attitude and the concern with meaning, the deviance perspective appears to have reached an impasse in its development because of the conceptual and methodological limitations of the two traditions which it encompasses. The analytical focus on societal reactions to social deviance, found in the current emphasis on the labelling process and secondary deviation,35 is somewhat uncomfortably wedded to the idea of sub-culture (derived from the anomie tradition and stressing structure). In terms of their underlying assumptions these two traditions should be viewed as oppositional rather than complementary, but, for the practical purposes of getting on with the job of doing the sociology of deviance, syntheses have been attempted. By embracing these two contrasting traditions the deviance perspective now apparently offers a general framework for viewing the phenomenon of deviance. The field is integrated practically by including study of rule-breaking, rule-creation, and rule-enforcement. From a traditional methodological perspective couched in terms of the 'rhetoric of verification'36 all the perspective now requires is a more systematic documentation. Such a documentation would presumably include such things as the delineation of different types of deviant careers, moves into and out of deviant sub-cultures, the differential enforcement of legal norms, and the creation of new legal norms. This systematic or all-inclusive character of the deviance perspective, looking at the phenomenon from all sides, is an attempt to offer a unified orientation towards the phenomenon of deviance. But because it appears to emerge as a unified framework we must consider, firstly, whether this apparent unification rests on clearly defined rules for defining the field, and secondly, whether the limiting concepts of the perspective provide the basis for its fruitful development.

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Firstly, does the deviance perspective rest on clearly articulated rules for defining the field? The necessary precondition for the development of an integrated perspective on social deviance is the clarification of the concept of social deviance itself. A clarification would require a statement of the interpretive rules according to which sociologists and the members they study designate an act, event, or member, as deviant. How do members and sociologists decide that an event falls in the category which sociologists call social deviance? A series of specific difficulties arise for the deviance perspective when the answers given to this question by sociologists are examined. SOCIOLOGICAL AND COMMONSENSE UNDERSTANDING OF DEVIANCE

The boundaries of the interpretive field are apparently clearly predetermined by the terms 'deviance' and 'control'. But the use of these sociological terms for defining the subject area presumes observers' rules, known in common by observers, which state the conditions under which deviance and its control may be said to have occurred. In fact a shared but tacit assumption among sociologists about what social deviance is allows discourse to proceed unhindered, even though the rules for deciding on the conformity or non-conformity of an event are unknown. When the work of those authors writing under the deviance rubric is examined, no clarified, held-in-common observers' or members' rules for deciding the occurrence of deviance and control are found; observers' definitions and depiction of deviance rest on meanings which are presumed to be commonsense and known in common by sociologists. The concepts 'social deviance' and 'social control' then become sociological short-hand terms for grouping together 'what everyone knows' to be rule-breaking and rule-enforcement. But what is lacking is an attempt to specify the interpretive procedures used by members and sociologists in deciding what events are to be included and what are to be excluded from the field of investigation; there are no rules specifying how the sociological concepts relate to members' typifications of the events studied. Until we can describe how members typify some acts as deviant and how sociologists jump from members' typifications to their own constructions, then we have no means of choosing between alternative descriptions of the same phenomenon. One account is as good as another as they all (members' and sociologists') rest on unclarified com-

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monsense typifications. This requires the sociologist to inquire into members' and sociologists' rules for imputing deviance to an event. These criticisms may be clarified by a brief examination of the approaches of some writers broadly representative of the deviance perspective. There are several recurring themes emphasized by writers in the deviance perspective in their attempts to place some limits on the area of study and to define it as a field of study in its own right. The differing ways in which these themes are phrased, the differing emphases between authors, the variety of terms used to refer to what readers relatively sophisticated in sociological jargon would probably regard as the same phenomena, all point to the relevance of the general phenomenological critique to the particular area of social deviance. RECURRING THEMES AND DEFINITIONAL PROBLEMS

(i) Ambiguity. A theme common to most writers, and one that illustrates a fundamental point in the phenomenological critique, is the difficulty of deciding what deviance is; the very ambiguity of the phenomenon is referred to repeatedly. Cohen, defining deviance as 'behaviour that violates normative rules' (1966: 12) recognizes however that 'seldom is the precise meaning of a rule obvious' and, 'it is also a fact of social life, and not just a product of sociology's confusion, that there are obscure borderlands between deviance and conformity; people themselves are sometimes unsure of themselves and sometimes cannot agree on what is deviant' (1966: 12). Erikson states quite simply that, 'the subject itself does not seem to have any natural boundaries' (1966: 5), while Lemert openly recognizes that, 'all is not well with deviation as currently conceived, and that its adoption into the official lexicon of our discipline may be premature' (1964: 57). Lemert justifies his wariness about the term by pointing to 'the weakness of relevant sociological theory and limitations of empirical knowledge about social norms' (1964: 58). Lofland, in the most systematic and integrated presentation of a deviance perspective in which he views deviance as one kind of social conflict, discusses ambiguity and the definitional problem in these terms: 'To be true to the character of his materials the sociologist must reflect ambiguity as well as more or less consensual public definitions. The point is here that there are likely, at any time, to be acts and persons about which it is difficult to make a decision as to their deviance. By being attentive to such conflict and ambiguity,

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it becomes possible to follow the dynamics of how items can come to be defined in terms of conflict other than deviance or can reach consensual normality (as well as how they can come to be defined as deviant)' (1969: 22). Finally, Matza sees ambiguity as 'implicated in the very idea of deviation' (1969: 12) but for the sociologist the 'uncertainty cannot be liquidated, it can only be observed and reported' (1969: 12). He recognizes that this ambiguity in the concept of deviation inevitably gives rise to 'difficulties in applying it to empirically problematic phenomena' (1969: 12). However, the ambiguity apparently inherent in the concept does not prevent each of these writers from providing nominal definitions of the concept which invariably contain other unclarified sociological concepts, and then using it authoritatively to refer to a wide range of behavioural events. (2) Rules and deviance. The kinds of behavioural events included as deviation by the writers varies according to the nature of their nominal definitions; some are very general while others attempt to be more precise. At the most general level, Cohen defines deviance in terms of conformity or non-conformity to rules: if an actor, subject to the jurisdiction of a rule (jurisdiction is decided in terms of collectivity membership and collectivity roles), contravenes it then he is deviant. In this definition the contravention of any kind of rule (as defined by the sociologist) is appropriate subject matter and Cohen attempts to draw his examples from a wide field, although the majority in fact fall within the traditional domain of 'social problems'. Most writers, however, prefer to narrow the field to more manageable proportions and the commonest way of doing this is to limit inclusion to activities which are formally banned on a society-wide basis. Thus most agree either implicitly or explicitly with Matza, that there is 'a phenomenal realm that is commonly sensed as deviant' (1969: 12) and that the main definer of this realm is what Matza calls 'public ban'. Lofland more explicitly refers to 'the existence of state rulings and corresponding enforcement mechanisms that provide for the possibility of forceably removing actors from civil society' (1969: 18) for defining his sphere of interest. The others writers, such as Becker and Erikson, fall somewhere in between these positions; whilst the terms they use are so vague that they could apply both to 'state rulings' and 'state enforcement mechanisms', as well as to deviation and reactions to it in any group situation, their examples are drawn typically from those spheres of activity formally banned by the whole society. Thus,

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although the terminology used (rule-breaking and rule-enforcement) would seem to widen the field of study considerably, in practice the deviance perspective ends up focusing on similar issues to the earlier 'social problems' school. (3) Conflict and rules. The interest in the forms of societal reaction is evidenced by a further theme which some authors emphasize. Both Becker and Lofland are concerned with who decides what the rules are and recognize that there is social conflict over creation and enforcement of society-wide rules; this immediately extends the interests of the deviance perspective into the allied field of the sociology of law and political sociology. The emphasis of both authors is on power differentials and social conflict over what is publicly 'labelled' deviant.37 (4) The role of commonsense. It is worth noting that most authors, in different ways, recognize that commonsense understandings are important but it is at this that they stop short; there are no indications in the deviance perspective how this commonsense world is to be approached by the sociologist and what relations his concepts should bear to it. Thus Matza says: Tlural evasion, shifting standards, and moral ambiguity may, and do, coexist with a phenomenal realm that is commonly sensed as deviant. The very meaning of pluralism, the very possibility of shift and ambiguity depends on a wider consensus founded in common understandings, regarding the patently deviant nature of many nonetheless ordinary undertakings' (1969: 12). Becker, too, seems to be drawing attention to commonsense understandings when he identifies his concern as '... the process by which they (labelled deviants) come to be thought of as outsiders and their reactions to that judgement' (1963: 10). Similarly, Erikson, in dealing with the problem of clearly defining the field, recommends the tactic of letting 'each social group in question provide its own definitions of deviant behaviour' (1966: 6). He goes on to say that 'the only way an observer can tell whether or not a given style of behaviour is deviant, then, is to learn something about the standards of the audience which responds to it' (1966: 6). The concern of these authors is with what Cicourel has defined as the 'surface rules' presumed present hi any interactional setting and usually defined by sociologists in terms of 'norms' and 'values'.38 (5) Methodological shortcomings. However, even at this level of

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the surface rules, a failing common to all the authors is a lack of consideration of the central methodological issue of how sociologists are to 'reveal' these surface rules and what rules they themselves follow in relating these common understandings to their concepts. We take the central methodological problem in sociology to be that of demonstrating both how the sociologist constructs his explanation and how this explanation relates to the realities he investigates; this concern has been ignored in sociology. The recurring themes we have been discussing illustrate some of the most intractable difficulties of the deviance perspective when viewed from the standpoint of phenomenological sociology. The confusion about what the sociological concept of deviance is taken to mean, reflected in the acknowledgement of ambiguity, does not prevent its use as a short-hand term to refer to a wide variety of disparate phenomena. Having provided nominal definitions each author then assumes that his readers 'know what he means' and to what behavioural events he is referring when he uses the term subsequently; however, this is apparently contradicted by the recognition that what deviance is rests upon the commonsense understandings and definitions of the collectivity being studied. Unfortunately, none of the authors describes a methodology by which this realm of commonsense understandings and their own application of the concept may be investigated and clarified; the ambiguity is in each case resolved by fiat. Given the emphasis of these authors on the importance of members' definitions of deviance as the source of the sociologists' definitions, the most surprising omission within the perspective is empirical data on members' typifications of events which sociologists subsume under the concept of deviance. When members' meanings are presented in an anecdotal way by, for example, Erikson, Becker, and Lofland, they are used not as source materials for investigating the construction of meaning but as indicators of 'norms', 'values', or 'rules'. The data presented, drawn from a wide variety of sources such as autobiographies, documents, interviews, or open discussions, are taken to be illustrative of the sociologists' concepts, but no attempt is made by the authors to account for their selection of these meanings as indicators. The nature of the articulation between the concepts and members' meanings remains unclarified. Sociologists' assumptions about the 'obvious' character of the fit between their concepts and members' typifications rest on their unstated systems of

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relevances and taken-for-granted assumptions about the meanings of the materials and the isomorphism of these with sociological constructs. Thus to make sense of the sociologists' short-hand terms the reader has to fill in the details according to his own commonsense reasoning; for the reader to say he 'knows what the author means' he has to add a horizon to the bare theme stated in the concept. Whether there is a congruence between the reader's horizon of added meaning and the horizon intended by the author is entirely problematic; it is problematic because the reader has no way of seeing how the sociologist made the leap from the members' typifications to sociological constructs. From the point of view of phenomenological sociology, then, it is impossible to choose between the variety of differing accounts presented by the authors in the deviance perspective. Although accomplished by sociologists they remain members' accounts and there are no criteria independent of the ways in which they were constructed for choosing between them. The second question concerning the potentiality of the deviance perspective asked whether its limiting concepts provided the basis for fruitful development. Attempts to provide a unified field of investigation by the amalgamation of structural-functional approaches to deviance and the symbolic interactionist approaches in themselves tend to close off the possibilities of development by providing a systematic framework for viewing deviance. Having provided an orientation which attempts to be all-inclusive (by covering rule creation, rule breaking, and rule enforcement), the remaining task, according to the canons of conventional methodology, is to fill out the existing set of concepts (deviance, control, societal reaction, the labelling process, rules, norms, values, etc) with illustrative empirical material. The perspective does not provide a closed system in the same way, for example, as the logico-deductive systems which appear to be attempts to provide exhaustive abstract classification schemes of social action.39 But its limiting concepts (deviance and societal reaction) nevertheless can be seen as attempts to encapsulate systematically a distinctive field of study. By contrast, from the standpoint of phenomenological sociology, concepts are generated from empirical data gathered by the sociologist in interaction with members and are always subject to modification and rejection; they do not pre-determine or limit what phenomena are studied and how they are studied. For example, put in its crudest terms, the social phenomenological

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problem of understanding what sociologists call 'the labelling process' is quite different to collecting data which are claimed by sociologists to 'illustrate' and 'verify' the concept. To clarify the human meaning of 'the labelling process' would require, firstly, investigation of the background relevances and taken-for-granted assumptions of the sociologists who select out certain phenomena as indicators of the concept. Do sociologists share common rules in their use of the concept and if so what are they? A second question would ask whether the term was a members' term or simply a sociological construct. Do members actually refer to 'the labelling process' (and if so, to refer to what kinds of experiences) or is the sociologist using this term as a short-hand term for grouping together different phenomena? Stemming from this would be the question, what accounts do members give of those phenomena subsumed by sociologists under the term 'labelling process'? The more general points made by Cicourel about the limitations of the concept of 'societal reaction' (of which the labelling process is presumably a part) are relevant in this context: 'Recent advances, recognizing the problem of how members of a group or society come to be labelled as "deviant", "strange", "odd", and the like, have not explicated terms like "societal reaction" and "the point of view of the actor", while also ignoring the practical reasoning integral to how members and researchers "know" what they claim to "know". Sociologists have been slow to recognize the basic empirical issues that problems involving language and meaning pose for all research' (1968: 331-2).

and: 'But work derived from the notion of societal reaction fails to specify the observable and tacit properties making up the practical decision-making both lay and law-enforcement officials utilize when deciding some act or sequence is "wrong" or "illegal"' (1968: 55). Concepts like 'societal reaction' point to empirical issues ignored by traditional criminology, but do not take us much further in the understanding of these issues both because of their generality and because of unknown properties that enter in their use by sociologists. The way out of this impasse both in the field of deviance and in other areas of sociological investigation is, as Cicourel says, '... to develop a theoretical apparatus that would explain and generate everyday behaviour' (1968: 332). Until we at least partially understand how

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members make intersubjective sense of their worlds and accomplish social interaction, conventional sociological descriptions will remain vague short-hand accounts which rely on the reader filling in unstated commonsense meanings for their comprehension. Conventional methodology and analysis assumes an underlying pattern to events which is idealized in unclarified ways by the inter-relationships between sociological concepts. However, these very concepts impose a spurious order on social life unless they are derived from members' typifications; the particular underlying patterns which sociologists invariably 'reveal' arise from the very concepts and techniques used by sociologists in locating them: 'The search for hypothetical "underlying patterns" precludes discovery of social meaningful action by invoking the researcher's ideals as an unobservable explanation' (1968: 333). Thus, there are two barriers to the further development of the deviance perspective: first, in its attempt to provide an all-embracing framework for understanding the phenomenon, the perspective both imposes an idealized pattern on events and in so doing closes off the possibility of radical reformulation; even this attempt to articulate a homogenous field of investigation fails, as we have seen, through the differences between sociologists in their delineation of the field. Secondly, both the lack of, and also the lack of concern with, the development of a methodology appropriate to describing the phenomena of concern to the perspective (members' and sociologists' commonsense meanings) severely limits the kinds of clarifications and understandings which the perspective can provide. Given these problems, what directions might investigation take in areas relevant to the deviance perspective? Following the earlier distinction between the constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude and mundane sociology, we suggest that these two levels of investigation open up different but complementary avenues for the analysis of social deviance. THE C O N S T I T U T I V E P H E N O M E N O L O G Y OF THE N A T U R A L ATTITUDE AND SOCIAL DEVIANCE

The development of a sociology of everyday life, grounded in Schutz's descriptions of the constitution of the natural attitude, has been commenced by the ethnomethodologists. Their dual concerns

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with the formal properties or basic rules underlying the construction of social meanings and the role of commonsense reasoning in the creation of sociological interpretations relate directly to the sociological analysis of deviance. The clarification of concepts is fundamental to the natural attitude of phenomenology in its concerns with the ways in which common concepts bear unspecified relationships to members' realities. This clarification is empirical in its insistence that concepts can be adequately clarified only by describing the contexts to which they are said to relate and by making explicit the observer's background relevances in his use of the concept. Thus in relation to concepts such as deviance, control, rule, or value, this would require the extensive documentation of both members' commonsense ways of typifying phenomena included by sociologists under such concepts, and also the explication by sociologists of how they recognize the phenomena fitting the concept. The interactional context of such documentation would also have to be specified for adequate clarification; thus the biographical situations of both members and sociologists, viewed in terms of their systems of relevances, stocks of knowledge, taken-for-granted assumptions, and their recipes for handling the contexts, would have to be described. Apart from the general clarification of the dimensions of the natural attitude little work of direct relevance to the concepts of the deviance perspective has yet been undertaken. CicourePs work on the organization of juvenile justice can be seen as a contribution to both ethnomethodology and mundane sociology. For example, in his concern with the rules followed in transforming conversations and observations into documents later used as 'correct depictions' of 'what happened' Cicourel contributes to our understanding of the constitution of the natural attitude; in the same study there is much material relevant to the understanding of the substantive issues of delinquency and social control. Thus the descriptions of police and probation officers' background expectancies is a contribution to the mundane sociology of deviance. The work of Peter McHugh provides two further examples of the clarification of relevant concepts. First, he has provided an analytical distinction of two commonsense rules which members follow in designating an act as either deviant or conforming.40 As his discussion does not rest on empirical data the exhaustiveness and validity of the rules he proposes remain problematic, but his concern with common-

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sense imputations points the way for further developments in investigating the rules followed by practical activities. A second study by McHugh clarifies a concept which is assumed to have some general explanatory usefulness in sociology but which is used with a looseness and arbitrariness that severely restricts its value. The concept of 'anomie' has been of central importance to the structural functional strand of the deviance perspective and yet there is an absence of any clear sociological rules for its application to particular events or situations. It is used with such generality that its empirical utility remains marginal. In a replication of a laboratory experiment by Garfinkel, McHugh (1968) defines anomie (disorder) in terms of members' rules for assigning intelligibility and purpose to an interaction, and produces anomie situations in the laboratory; in so doing he is able to clarify the elements of interaction and the meaning-giving process out of which a situation of member-defined anomie emerges. Of particular importance is the careful way he states his assumptions at every stage of the project, making it possible for the reader to see how he moves from members' typification to sociological concepts. The empirical meaning of the concept of anomie, the rules for sociological use of the term, and the ways in which it relates to members' realities, which emerge from McHugh's study, call into question its unclarified and vague usage in conventional sociology. Indeed, the relevance of its common use for describing situations which are said to call forth deviant responses must be called into question. The processes of concept clarification and exploration of the natural attitude have only just begun in ethnomethodology,41 but the work so far undertaken leads to a rejection of conventional sociological methodology and interpretation. The sources of an alternative perspective are to be found in some of the work cited here. M U N D A N E SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL DEVIANCE

At the level of mundane sociology, which rests on the clarifications provided at the two previous levels of investigation, the sociological problems tend to centre on content rather than form and the interests are directed typically towards particular areas of social life. In studying substantive areas the aim of phenomenological sociology is the clarification of the particular human projects under study. Continuity with the findings of the phenomenology of the natural attitude is ensured by mundane sociology's focus on social meanings and the

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adherence to Schutz's postulate of adequacy. Thus the adequate description of the content of the meaning structures which typify particular interactional contexts is the aim of this level of analysis. The question of what counts as 'adequate sociological description' must also be raised. In the phenomenological perspective the question of validation hinges on what constitutes 'members' competence'. One way of formulating this criterion can be found in Goodenough's definition of a society's culture. This consists of: 'Whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members and do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves.' (1964: 36) The unachievable ideal of substantive sociological description then becomes the derivation of the socially shared knowledge which would be essential for any member to demonstrate his competence as a member. Schutz's remarks on the construction of 'personal ideal types' point the way in to this kind of investigation, although the practical methodological implementations of this approach have only just begun.42 The main problem for the sociologist is to decide at what point his descriptions meet the criterion of competence; this can only be ascertained by developing ways of setting off sociologists' accounts against members' accounts of the same phenomena. The problem is thus to develop methodologies which will facilitate the reconstruction of the recipes and 'cookbook knowledge' necessary for members to demonstrate their competence. Within the field of social deviance there are very few studies which either explicitly adopt this framework or implicitly approach it in terms of their interests and methodologies. In the following studies the authors have either explicitly followed the methodological directives of phenomenological society or provide the kind of data and methodologies which are contingent to the phenomenological approach. In relation to delinquency, apart from Cicourel's study, the work of Carl Werthman is contingent to the methodologies and interests of phenomenological sociology.43 Werthman takes meaning as his central problem, and through extensive interviewing and observation he is able to build up descriptions of the typffications which characterize the contrasting perspectives of gang members and police. Moreover by presenting large amounts of material from his interviews the reader's task of establishing the connexions between the author's con-

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cepts and the manifest data is facilitated. Even here, however, the strict methodological requirements of phenomenological sociology are not followed, so that the observer's background expectancies are rarely made explicit. Little work in the field of crime adopts this framework. Sudnow's short article, in which he investigates the emergence of typifications in the 'plea bargaining' process, illustrates the importance of analysing commonsense reasoning for understanding the administration of criminal justice. He shows how the abstract categories of the criminal law are routinely transformed into commonsense categories through which the participants negotiate the organization's business; in turn he demonstrates how the nature of these commonsense categories is closely related to the organizational positions of the participants. The article is too short for an adequate presentation of either the observer's background expectancies or the material on which he bases his interpretation.44 In a different way the work of David Maurer is directly contingent to the concerns of phenomenological sociology; although clearly not done from within an explicitly phenomenological perspective his investigations illustrate the richness of the potential data on argot and language use in the field of crime and deviance. Given the centrality of the problem of language to the phenomenological perspective Maurer's thorough descriptions point the way to one style of clarification of, for example, the concept of sub-culture. Viewing sub-cultures as finite speech communities and defining their boundaries according to members' own language usage and definitions would seem to meet the criterion of adequacy more satisfactorily than structural functional approaches.45 A paper by Alan Sutter on drug use illustrates both the methodological value of trying to meet the postulate of adequacy and, also, how grounding an interpretation at the level of meaning can call into question the relevance of existing concepts for understanding social phenomena. By focusing on drug users' and addicts' own experiences and on the nature of the selective processes into and out of the drug community, he shows the inappropriateness of the retreatist or double failure hypothesis; similarly he calls into question the idea of homogeneity which is built into the concept of sub-culture. Methodologically his work is valuable in showing how it is possible to attempt validation at the intentional level; he checked the authenticity of his information by submitting it to panels of drug users and

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by getting them to read the research reports. Such a procedure can be used both as a validation technique and as a way of collecting more information.46 Two studies of suicide are explicitly derived from the phenomenological perspective. Douglas' radical critique of the conventional sociological mode of explaining suicide phenomena directs attention to the processes of meaning-construction; the two major problematic phenomena for the sociologists are the meanings the suicidal person attaches to his act and the meanings attached to this act by others, especially by the compilers of official records. Douglas (1967) offers a variety of suggestions as to how the sociologists can approach these phenomena. A study by Jacobs complements the work of Douglas, and is interesting methodologically in its restriction to the manifest statements contained in suicide notes. By treating the verbalizations contained in the notes as explicit references to their authors' intent he derives six categories which typify the intentions of suicides; the categories are placed within the context of a general formulation, centring on the notion of trust violation for understanding the phenomenon of suicide (Jacobs 1967). We suggest that these studies are concerned both substantively and, to a lesser extent, methodologically, with the kinds of issues relevant to the development of a phenomenologically oriented sociology of deviance. However, fruitful development in a reoriented sociology of deviance can only come through close liaison with the emerging sociology of everyday life.47 Thus the main import of the phenomenological critique is to eradicate the conventional distinction in sociology between theory and research. Methodology, viewed as the ways sociologists construct a description or explanation, is the central problem, and a major part of this problem is to treat as problematic the sociologists' own commonsense understandings. It is possible to give an infinite number of accounts of the social world and any event in it and conventional sociological accounts are unrecognized glosses of commonsense accounts because they do not treat commonsense as problematic. The ethnomethodologists, by inquiring into commonsense, are aware of and help to clarify the limits of sociological interpretation. Cicourel states this awareness in the following way: 'In recognizing that we can generate only different glosses of our experiences, the ethnomethodologists try to underscore the pitfalls

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of viewing indexical expressions as if they could be repaired and thus transformed into context-free objective statements.' (i9yi) 48 The problem is, then, to make sociological sense of members' accounting procedures; the analysis of natural language use in conversation, natural language documents as members' accounts, and ethnographic observation of interaction settings provide the areas of empirical interest for the phenomenological sociologist. Members' accounts and sociologists' accounts are treated as both topics and resources in the generation of sociological interpretations.

Notes 1 We would like to thank David Walsh for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Needless to say, he is not responsible for the faults of the finished product. 2 The most comprehensive account of phenomenological ideas is given in Spiegleberg (1960-69). 3 See Garfinkel (1967). 4 For a sensationalistic empiricist account of science which influenced Husserl's phenomenology, see Mach (1914). Husserl also had a high regard for Hume, in spite of his criticism of him; see Husserl (1970: Vol. i: Investigation 2: Ch. 5). 5 On existential psychiatry see May et aL (1959). Examples of the conceptual analytic endorsement of intentionality can be found in Winch (1958), Peters (1958), Melden (1961), and Hampshire (1958). 6 For short discussions of this concept see Husserl (1931: Section 84: 241-4), Gurwitsch (1966: Ch. 7), and Pivcevic (1970: Ch. 4). 7 This concept would also appear to be basic to Mead's symbolic interactionist perspective of mind, self, and society (1962: Part II: Sections 15 and 17). 8 See the discussion of validity at the intentional level on p. 154, and Goodenough (1964). 9 Regarding the criterion of what he calls eany good naturalist description', see Matza (1969: no). 10 To mix metaphors, the reader need hardly be reminded that in this section we are attempting to fix simple labels on extremely large and complex intellectual animals. The gist of our criticism of Husserl's transcendental idealism is that it is either otiose or grandiose. It is otiose when the term 'transcendental ego' means no more than the

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mundane ego in a reflective and scientific posture, or when it means that the ordinary man is an entity which can transcend itself and its situation, an entity which becomes and has possibilities. It is grandiose when it is linked with a totally presuppositionless position, and with HusserPs aspiration to found a science of philosophy on which all science and philosophy could be based. We are not suggesting that phenomenologists will not gain from a reading of Husserl. However, this reading must be a critical one, perhaps in the light of the kind of criticisms we have, too briefly, indicated here. A short but authoritative account of Brentano's work, particularly regarding his introduction of the term 'intentionality' and his concept of a 'descriptive phenomenological psychology' is contained in Rancurello (1968). On the early Husserl, particularly his relationship to Frege's philosophy of mathematics and number, see Pivcevic (1970: Ch. 2). Cf. Husserl (1931). Cf. Husserl (1931: Sections 31-4; and passim). For a vivid contrast between HusserPs and the existentially realistic Sartre's perspectives on the experience of physical objects (in this case trees) see Husserl (1931: Section 88: 258-9) and Sartre (1965: 182). See, for example, Merleau-Ponty (1962), Sartre (1966), and Luijpen (1963). See pp. I32ff. for Schutz's development of this point in contrast to Husserl. Cf. Merleau-Ponty (1962), Schutz (1964-7), and Husserl (1965). Cf. Kockelmans (1967). Schutz on the phenomenology of the social world (1967: Ch. 2: 45-96). Cf. Schutz (1964: Vol. i: 165, 167, and 197, and also L. von Breda's preface p. xii). On the other hand Schutz appears to endorse HusserPs efforts, even implying their success on p. 124. See Husserl (1960), particularly the 5th meditation, pp. 89-157, where Husserl attempts to tackle the constitution of inter subjectivity from the transcendental level. Cf. Schutz (1964: Vol. i: 149) 'the empirical social sciences will find their true foundation not in transcendental phenomenology, but in the constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude'. Cf. Schutz (1964: Vol. i: 11-12 and 315-16). Cf. Schutz (1964: Vol. i: 172-5). Cf. Schutz (1964: Vol. i: 175) and Parsons (1937: 733). For a relatively non-technical development of these themes see Chomsky (1966 and 1968).

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26 Cf. Hampshire (1958)3 Strawson (1958), and also Roche (1973). For an ethnomethodological use of conceptual analytic arguments, see Blum & McHugh (1971). 27 Most of the interesting recent papers on the question of rationality in the social sciences are in Wilson (1970). 28 See Schutz's 'The Problem of Rationality in the Social World' (1967: Vol. 2: 64-90). He criticizes Parsons for using this model and states that cthe ideal of rationality is not, and cannot be, a particular feature of everyday thought, nor can it, therefore, be a methodological principle of the interpretation of human acts in everyday life' (p. 79). See also Garfinkel (1968: Ch. 8) and Scott (1968) for ethnomethodological discussions of the stipulation of rationality and meaning. 29 See Wittgenstein (1958) on language games (Sections 23-7, 64-76), and on rules (Sections 198-242) for the original conceptual analytic approach to this area. 30 See Cicourel (1964) for the most trenchant critique of conventional sociological procedures of investigation. 31 Cf. Weber (1949). 32 Cf. for instance, Nisbet (1966), or most recently Gouldner (1971). 33 The term 'deviance perspective' is used as a shorthand term for grouping together a variety of convergent ways of viewing something called social deviance. This is not to suggest that they are identical but that they share similar concerns; indeed a main problem of these views or perspectives on deviance is just their lack of agreement on what counts as deviance. This point is expanded shortly. 34 See Cohen (1965: 10) for an attempt to synthesize the two traditions, and also Cohen (1966). 35 These have been formulated in contrasting but ultimately similar ways by Becker, Erikson, Wilkins, and Lemert (his valuable critique of Merton notwithstanding) which stress social processes. 36 This term is taken from Glaser & Strauss (1967). 37 See Lofland (1969: 19) and Becker (1963: 15-18). 38 See Cicourel (1970). 39 E.g. Parsons (1951) and Blau (1964). 40 He calls these rules 'conventionality' (the act which might have been otherwise) and 'theoreticity' (the actor knows what he is doing). See McHugh (1970). 41 Cf. Douglas (1971). 42 The clearest statement of this approach is to be found in Scott (1968). See Schutz's discussion on criteria for constructing and evaluating sociological interpretations (1964: Vol. i: 43-4). 43 See Werthman (1967: 155), and also Werthman & Piliavin (1967). 44 Sudnow (1965); for an excellent ethnomethodological study by Sudnow not in the field of deviance, see his Passing On (1967).

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Maurer (1964 and 1962). Sutter (1969). Cf. Douglas (1971) and Fikner et al. (1972). Cf. also Garfinkel & Sacks (1970).

References BECKER, H. s. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. BLAU, P. 1964. Exchange and Power in Social Life. New York: Wiley. BLUM, A. F. & MCHUGH, P. 1971. The Social Ascription of Motives. American Sociological Review 36: 98-109. CHOMSKY, N. 1966. Cartesian Linguistics. New York: Harper & Row. 1968. Language and Mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. CICOUREL, A. v. 1964. Method and Measurement in Sociology. New York: Free Press. 1967. Fertility, Family Planning, and the Social Organization of Family Life. Journal of Social Issues 23 (4): 62. 1968. The Social Organization of Juvenile Justice. New York: Wiley. 1970. Basic and Normative Rules in the Negotiation of Status and Role. In H. P. Dreitzel (ed.) Recent Sociology Vol. 2. New York: Crowell Collier Macmillan. 1972. Ethnomethodology. In T. A. Sebeok et al. (eds.) Current Trends in Linguistics Vol. 12. The Hague: Mouton. COHEN, A. K. 1965. The Sociology of the Deviant Act. American Sociological Review 30: 10. 1966. Deviance and Control. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. DOUGLAS, j. 1967. The Social Meanings of Suicide. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. (ed.) 1971. Understanding Everyday Life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ERIKSON, K. T. 1966. Wayward Puritans. New York: Wiley. FILMER, P., PHILLIPSON, M., SILVERMAN, D. & WALSH, D. (eds.)

1972. New Directions in Sociological Theory. New York: Crowell Collier Macmillan. GARFINKEL, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. GARFINKEL, H. & SACKS, H. 1970. On Formal Structures of Practical Actions. In J. C. McKinney & E. A. Tiryakian (eds.) Theoretical Sociology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. GLASER, B. G. & STRAUSS, A. L. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory. London: Weidenfeld ^Nicholson.

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GOODENOUGH, w. H. 1964. Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics. In D. Hymes (ed.) Language in Culture and Society. New York: Harper

&ROW.

GOULDNER, A. w. 1971. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. London: Heinemann. GURWITSCH,A. 1966. Studies in Phenomenology andPsychology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. HAMPSHIRE, s. 1958. Thought and Action. London: Chatto & Windus. HUSSERL, E. 1931. Ideas (trans. W. R. Boyce-Gibson). London: Allen & Unwin. First published 1913. 1960. Cartesian Meditations (trans. D. Cairns). The Hague: Nijhoff. First published 1931. 1965. Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man (trans. Q. Lauer). In Q. Lauer (ed.) Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row. 1970. The Logical Investigations (trans. J. N. Findlay). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. First published 1913. JACOBS, j. 1967. A Phenomenological Study of Suicide Notes. Social Problems 15 (i): 62. KOCKELMANS, j. J. 1967. Phenomenology. New York: Doubleday. LEMERT, E. j. 1964. Social Structure, Social Control and Deviation. In M. Clinard (ed.). Anomie and Deviant Behaviour. New York: Free Press. LIUJPEN, W. A. 1963. Existential Phenomenology. Pittsburgh: Duquesne. LOFLAND, j. 1969. Deviance and Identity. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. MACH, E. 1914. The Analysis of Sensations. London: Open Court. First published 1906. MCHUGH, P. 1968. Defining the Situation. New York: Bobbs Merrill. 1970. A Commonsense Perception of Deviance. In H. P. Dreitzel (ed.) Recent Sociology No. 2. New York: Crowell Collier Macmillan. MATZA, D. 1969. Becoming Deviant. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. MAURER, D. 1962. The Big Con. New York: Signet. 1964. Whiz Mob. New Haven, Conn.: College and University Press. MAY, R., ANGEL, E. & ELLENBERGER, H. E. (eds.) 1959. Existence. New

York: Basic Books. MEAD, G. H. 1962. Mind) Self, and Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press. MELDEN, A. I. 1961. Free Action. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. MERLEAU-PONTY, M. 1962. The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. NISBET, R. A. 1966. The Sociological Tradition. New York: Basic Books.

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PARSONS, T. 1937. The Structure of Social Action. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. 1951. The Social System. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. PETERS, R. s. 1958. The Concept of Motivation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. PIVCEVIC, E. 1970. Husserl and Phenomenology. London: Hutchinson. RANCURELLO, A. c. 1969. A Study of Franz Brentano. New York: Academic Press. ROCHE, M. 1973. Phenomenology, Language and the Social Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. SARTRE, J.-P. 1965. Nausea (trans. Robert Baldick). Harmondsworth: Penguin. First published 1938. 1966. Being and Nothingness (trans. Hazel E. Barnes). New York: Washington Square Press. First published in 1943. SCHUTZ, A. 1964-7. Collected Papers (trans. H. L. Van Breda). The Hague: Nijhoff. SCOTT, M. 1968. The Racing Game. Chicago, 111.: Aldine. SPIEGLEBERG, H. 1960-9. The Phenomenological Movement. Vols. I and II. The Hague: Nijhoff. STRAWS ON, P. F. 1958. Individuals. London: Methuen. SUDNOW, D. 1965. Normal Crimes. Social Problems 12 (Winter): 255. 1967. Passing On. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. SUTTER, A. 1969. Worlds of Drug Use in the Street Scene. In D. Cressey & D. Ward (eds.) Crime and the Social Process. New York: Harper and Row. WEBER, M. 1949. Methodology of the Social Sciences (trans. E. A. Shils & M. A. Finch). Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. WERTHM AN, c. 1967. The Functions of Social Definitions in the Development of Juvenile Careers. In Task Force Report: Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime. Washington: President's Commission on Law Enforcement. WERTHMAN, c. & PILIAVIN, I. 1967. Gang Members and the Police. In D. Bordua (ed.) The Police. New York: Wiley. WILSON, B. R. (ed.) 1970. Rationality. Oxford: Blackwell. WINCH, P. 1958. The Idea of a Social Science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. WITTGENSTEIN, L. 1958. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

MIKE HEPWORTH and MIKE FEATHERSTONE

'Persons believed missing* A search for a sociological interpretation 'The problems facing researchers... are of which methods may result in more or less misrepresentation of purposes and identity, more or less betrayal of confidence' (Humphreys 1970). INTRODUCTION: A C A U S E FOR CONCERN?

Within the expanding field of the sociology of deviance, every enterprise bears its own quota of impertinence. Researchers reveal their consciousness of the possible impropriety of their inquiries through prefaces, acknowledgements, notes, references, and the rest. One of the difficulties which can arise for sociologists embarking on an analysis of at least some forms of deviance - particularly the so-called 'private' areas of rule-breaking activity which allegedly are part of the experience of all 'normals'1 - is that of justifying, before whatever audience, an urgent invasion of the lives of some others which is held to be potentially productive of what may appear at first blush to be dubiously validated interactional minutiae. The most successful evaders of accusations of banality, or sensationalism, or (worse) sociological irrelevance, have been those sociologists of deviance who have effectively related their investigations into a specific substantive area to the larger compelling issues of power and social control. Our concern with missing persons, then, reflects a concern expressed by various agents of social control (or potential control) when confronted in concrete situations by what is defined by certain petitioners (for instance, grieving wives approaching the police or private detectives) as the problematical and 'inexplicable' physical absence of some individual.2 When someone is reported as missing (i.e. when a specific private act is made public) those who become involved not only feel it incumbent upon them to put some effort into the search, but also to offer some sort of explanation of what is happening, why

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it is happening, and sometimes whether it will go on happening.3 In other words, those who have their attention immediately and practically focused on the issue come to consider physical disappearance 'a cause for concern'. Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Williams of the Salvation Army (dubbed Tarent-Hunter' in the News of the World, 30 November 1969), author of the only systematic account of going missing, writes: What is surprising ... is that apart from freelance journalism, little attention appears to have been given to the subject by serious writers. It is curious too that down the years sociologists and public authorities have done very little by way of recording statistics and undertaking research into the causes of the high rate of disappearances within the welfare state and into the complex implications, both social and national, of this problem' (Williams 1969). Current explanations of going missing, therefore, derive from the efforts of involved others to 'bring back' and retain an individual or small group of people, such as a family, in some sort of social setting. Since it is technically possible to be missing only if someone, somewhere, misses you and wishes to regain contact and resume interaction, any consideration of 'this problem' must critically analyse the 'definitions of the situation' and attendant conceptualizations of the motivations behind a specific act of physical disappearance employed by such interested parties.4 Richard Williams pointed out that the term 'missing person' has several social connotations although it is generally used to refer to people who have mysteriously or deliberately disappeared overnight. He noted that the term is also popularly applied to those who have become detached from family connexions and stressed that the Salvation Army accepted both forms of definition, being always willing to 'extend its searches for people for whom it is important to someone that they be found' (Williams 1969). As explanations of going missing and speculations concerning the dimensions of the problem and its characteristic features have been restricted to limited series of events largely where legal restrictions are involved (such as those contributing to an act of truancy or some prison escape), and have issued from those absorbed officially in these circumscribed situations, little attention has been given to the perspective of the person who actually disappears. This hardly surprising omission has, of course, certain implications for the kind of treatment to which the wanderer restored to his situation or 'his friends and his

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relations' is exposed. What is alarming in situations of this kind, where missing persons who have returned are exposed to certain controls, is that there frequently appears to be little congruence between the causal explanations proffered by various social agencies and others involved in the search and the meanings of the act of going missing for those who disappeared.6 This lack of consideration means that inappropriate 'corrective' measures can be taken and, equally important, that a whole facet of human experience is either ignored completely or, because of organizational imperatives, taken only briefly into account.7 In this context it is worth considering whether Gaugin's celebrated break with hearth and home - a process which he himself described as one in which 'I am gradually shedding my civilization, I am beginning to think simply' (Perruchot 1958) - can be explained adequately without some detailed exploration of his self-conception as a person related to others, and by implication of the sociological possibilities of there being many unknown figures in our society preoccupied with the personal attractions of social disengagement. Outside the legendary Foreign Legion, missing persons do not constitute an identifiable social group to which a single unifying definition can be attached. For this reason alone, going missing as such is not necessarily viewed as deviant behaviour though certain aspects of this activity may well be stigmatized. Not all cases of missing persons receive wide publicity or any sort of publicity, neither are they considered to be pressing problems or indices of serious personal or interactional breakdown8 (though there is, apparently, a seasonal element: mothers who go missing at Christmas time may be the subject of considerable publicity in the press). Going missing, in our society, has an ambiguous quality which leads to the general categorization of such behaviour as understandable (in many cases9) and yet not understandable - it becomes 'strange'. Frequently physical disappearance is invested with an aura of mystery which, in its most explicit form, assumes all the trappings of a detective story; the sudden disappearances of apparently conventional people from hitherto apparently undisturbed homes10 where there have been 'no financial or domestic difficulties' convey a distinct impression from time to time of nature imitating art.11 The air of excitement and curiosity surrounding events of this kind can be augmented by the possibility that those who are missing have been abducted and perhaps murdered12 or have committed suicide; such an air of excitement and mystery is increased further, of course, when those who return either refuse to talk con-

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vincingly of their experiences and motives or seem unable to do so.13 Thus, in everyday terms going missing can be a strange and fearful thing and therefore to be guarded against. One of the major sources of unease stems from the revelation to a wider audience of the violability and fragility of allegedly compelling and emotionally absorbing social bonds in a complex modern society. It follows that an examination of certain facets of this 'cause for alarm' (Williams 1969) should afford some insight into the relationships existing between individual self-consciousness and social interaction within specific structural settings. A METHODOLOGICAL NOTE

For social scientists 'methodological notes' tend to assume certain characteristics of the confessional; in this section we refer to the sources of our material and would stress the on-going and necessarily incomplete nature of our researches. While we cannot make any hardand-fast statements about going missing as a general phenomenon, and while we are hardly claiming any special enlightenment, what we do wish to assert is that current explanations based upon more restricted 'samples' of missing persons than even we have encountered are partial and of doubtfully universal applicability. As we have stated above, what does concern us is that the limited applicability of the explanations which are in use does not apparently act as a deterrent to the construction and implementation of free-ranging motivational models. These models tend to incorporate certain assumptions about the nature of reciprocity, complementarity,14 and trustfulness supposedly permeating human interaction in our world. Because no single agency exists which is preoccupied with an officially defined problem with the designation 'going missing', 'samples' of missing persons in captivity or symbolically transformed into 'total documentary portraits' in filing cabinets are difficult to locate. Official case histories of persons who have disappeared are occasionally compiled as part of general casework preoccupations or organizational interests which usually lead to the classification of going missing as a tangential problem symptomatic of deeper or wider individual personality or behavioural disorganization. As a consequence, documentary sources are well concealed amidst the collection of confidential papers which comprise a case-record, and they tend to be limited in their coverage.15 In such organizational settings

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the workers memories of acts of going missing are highly selective, few and far between, and usually confined to vivid or dramatic incidents. For these reasons we have incorporated our tentative findings into the body of this paper where they will be employed throughout to substantiate theoretical observations and to suggest further avenues of exploration. Substantively, our sources of evidence to date are as follows: (1) Preliminary exploratory discussions and analysis of case records with probation officers, marriage guidance counsellors, and social workers in social service departments in the North East of England. Such discussions included the detailed breakdown of what were considered 'typical' or significant cases; these cases were, of course, preselected by officials. (2) An examination of newspaper and other accounts and analyses of behaviour in which physical disappearance plays a part. This includes a survey of the literature concerned with the specific problems surrounding truancy, absconding, vagrancy, cdropping-out', prison escapes, breach of probation cases, suicide, apostasy, and treason, together with analyses of the 'states' of loneliness, isolation, bereavement, and getting lost. Obviously we are here preoccupied with a survey of secondary sources with all their limitations.16 However, these materials do indicate, among other things, that going missing or becoming a missing person is an extremely complex activity with a wide range of spatial, temporal, interactional, experiential, structural, and cultural facets, all of which must be explored if any satisfactory sociological interpretation is to emerge. What follows, therefore, is a discussion of those features of the problem of explaining going missing which we feel are significant and an analysis of certain of their implications for our future research programme. The situation of the missing actor still remains to be discovered. SOCIAL DISENGAGEMENT

It will by now be apparent that no satisfactory definition of physical disappearance which can be employed with confidence to distinguish one group of actions from another is in use at the present time. In order to probe some of the assumptions underlying the imputation by witnesses and those left behind of certain motivations of acts of going missing and to facilitate an understanding of the possible 'definitions

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of the situation' of those who disappear, we wish to restrict our discussion to conceptualizations of voluntary and intentional removal of the self from interaction. We see going missing as an act of social disengagement17 which indicates the desire of some people to modify their patterns of interaction and thus (hopefully) assume a changed or partially modified identity supported by the new patterns of interaction. Our preliminary position is best reflected in Shibutani's derived comment that: 'Many misunderstandings arise in our society from the fact that people who are living in the same community and even cooperating in a number of transactions are actually oriented toward different audiences.' (Shibutani 1962.) We are by no means suggesting that all those who go missing are necessarily in search of what corresponds to some sort of grail (in fact the demands of many of those who disappear seem very modest and entirely conventional18); but we are suggesting that acts of social disengagement must be examined alongside concepts of personal identity held by those who disappear if the total situation is to be adequately understood. Going missing needs to be interpreted in the light of the tension existing between an individual's specific interactional context and his consciousness of this setting, illuminated by the realization of the presence of possible others to whom he or she can relate either in symbolic or in situationally realizable terms. The number of external witnesses to such events will depend upon specific social and cultural factors; the reactions of these outsiders may well play a significant part in determining the outcome of such events and the likelihood of their duplication. The official designation of any one as a missing person depends, as was stated above, upon there being present others who care and who in some way wish to restrain and retain (i.e. control) the person who is, or has been, physically absent.19 Here a very selective process is at work: persons who privately go missing only find themselves transmuted into public case histories under certain conditions, as was illustrated dramatically by the tragic disappearance of Mrs McKay. To make any convincing statement concerning the interactional aspects of going missing and being a missing person we must relate the concealed private dimensions of these behaviours to accessible and publicized case histories. Any analysis of publicly regretted physical absence20 is complicated, therefore, by a series of possibilities suggested by Erving Goffman's reference to 'spiritual leave-taking'.21 Our definition of going missing, related as it must be to an attendant conception

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of being a missing person, must allow distinctions to be made between the following ingredients of this type of social disengagement. A person may be or be believed to be: (1) Physically and spiritually absent (i.e. probably alive22 but totally absorbed in some other situation; see, for example: 'Wife fell under the hypnotist's spell'. News of the World 14 February 1971). (2) Physically absent and spiritually present or involved permanently, capriciously, or occasionally, depending on the kind of communications they receive from those who are away; one of the fears expressed by foster parents is that the missing biological parent or parents of a cared-for child will return and destroy the domestic harmony they are attempting to create.23 (3) Continuously present physically and only partially involved spiritually (for instance the 'I-know-his-heart's-not-in-it' syndrome where a certain member of a group may reveal varying degrees of commitment to what is going on around him24 through withdrawal into a 'brown study' for example, or into some private personalized hobby. (4) Physically present and totally absent spiritually (like, for instance, the withdrawn schizophrenic or the comatose patient who may be believed to be 'in another world'). (5) Occasionally present physically and fully involved spiritually when present (i.e. those people involved in occupations or life-styles which keep them on the move or those people who have other acknowledged and accepted concerns; perhaps the cgirl-in-every-port' typification best represents this kind of situation though we would stress that the significance of the label 'fully spiritually involved' rests upon the apparent satisfaction of those around a particular mobile person with the relationship as it is 'to the best of their knowledge'25). (6) Occasionally present physically and only partially involved spiritually when present (some trawlermen, for instance, after returning home from a deep-sea fishing voyage become immediately absorbed in extra-familial drinking bouts and consequently have little involvement with their close relatives before returning to sea). (7) Occasionally present physically and totally absent spiritually (we feel that such cases are likely to be rare and when they do occur the missing person concerned may well be physically sick or believed to be mentally ill and therefore in receipt of sporadic home care by relatives; there are also those cases of wandering visionaries, prophets, or seers who are temporarily in the presence of others though rarely involved to any significant degree).

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Going missing arises and is defined within a complex interactional matrix. David Cooper has written of schizophrenia that: 'Madness ... is not "in" a person, but in a system of relationships in which the labelled "patient" participates' (Cooper 1967); similarly the seven situational categories previously outlined reveal that going missing can be interpreted as an interactional event with accessible cultural connotations.26 In restricting our definition of going missing to voluntary and intentional acts derived from some preoccupation with personal identity amongst the actors who disappear, we wish to exclude from our frame of reference those who are kidnapped, abducted, and otherwise forcibly removed from a social scene.27 We wish to underscore the consciousness of the individual missing person28 as an important facet of any definition of going missing and to offer the interpretation that many of those who disappear, however temporarily, are often perfectly clear about their motives and have adequate insight' into their problems.29 We are, therefore, interested in the events and factors which form the background to an individual's decision to make a conscious break with those around him.30

SOCIETAL REACTION: THE SEARCH If no-one is left behind there can be no search and a person cannot be missing. An individual can only be publicly defined as missing within the context of the search and such procedures will only be instituted when a physically absent person is considered worth finding. Certain interactional factors, then, will condition the emergence of the search and also have important implications for the 'definition of the situation' employed by any disengaged individual. These factors are: (1) Those left behind may not care that someone has quitted their circle and therefore refuse to involve themselves in any pursuit. (2) Those left behind may have a positive investment in the departure of one of their circle and may secure positive rewards from not being cognizant of his or her whereabouts.31 (3) Those remaining may wish for someone to return but feel themselves unable or unwilling to set in motion any form of search procedure. (4) Those remaining may not wish for an absent figure to return but feel impelled to search (for example, for a troublesome youngster or deserting husband).

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It follows that the duration and qualitative nature of an individual's physical absence will depend upon some of the interactional factors outlined above. In turn these factors will be complicated by the degree of competence and pertinacity of the search and the watchfulness and skill of the protagonist in eluding pursuit.32 The public definition of a person as missing provides some indication of a human relationship or series of relationships which carry more than temporary significance. The search strategies, accompanying justifications and motivational analyses employed by those left behind can be interpreted in one sense as efforts to impose or negotiate some form of control over those who are missing, and as an indication that the disrupted interactional pattern has hitherto proved in some way practically rewarding or symbolically significant to them.33 At the same time those who have absented themselves may be searching for a way of introducing into what from their point of view appears to be a hitherto uncontrolled situation, a reappraisal of their personal worth by those left behind which will permit triumphant re-entry into the 'interactional membrane'. Whether or not a missing person will be stigmatized by those left behind or himself feel a private sense of guilt or unease will depend upon the nature of the relational rules disrupted by the act of disengagement34 and the degree of personal investment in such rules by the individual who has gone away. Outwardly and visibly missing persons must be known not only to be absent from some interactional field with which they have been commonly supposed to identify but they must also be seen to be physically absent from a certain location. Conversely, to be detected by searching others, they must be seen to be out of place in some other specific location; in other words someone must consider them to be 'behaving suspiciously'.35 This means that a specific non-colluding audience will not recognize someone in their midst as a missing person (i.e. missed by others elsewhere) unless such a person blatantly does not 'fit in with' his current location.36 Suspicious behaviour leading others to define an individual as out of place in a particular setting can, of course, include aspects of 'spiritual leave-taking' which we have already described above. For external witnesses not engaged in the search to define a person as missing, therefore, must be a realization that someone in their midst is out of place and a recognition of the existence of others elsewhere who have legitimate claims on that person.37 Explanations of going missing constructed during the course of the

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search and its aftermath tend to be pervaded by taken-for-granted or commonplace notions of human motivation circumstantially inferred by those who remain and by those actively looking for clues which may indicate that a certain person or group of persons is out of place in a specific social setting. Circumstantial clues to explanation and discovery fall into three main groups: (i) the nature of the social scene from which someone has disappeared; (2) the presumed physical and personal characteristics of the person who has vanished; (3) the circumstances surrounding the disappearance. (i) The background social scene This group of factors includes all that can be gleaned from the physical and social setting left behind by the person who is missing. Features regarded as particularly meaningful by inquirers include: (a) Class and occupation: the disappearance of a company director is more likely to be investigated than that of a 'known' casual worker or chronically unemployed individual partly because others may have a compelling financial interest in the vanished official.38 Similarly celebrities can find themselves pursued by publicity and in this sense not 'allowed' to go missing (in one way Greta Garbo has apparently tried to be a missing person for years); in contexts of this kind what is interesting is how celebrities manage to disappear. Economic pressures generally are understandably considered very important clues to the interpretation of the state of mind of the person no longer present. With regard particularly to people at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, one of the factors which we feel is often ignored is the implications for a concept of self which reside in the realization that situations of economic deprivation or serious reversals of fortune have no foreseeable end.39 There is more to going missing from a decrepit and physically depressing environment than just being short of money or being evicted; the unexplained ingredient need not necessarily be located in the mystifying complexities of the alleged personal pathology of those who disappear. (b) The interpersonal relations of the people involved: those who are called to the scene which someone has left behind (whether they have an official role to play or not) will discover the nature of the relationships involved with varying degrees of difficulty. Indications of stressful relations between the missing person and the present company can be underplayed in a context of wonderment and hurt

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surprise at what has taken place (the implications of these expressions of hurt surprise, etc., are expanded in our discussion of embarrassment below). On the other hand interpersonal stress may be overemphasized to outside investigators or, what is even more likely in our experience, the source and nature of whatever interpersonal stress is described takes on an elusive quality which does have the effect of making expressions of hurt surprise much more credible. The kind of complexity we have in mind here is well illustrated by a quotation from the reminiscences of a girl of nineteen (Timms 1968): describing how she felt incompetent and unhappy at school in a context of disturbed home life she writes, 'It was then that I started to worry my mother. I would play truant from school and arrive home very late at night and my mother would get worried sick. She used to run around to all my friends' houses and not find me in any of them. The reason being I would be walking around all on my own. In those days I would walk for hours on end, just trying to piece my life together, but all the time there was something there that wouldn't come out, so that I could put everything right again.' (c) The mode of life of those involved: here are featured patterns of association, spending habits, place of residence and the like. These factors need have no direct relationship with social class; patterns of association of wide diversity can be involved as explanations of specific acts of going missing. Examples of the employment of patterns of 'differential association' as explanatory clues include the involvement of missing wives in working class 'boozing' parlies and the preference of middle class youths for companies of 'retreatist' intellectuals. (2) Physical and personal characteristics of missing persons

Equally valuable for the construction of explanations are the following factors: (a) The age and sex of the missing person: children, adolescents, and women are an obvious source of concern and are sought after with the same degree of publicity and pertinacity very often that attends the disappearance of social celebrities. Whereas the children of parents (or guardians) are always sought after, parents (or guardians) of some children may be 'allowed' to remain untroubled by past associations. As far as youngsters are concerned, explanations of their conduct can be found in notions of developmental disorder, an indiscriminating (though understandable) youthful love of excite-

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ment or just plain unrestrained wilfulness and the absence of consideration for others. Here we would agree with Robert Coles (Coles 1968) and others that popular Western notions of childhood and 'youthfulness', dignified with 'scientifically observable' stages, have contributed to a depreciation of the strength of young people to relate to life as problematic and have also undermined attempts to invest accounts by such youngsters of why they do what they do with credibility and authenticity.41 It is difficult for parents and guardians, even in a society which claims the ethic of individualism, to believe that their children may have chosen some path of action rather than have been led astray by internal impulses or strong-minded tempters they lack the psychic resources to withstand.42 Certain people are undoubtedly vulnerable to physical and personal disaster because of some medical or biological condition which requires careful surveillance. We refer here not to the alleged frailties of femininity - which do have a place in the construction of explanations of going missing - but to states of chronic ill-health which require constant medication and to factors such as known mental retardation. Such factors may be seen by anxious relatives and other searchers as, in some cases, the cause of the disappearance;43 they may also serve to focus the attention of those left behind on the gravity of what has taken place44 and consequently on the need for careful search. (b) The past personal history and revealed character of the missing persons: societal reaction theory has made us all aware that personal histories can be re-created in the light of dramatic events surrounding particular people; these reconstructed personal histories can be categorized and drawn upon as substantive explanations of what has taken place.45 Youngsters who have absconded from some institution can find their personal profiles re-drawn in a predictive fashion which gives them little scope for manoeuvre except in the expected direction of attempted escape.46 Other biographical factors from which inferences concerning the unstable character of those who go missing can be drawn include a past history of unsettled employment or a proclivity for one of the 'roving occupations'. In all cases of physical disappearance the biographies of those no longer present may be ransacked by family, friends, associates, and officials in the pursuit of some inherent personal cause of the behaviour. Such retrospective probings, whilst valuable, do not neces-

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sarily yield a solution to the problem of causation. Missing persons whose actions are often considered 'inexplicable' tend to be precisely those people whose biographies embrace none of the features commonly believed to indicate an unstable personality in our society. In this context the sense of unease of those who remain is all the greater, and the retrospective biographical analysis of missing individuals all the more meticulous since this behaviour can be construed as revealing an uncomfortable and surprising affinity with the less stable personalities whose lives appear to lack creditable security and a place of settlement. (3) Circumstances surrounding the disappearance When missing persons cannot be classified officially as a source of concern according to any of the criteria outlined above, the circumstances surrounding the actual mode of leave-taking of certain individuals assume the status of explanatory reference points for those attempting to determine what has taken place. In such situations indications of intention (which include the disappearance of packed suitcases, massive withdrawals from bank accounts, farewell notes and letters, and the open and witnessed purchase of train, plane, or bus tickets) are sought in order to establish that those who are missed fall into the category of consenting adults. Once the police are convinced, on the basis of circumstantial evidence, that no crime has been committed and once they feel certain that those in question are not suffering from some form of personal pathology harmful to the state, then the matter is redefined as a private affair which those left behind must sort out for themselves or in collusion with private detection agencies.48 It will hardly surprise sociologists of deviance, therefore, that the one official body which is most likely to reveal a consistent preoccupation with intentionality and which is most likely to produce 'definitions of the situation' which allow and accredit the deliberate and voluntary nature of acts of social disengagement, is the one agency which is the least preoccupied with any sustained motivational analysis of this behaviour retained in the form of detailed case records. We have tried to show that the circumstances and events surrounding the publication of an act of going missing do not tend to be productive of causal explanations which take into account the processes of social

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disengagement and changing self conceptions with which we are preoccupied in this paper. Because the instigation of search procedures involves the transformation of a private incident into a public talkingpoinr, it falls to those left behind to justify their actions both to themselves and to any others who may be involved or interested. The crucial factor here is that the perspective of the missing person himself tends to be inferred from the justificatory statements of those drawn to the scene who are expected, through their commitment to the search, to be concerned to exercise some form of control over the wanderer returned. In this context the explanations preferred by those engaged in the search tend either to avoid over-sophistication49 or to resort to those terminological complexities commonly employed to reveal psychic confusions in the individual cases under analysis. The complexity of the total situation becomes hidden behind the glare of publicity focused on the one who has gone missing; out of this process, any imputations of deviance which may be directed towards the absent interactant stem from assumptions concerning conventional patterns of reciprocal conduct which may exclude the actual experiences of the individual who is being pursued. A key to these assumptions about conventional patterns of reciprocal conduct, which appear to be operationalized in the construction of many of the elaborated explanations of going missing on record, may reside in the state of embarrassment into which those left behind frequently seem to feel they have been engineered by a particular act of social disengagement.50 Social disengagement, of course, can often be interpreted as a rule-breaking activity51 which not only incorporates the rejection of specific significant others but also includes the rejection of conformity in general. Thus the missing person can be seen to have broken some sort of social contract which binds him responsibly to others and therefore to the wider society: he becomes 'irresponsible'. The missing person may also have violated the trust of others by forcing their private affairs into the limelight or by making it imperative for them to involve themselves in some form of public inquiry. In addition, the impression we have gained from an examination of specific case records is that the real or apparent anxiety of those who remain, combined with the legitimacy of their conventional social status (father, mother, etc.), can have the effect of discrediting the perspectives and motives claimed by those who have disappeared. The total situation of uneven reciprocity which appears likely to

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produce sudden or 'inexplicable' social disengagement can be so easily ignored. Some of those who are physically absent, therefore, may well have taken the opportunity of putting themselves (temporarily at any rate) beyond the judgement of others.52

GOING MISSING: THE CONVENTIONAL 'DETERMINANTS' It now remains to us to substantiate further the critical and theoretical implications of our earlier discussion through an examination of two major areas of the problem: first, the nature of the causal explanations of going missing proffered by those left behind, and, secondly, the explanatory status of certain cultural themes in our society which correlate social disengagement with the pursuit of authentic experience and self-satisfaction. In this section we shall confine ourselves to an examination of the conventional determinants pervading frequently recurring accounts of physical disappearance which emerge out of observable search procedures. Explanations suggested by those who remain appear to fall into two categories, each with its own order of determinism. One order lays emphasis upon the force of external pressures, the commonest being: generally constraining circumstances, abduction, and amnesia. The second order advocates a brand of determinism which conceptualizes social disengagement as emerging out of interaction partly as a result of discreditable characteristics 'within' the personalities of those who disappear. The most noticeable manifestations of this latter form of interactional determinism can be listed as follows: interpersonal pressures, shame and guilt, and 'working the folks'. Both types of explanation may be employed separately or in combination, and both these categories will be surveyed in the light of the research materials to which we currently have access. The causal explanations to be examined below can additionally be regarded as offering some insight into the social contexts within which those who return will probably live, move, and have their being. The resumption of interaction between some of those returned and the people they temporarily put behind them and the restoration of some sort of balance between these parties may well result from, and depend upon, negotiated 'mutual' acceptance of some variant of these deterministic themes.

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Constraining circumstances As we have already noted, going missing under severely restricted economic conditions often appears to be immediately understandable to the outside observer; the cause seems self-evident: the circumstances in which such people live produce a crisis which those involved cannot reasonably be expected to master whilst remaining within that situation.53 Many commentators on the prevalence of casual labour, both in America and in this country, have remarked on the relationship between the incidence of extreme economic hardship and the number of people who are missing from home. The major economic depressions of the iSyos and the 19305 in the United States were accompanied by a massive increase in the number of tramps, hobos, and wandering people. Kenneth Allsop (Allsop 1967) echoes Nels Anderson's (Anderson 1962) brand of socio-economic determinism when he emphasizes that poverty coerced many unemployed young men into leaving their families, taking their chances on the road during the Great Depression. To Allsop this causal relationship is clear: 'The ordinary, uncomplicated fact was that the young boy shuttling about... was either in flight from actual starvation or had taken a Captain Gates decision to relieve the pressure on a family in extremity by removing one stomach.'54 It would be misleading to regard the connexion between economic hardship and going missing as revealing itself only during the course of sporadic periods of major economic depression. An important ingredient of the popularity advocated causal nexus linking poverty to acts of social disengagement is the meaningful appraisal by a given actor of his specific situation of economic hardship as constituting an intolerable burden which it is possible to leave behind. One social worker we interviewed stressed that some working class wives, faced by a combination of factors including, characteristically, an unemployed husband, large family, poor material conditions, debts and an inadequate income, may well rightly conclude that the only course of action open to them is to abandon the situation and make a fresh start as 'new' persons elsewhere.55 As it was succinctly put to us: 'the women just get pig sick'. Circumstances surrounding legal and political events can also be seen as having an 'affinity' with the phenomenon of physical disappearance. Someone who has incurred un-payable fines (particularly

'Persons Believed Missing9 179 those costs attending divorce proceedings) or a person who discovers he is sought by the police, the military, or other officials, may be seen by others as understandably discovering the only solution to his particular problem in flight. Such explanations obviously allow that those no longer present are seeking to maintain some personal control over their life chances and the quality of their future experiences. In general, then, the sorts of popular explanations of going missing which emphasize what we have labelled 'constraining circumstances', provide us with the opportunity of hypocritically stigmatizing those who have gone missing as 'people who will not face up to their responsibilities', since the acknowledgement of their outwardly and visibly reduced circumstances suggests sympathetic insight into the volitional nature of their activities. Abduction During the course of their investigations into the circumstances surrounding a case of going missing, the police seek to eliminate or confirm the possibility that the person missing has been abducted. Kidnapping,56 which is relatively infrequent, and abduction into white slavery,57 which is sparsely documented, constitute two series of events which frequently occupy a central place in published discussions of the problem of missing persons.58 As with other forms of the non-volitional explanation of going missing, variations of the abduction theme may be drawn upon by those involved in the search to direct the attention of the public away from the total interactional setting from which someone has disappeared. Those who remain and those returned may both prefer to explain the disengagement which has occurred as determined by pressure from 'bad company'. Thus missing teenage girls frequently fall into this exploited category: in one newspaper report concerning an absent teenage girl who was believed to have disappeared in the company of an older man, the father was said to have stated, 'I don't think she went entirely willingly. I think someone must have some kind of hold over her' (Middlesbrough Evening Gazette 8 October I970).59 A bizarre and romantic form of abduction, in which the individual who has been abducted and those from whom he has been taken may be initially unaware that the event has taken place, characterizes the 'changeling' theme.60 A person may come to believe in adult life that

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he was abducted as a baby and his rightful social station (usually exalted) occupied by another infant of similar appearance so that his parents remained unaware of the change. Doubts about his original parentage may be sparked off by the sudden realization of a facial resemblance between himself and some other or others with whom he has hitherto failed to identify. We learned of one case from a probation officer concerning a man who oriented an otherwise mundane life in the 1930$ around the belief that he was the 'true' Prince of Wales and that the current performer of the role - whom he resembled facially - was, unknown to himself, an impostor. There is, of course, a great deal of theorization concerning the mental stability of those who enact these personal dramas; our main concern here is to document a cultural theme which may be employed, as in the case of the Trince of Wales', to justify certain acts of social disengagement. In the case we have briefly described, the fundamental source of concern to others was that the man adopted the mannerisms conventionally associated with royalty. Amnesia There have been a number of popular novels and films constructed around a central character who has lost his memory and become involved in incidents of the 'lost weekend' variety. 'Mental blackout' has an immediate connotation of mystery and enigma: an individual suddenly finds himself in a place unknown to him, with no knowledge of how he came to be there, and possibly with the added complication that he does not know who he is. The state of amnesia, defined as a total or partial inability to remember aspects of one's past life experience, has been presented as a non-volitional explanation of social disengagement.61 Although such an explanation may, for the reasons we have given above, be extremely welcome to those left behind and possibly hopefully anticipated, commentators on missing persons tend to regard amnesia as a much less significant cause of going missing than is generally believed (Williams 1969 and Ellison I966).62 Interpersonal pressures The predisposition to act emotionally rather than rationally within some social setting constitutes a character trait which allegedly can

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be employed effectively to distinguish those who act responsibly in concert with others from those who are mainly and ungratefully concerned with self-satisfaction through interaction. Characterological models of this order are a valuable tool or analysis in situations where there is some form of mandate to assume control over certain missing persons. We have encountered two variants of the inadequacy syndrome stressing the causal significance of interpersonal pressures which are held to challenge us all during our 'identity voyage' through life. Firstly, an individual can be regarded as revealing a relatively permanent inadequacy which may have been generated by an 'incapability', bio-genetic in origin, or stemming from a process of 'incomplete' socialization. Thus a social worker reported that a fifteen-year-old girl who had persistently gone missing was basically 'immature' and 'self-centred' and therefore in need of a period of social training with firm, consistent handling.63 In the second instance, individuals can be conceived as inappropriately behaving emotionally when they are confronted by situations they cannot or are not allowed to control. Unable to cope with the natural resultant emotional strain (unlike the rest of us) they attempt to escape from their responsibilities into a more easeful interactional framework. Williams (1968), whom it will be recalled allows in his definition of going missing for the deliberate volitional act, also writes in his book that: 'People do not deliberately disappear for the sake of so doing, generally the cause is emotional strain, or an over-riding necessity to escape from responsibilities and obligations.'64 Just as they can be employed to discredit the diverse 'definitions of the situation' adopted by those who go missing, these two forms of interactional determinism can also constitute a basis for the categorical oversimplification of widely varying, though outwardly and visibly similar, life situations. Shame and guilt The role of embarrassment in the construction of explanations of an individual's disappearance by those left behind, and the possibility that someone may be 'on-the-run' from the judgement of others in situations where no serious official rules have been violated by that person have already been noted. Equally important are references to the experiences of shame and guilt as sources of a sense of personal

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failure within a certain social context.65 An act of social disengagement could be interpreted as the revelation of an attempted escape from the likelihood of stigmatization by others.66 Feelings of embarrassment, shame, and guilt, interpreted in terms of some failure to live up to a given standard of conduct, may well play a part in all the social contexts we have previously described; the point here, however, is that physical disappearance in our society can be culturally associated with 'guilty secrets' - there is 'no smoke without fire'.67 'Working the folks3 Nels Anderson (1961) recollects a particular strategy of disengagement which he calls 'working the folks'. He writes: 'There is a type of tramp who lives on his bad reputation. He may have been sent away for the sake of the family or have fled to safety. Or he may have gone voluntarily to start a life anew. Seldom does he succeed but firm pride stands between him and his return and he capitalizes on the fact that his family does not want him to return.' The chief significance of this aspect of going missing - the extent of which is totally unknown, but may be suspected by outsiders in certain instances - is that the individual concerned does not apparently express the wish to disappear and does not actively seek to disengage himself from his present company. The initiative comes from certain of those with whom he associates (often the family) who may confer a 'black sheep' status upon him or otherwise persuade him to stay away.68 SOCIAL DISENGAGEMENT AS A SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE

In this final section we shall take an all too brief look at certain cultural themes associated, in our world, with social disengagement conceived as a quest for meaningful experience and insight which has certain consequences for the identification of the self. We deliberately refer to 'themes' as distinct from 'explanations' since we are not involving ourselves in causal statements of the kind we have already critically outlined. We are interested, then, in the general thematic characteristics associated with certain life-styles which it is possible for individuals to invest with such meaning that they become prepared to disengage themselves from one pattern of interaction in the hope of some form of personal identity change through new social

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associations. The problem is neatly summarized by Philip O'Connor in an excellent and strangely ignored analysis of vagrancy (O'Connor 1963): 'Why do men tramp? Connecting cause to event is the primitive technique of the art of therapy, one selects what one can deal with. It is functional and temporary. If official doctrines want to bring vagrants into employment, it will pronounce "laziness" to be a main cause. It will also refrain from examining the complex nature of laziness.' In certain instances of physical disappearance those who leave may be more positively accredited with a search for temporary or permanent self-satisfaction in new situations amongst new people.69 Within this interactional framework the missing person is not necessarily regarded as having negatively fled from a situation of constraint,70 (in fact his life situation may be acknowledged to be tolerable by all parties), but, rather, insight into the individual's knowledge of the existence of other situations is interpreted as pointing to the possibility of a subjective self-development not feasible in the present life context.71 Returning to our original definition we find that it is socially acceptable for some people sometimes to disengage themselves in a conscious attempt to change their identity;72 such disengagement can involve changed pattern of interaction73 with, or without, a change in physical location.74 There are certain welcoming groups in society to which those who have gone missing may become attached and in which the search for new experience and individual self-development are articulated themes. Specifically these are: tramps and hippies; two very broad categories which can be distinguished from other perhaps more predatory groups whose presence, we have seen, is so much deplored in our society. As far as tramps are concerned the major themes which characterize this culture are extremely difficult to distil. Two major forms of experience tend to be subject to emphasis in the literature by and about tramps: 'the attraction of other places' and secondly 'freedom from the ties of conventional life' related to 'the absence of monotony'.75 The only major accredited sociological analysis of this phenomenon (Anderson 1961) significantly fails to relate the experiential and interactional facets of this behaviour - expressed as follows by Jack London: 'Perhaps the greatest charm of tramp life is the absence of monotony. In Hobo Land the face of life is protean - an everchanging phantasmagoria, where the impossible happens and the un-

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expected jumps out of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo never knows what is going to happen the next moment; hence he only lives in the present moment' (London 1964) - to the varying socioeconomic crises and other social pressures which are instrumental in setting numbers of men and women on the roads.76 By contrast, the hippy movement has perhaps expressed more coherently the cultural theme of a search for self-satisfaction and individual self-expression. Whilst it is difficult to penetrate and draw out certain persistent themes from the world-view of a movement77 the 'members' of which regard their way of life as involving a conscious search for new experience and new modes of perception, this conscious involvement in change seems to embody the implication that the themes of today will rapidly become 'depassed'. An examination of the themes most frequently emphasized by commentators at various points of the genealogy of the 'bohemian-hipster-beat-hippieyippie' movement provides an illustration of the paramount importance of this collusion with change. At the same time, however much involvement with specific themes has waxed and waned, the 'conscious creative search to find oneself' occupies a central position in the whole development - this statement applies as much to the bohemians described by Ware and Zorbaugh78 as it does to the yippies of Jerry Rubin (1970). Orrin Klapp (1969) notes, during the course of his neo-Durkheimian commentary on modern times, that: "The chief characteristics of the drop-out movement were a concern with inner values and experiences ... disinterest in politics, personal freedom of expression and style, and a concern with finding oneself and living a better life privately with a retreat from obligations and antagonism to the establishment.' The theme of 'finding onself' in the hippie movement has received indirect criticism through its association with the search for pleasure79 and, of course, unsettled wandering which has always been clothed in ambiguity in western society.80 Recently, wandering through the Near East and India on the 'road to Katmandu',81 has been advocated as an expanding movement towards self-discovery and enlightenment and, ultimately, a saner world. And finally, equally suspect journeys of exploration on the 'private inner sea' (Klapp 1969) engineered through the use of drugs have further discredited, in the eyes of 'straight' society, the experiential world of the hippies.

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POSTSCRIPT: PERMISSION TO GO MISSING, OR 'THE BROADER SOCIAL ORDER' My individualism is really an illusion. I am part of the great whole, and I can never escape. But I can deny my connexions, break them, and become a fragment. Then I am wretched. D. H. LAWRENCE 82

In our world, the existence of people who are missing (whether publicly so defined or not) depends upon the willingness of others to seek them out and the efficacy of the procedures of social surveillance in use.83 The spirit which moved Clarence Henry Willcock ('the patron saint of anonymity') to champion agitation for the abolition of 'identity cards'84 - the British tradition of private individualism - functions to restrain social surveillance procedures and thus permit acts of social disengagement which do not fundamentally challenge social order. Although, therefore, some people may go missing, the areas of social life objectively open to them - in terms of possible patterns of association, environments to settle, and so on - are rather limited.85 By and large the cases we have so far researched reveal, on the surface, individuals seeking out solutions to their personal problems through conventional associations which tend to repeat in form past associations from which they have disengaged themselves.86 One of the important contributions of symbolic interactionist theory to sociology has been to focus our attention upon the possibilities of action informed by conscious choice and self-awareness within contexts of structural constraint mediated through a myriad of contingencies. Our preliminary definition of going missing as an interactional event does not seek to exaggerate 'free will' at the expense of necessary notions of sociological determinism. What we have tried to emphasize is that the explanations of going missing which are currently popular are a product of the reactions of 'significant others' to the physical disappearance of individuals over whom they wish to exercise some form of control. Thus these explanatory themes are notable in that they pertain to issues of control and response rather than that they help us understand the experiential and, therefore, in our terms, interactional aspects of the behaviour. Concepts such as 'Wanderlust', instability, inadequacy, defective personality, indiscipline, and the like are all very well for an understanding of processes of social control as interpreted by potential controllers; they are hardly

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adequate forms of explanation when applied directly to products of complex interactional processes such as identity, self-consciousness, and self-respect which, we think, are vital features of any 'dropping out of sight' programme. Conventional explanations of physical disappearance can be interpreted in terms of the tension between conceptualizations and realizations of social stability - the 'ordered life' - and theories of the liberty of the individual and the value of privacy which include the right to move around physically and socially without let or hindrance. Out of this tension arises the ambiguous element in the 'societal reaction' to going missing which may well go a long way towards explaining (in terms of 'external' causative relations and personal motivations) certain outstanding features of this very complex behaviour which we set out to describe. As Nels Anderson, himself an extremely ambiguous commentator on one facet of the problem, wrote: 'On the road, a man is more or less immune to attacks upon his self-consciousness and self-respect, for his relations to other persons are loose and transient and he has no status to maintain. The opposite is true in his home town where his every act is known' (Anderson 1961).

Notes 1 See GofTman (1968) for the celebrated discussion of the sociological significance of the failings of every 'normal' person and the unlikelihood of total conformity in society. One of the foreseeable consequences of the lines of exploration suggested by the 'labelling' theorists of human deviancy has been to concentrate our minds on the 'we-are-all-deviant-now' thesis. See particularly Douglas (1970). 2 As reflected in statements of the following type: 'Police last night appealed to a fourteen-year old schoolgirl who disappeared three weeks ago to return home and end a mother's heart-break' ('Police pleas to missing schoolgirl', News of the World 14 February 1971). 3 A case in which two young married women with children left their families and together departed for an unknown destination in Manchester was explained to us by a social worker involved as an instance of two people attempting to 'secure self-sufficiency for themselves' against a background of grinding poverty and environmental decrepitude. 4 A popular current theme is that a given husband, wife, son, or daughter, etc., is running away from his/her responsibilities.

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5 Thus, among social workers, persistent encounters with young people who are defined as indulging in an 'absconding pattern of behaviour' (from reception centres, remand homes, community homes, parents or foster parents, and so on) can sometimes yield explanations critical of the underlying motivations which rely heavily on typologies incorporating the common feature of a 'low threshold of tolerance' of restrictive relationships or unrewarding social situations. 6 Reports of interviews with girls or boys who have run away from foster parents frequently reveal the enigmatic nature of these youngsters' responses when asked why they left home. Such youngsters often appear unable to account for their behaviour to the satisfaction of their interrogators (i.e. they do not give the expected replies) and in this context have motives or impulses imputed to them or psychobiological-cum-interactional 'causes' presented to them on a plate. For instance, one senior social worker has informed us that when she questions runaway girls about the reasons for their actions, they nearly always reply cryptically 'Don't know,' or 'Fed up.' Such responses may be taken on their face value as demonstrations of 'backwardness' or cognitive incompetence, or may be interpreted as indicating unmentionable, deep-seated relational and emotional problems which may pass away in the fullness of time or through therapy. 7 We are not suggesting that all or even most social workers and others are unaware of the unexplained dimension of the actor's self-consciousness; what we are suggesting is that such people have little time or incentive to tap these sources of explanation when constructing case histories. In the case of those left behind by someone who has gone missing, other factors (which we discuss below) such as embarrassment, a sense of social unease, or guilt may contribute towards the elaboration of skewed or distorted discussions of the sources of the behaviour. 8 Taken-for-granted instances of physical absence are from time to time revealed through terse comments in newspaper reports that, for example, 'The police do not suspect a crime. . .' (Middlesbrough Evening Gazette 25 January 1971); that a wife left home in an 'emotional state' ('Missing wife', Guardian 2 January 1971); or that a husband left home after a 'row'. Events so briefly described are by implication immediately understandable and relatively uncomplicated. 9 In comparison with the cases reported in Note 8, people tend to have much greater difficulty in understanding or making sense of the actions of a man who 'suddenly' deserts a comfortable home and a substantial marital heritage. (The wife of a middle-aged local government official who mysteriously disappeared was reported as saying: 'I still believe he could have had some kind of a mental blackout and completely lost his memory.' News of the World 18 November 1970.)

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10 The category 'undisturbed home' is, of course, problematic. One possibility that some of those who suddenly disappear from undisturbed homes have been leading a 'double-life' obviously cannot be excluded as it has important implications concerning the selfconceptions of such persons who vanish. For a fuller discussion of certain of the information-management problems possibly encountered in such situations see Hepworth (1971). 11 The presentation of articles about missing persons in newspapers bears comparison with the presentation of certain detective stories and 'factual' accounts of historical events: 'Mystery of the missing wife' (Guardian 2 January 1971); 'The vanishing bridegroom and the schoolboy' (News of the World 31 January 1971); 'Bunny Lake is missing' (but is she really ? - a detective story by Evelyn Piper (1966) described in the Observer as 'a psychological tour deforce9); 'Elizabeth is missing' (an historical account by Lilian De La Torre (1968) of the mysterious disappearance and equally mystifying return of Elizabeth Canning, a London servant girl, who spent the month of January 1753 somewhere near the City). 12 See, for example, Donald McCormick's recent book (1970) suggesting that Victor Grayson, the ex-Socialist MP who disappeared suddenly in 1921, was probably murdered. 13 We have all heard of the mystery of the Tichborne Claimant and are probably familiar with the debate concerning his authenticity. As Douglas Woodruff (1957) points out, a major problem troubling the champions of 'the Claimant' to the Tichborne inheritance was his apparently genuine unconcern about the property and his preoccupation with his personal and inner life. Woodruff writes: 'In so far as this book has been, in fact, a biography, it shows a man very unlike the illiterate but masterly schemer, his mind always on his vast and hair-raising fraud, of the accepted version. It shows, on the contrary, a man of some cultivation, almost schizophrenic in his change of mental gears: not at all clever, reckless and shortsighted and improvident to a breath-taking degree; his secret one that few people could credit, that his claim bored him and he was not prepared to take very much trouble about it. As far as he could, he lived outside of it and away from it, and had continually to be hauled back to give his mind to it by his lawyers and his self-appointed advisers and finally, by the law itself. For such was the man: and we are constantly reminded of the Dowager Lady Tichborne's expression that her poor Roger saw everything as in a dream, and with fantasies all his own.' 14 Gouldner (1960) has pointed to some of the important distinctions between reciprocity and complementarity we have in mind. 15 Even when the case deals with an institutionalized teenager, defined as a persistent absconder, considered therefore particularly trouble-

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some and placed under specific surveillance, the written official records may contain only brief references to his or her disappearance and recovery. We can suggest that case records contain only rarely detailed accounts of the absconder's self-conception or how he sees the world even though detailed accounts of his escapades may be completed. When the views of the absconder are set down they seem to appear within a framework of judgement which draws heavily on concepts of maturity/immaturity - adjustment/maladjustment and their predictable ingredients of emotional and intellectual conflict. It would seem that the actors themselves sometimes define their problems in corresponding terms; a teenage girl who had a history of running away from home and reception centre to join some hippies in London begged the social worker handling her case to allow her to go back so that she could get London out of her 'system' and thus work through her 'problem' to readjustment to the demands of conventional society. 16 We also cannot ignore Laing's (1969) warning that: 'No one in the situation may know what the situation is. We can never assume that the people in the situation know what the situation is.' 17 Through the notion of social disengagement we refer to problems of social attachment, detachment, being 'unattached' and attendant realities which are open to appraisal both from within and without the 'interaction membrane' and which therefore have some point of reference in the social structure. Disengagement can take several forms and perhaps has been most prominently discussed as a feature of the ageing process, and in connexion with other biological 'imperatives' such as the menopause. One version of a supposed link between biological factors and social status which we have encountered in discussions with social workers is that some working class women run away from home when their children have been fostered since they feel no longer socially qualified to play the traditional role of mother and have become disengaged from the family or neighbourhood. As far as the process of ageing is concerned, Butler and Mercer, in their paper (1968), discuss the notion that: 'When the disengagement process is complete, a new equilibrium is established characterized by greater social distance. This process will be manifested by changes in the number of persons habitually interacted with, by a reduction in the amount of interaction with those with whom he continues to interact, and by increasing pre-occupation with the self.' 18 Certainly, the cases we have discussed with social workers do point to a search (by husbands, wives, sons, and daughters) for tolerable and rewarding human relationships within a socially acceptable framework - often the legitimate family. A letter written by a teenage girl who persistently ran away from home included the statement: 'I

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want to have a steady boyfriend, instead of a different one each week. Someone I can take home and that my mum and dad will like.' One of the reasons why characterological labels such as 'immature' and 'inadequate' are applied is that superficially they solve the immediate problem for an overstretched social worker of reconciling the gulf between the commonplace nature of such admitted social goals and the troublesome and 'abnormal' desire to go missing. 19 The work of Dr Barnardo is a case in point. 20 Publicly unheard-of disengagement will, in our society, tend to be confined to officially blameless adults since others - children, absconders, deserters, prison escapees and the like - are on the receiving end of hue-and-cry procedures. A portion of this unheard-of disengagement will, of course, reach a restricted public as local knowledge, gossip or mutually shared 'secrets'. Such disappearances sometimes reach a wider public through the 'unclaimed money' or 'missing relatives' columns of newspapers where, generally, their miniscule and undramatic disclosure appears to be an indication either of the uninfluential nature of the person sought after or of the limited nature of the appellants' concern. 21 It will be evident that we are drawing heavily on Goffman's approach to the sociological implications of concepts of 'commitment' and 'attachment' in his essay (1968). Our use of the term 'spiritual' refers to degrees of mutual involvement and reciprocity expressed in terms of personal commitment found in varying interactional settings. 22 Missing persons may return. By contrast, in the case of bereavement, physical return is considered largely impossible in our culture. An important qualifying factor is the actual experience of the death of some cared-for person by those left behind. When the alleged death of the missing person passes unwitnessed, is remote geographically or relatively unpredictable, then it becomes possible for the missing person's family and others concerned to define such an individual as probably alive and as someone for whom provision can still be made in this world. See the case of two mothers of victims of the last war: 'Mothers leave cash to the sons they still believed alive' (Sunday Express 15 March 1970). A symbolic relationship of this type is quite different in quality from that of the elderly man with his deceased wife described in, 'He puts flowers on his own grave', which involved the husband in adding his own name to his wife's tombstone when she died; this man is reported as saying: 'You might call it sentimental but perhaps I want to show that though she is dead, in a way we are still together' (News of the World 10 January 1971). 23 Not all foster parents take this line. One detailed case we have examined concerns a girl placed in foster care following the disap-

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pearance of her father and the break-up of her parents' original home. This girl is reported as being absorbed in a symbolic relationship with her absent father and hopeful of resuming contact with him; the unhealthiness of this preoccupation is seen to be confined to the daughter's romanticization of her father's character. Cf. Goffman (1957), which is nearer our notion of partial spiritual involvement than his conception (1969) of 'role-distance'. States of 'awareness' amongst the participants will play an important part in determining these sorts of situations and their outcomes: Cf. Glaser and Strauss (1966). In contrast with the type of psycho-biological causative factors hinted at in the recent statement by the National Association for Mental Health to the effect that there are '30,000 mentally sick vagrants' somewhere in England (Guardian ij February 1971). Not everyone takes this precaution. See, for example, the novel by Stuart Cloete (1970) ('a disquieting novel about white slavery in Victorian England'), which has an 'Appendix and bibliography' which sets out to prove that white slavery is an on-going and significant cause of the disappearances of many respectable young women. The notion that many of those girls who are missing have been abducted by white slavers needs careful assessment. Compare Cloete's position with that of Ellison (1966), also a believer in the omnipresent possibility of abduction, who writes: 'In November 1963 a girl's torso was discovered in a Thames side ashpit. In order to establish her identity, the police attempted to check up on 300 young women, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, who had been reported missing in the last ten months. Of these only eighteen were easily traced, whilst among the absent were many au pair girls from France, Italy and Spain. It was also discovered that a further 200 girls were missing from home, whose parents or relations had not even bothered to report them.' Cf. Silvers' (1970) definition of the 'associability' of the abstract expressionists. Silvers states that: 'Asocial behaviour is the result of a wilful break from and rejection of former moral meanings given to the activities of a social position and a construction of a new set of meanings which emphasise the independent responsibility of a status.' Furthermore: 'An artist is always lonely. The artist is a man who functions beyond or ahead of his society.' Lonely people who have deliberately set themselves apart from others sometimes employ the term 'not mixing with people' as synonymous with 'not mixing with life', thereby drawing attention to their evaluation of the significance of a break in interaction. Such people can be shaped into an interesting group to compare with those lonely people who define their situation as 'a disease' characterized

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by an absence of self-respect, which they feel can only be generated through efforts to make contact with others. For such people in our country there are 'solo clubs' where they can meet other lonely people and the more recent 'Phonatact' service which emphasizes to those who pay for its services that loneliness need not be a product of inadequacy. See Joos, Debuyst, and Sepulchre-Cassiers (1970) for a discussion of the relative contributions of factors such as anxiety, emotional conflict, instability and self-conscious choice in twenty boys aged fifteen to eighteen years who had run away from home. These psychologists point out that'... absconding is not necessarily something aberrant; indeed some young people believe, and may be right, that only running away offers them a chance for a happier life.5 It has been pointed out to us that social workers can sensitize themselves to the subtle cues which indicate a client's intent to go missing. Certain phrases employed by specific individuals (particularly poor people) may be perceived as a cry for help which, if ignored, may lead to desperate flight. Examples of such statements are: 'I don't know how I'm going to pay the rent.' 'I can't stand much more of this.' 'I need some help', 'You've done nothing for me.' It is our experience that such statements can be seen as particularly significant by certain social workers who have reported that many families resent their intervention and very often feel that they do not need help. Included in discussions of truancy is the occasional assertion that some teachers in some schools do not overly encourage the more unruly pre-school leavers to put in 100 per cent attendance over the week. (See The Sunday Times 10 January 1971.) The interesting and perhaps extreme case of Ronald Biggs introduces the important part played by conspirators in assisting a missing person to evade detection. Social workers have often pointed out to us the amazing speed with which really urgent messages will find people who have been out of sight, in some instances, for years. This applies as much to the search for a Dartmoor escapee as it does to the search for a deserting husband or an embezzler on-the-run. See Denzin (1970) for a discussion of private deviancy as a disruption of rules governing 'daily forms of interaction' and the suggested implications of this private rule-breaking for the emergence of public deviance. Denzin points out that everyday patterns of interaction develop strategies which permit 'relational-release or escape from its demands. These rules of release may be of any duration and, as in divorce, be forever binding.' In one of the cases referred to us a missing teenage girl was picked up by the police early one morning loitering alone outside a closed coffee bar in Soho.

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Categories denoting the appropriate location of individuals in society are particularly important when searching for missing persons. Physical descriptions alone are frequently so inadequate (since many people are relatively undistinguished in appearance) that other situational factors become immediately important. For example, the knowledge that a young boy was last seen in the company of a middleaged man can be much more important than either a clear photograph of the boy or the information that he is 4 feet 10 inches high and has light brown hair, blue eyes, fresh complexion and is of medium build. 36 A nice illustration of this version of the well-known 'a-place-foreveryone-and-everyone-in-his-place' syndrome is the publication in the Guardian (23 December 1970) of the photograph of an elderly man described in the caption as:'... a tramp who spends his nights under the eaves of a flyover on the Romford bypass. He is also an artist and each day he walks three miles into the town centre, puts up his pictures outside the town hall, and eats his lunch of corned beef and biscuits.' This man has been clearly located in such a way that he would presumably be missed if he did not fulfil his expected routine. Thus whilst he is probably not a missing person to some Romford audience, he may be missed by unknown outsiders who are possibly not pressing their claim. Cf. Bittner (1967). A further point is that people in the tramp category, for example, are usually not expected by others to engage in any form of interaction involving the kind of intimacy from which a sense of suspicion that someone is out of place can be derived. Nels Anderson (1961), in his well-known discussion of 'The Jungles' constructed and frequented by hobos, includes the statement that'. .. with all the discussion there is seldom any effort to discuss personal relations and connexions. Here is one place where every man's past is his own secret', and also: 'Only in the case of very young boys or sick men and sometimes old men is there any effort to learn something of the individual's past. Men will brush elbows in the jungles for days and even weeks without ever learning one another's names. They live closed lives and grant others the same privilege.' This is not to deny the routinized or structured nature which the behaviour of tramps and other 'dropouts' can assume. Others, besides Anderson, have revealed the organizational patterns underlying the behaviour of some of these people who can so easily be labelled 'disorganized' wanderers: examples of the more systematic work include Wallace (1969) and Rubington (1968). 37 The claims of others, of course, are credited with varying degrees of legitimacy; events can pass back from the public to the private zone when a missing person is located. A Shrewsbury dignitary was no longer listed by the police as a missing person after they had learned

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he had written to his family; a spokesman for the police was reported as saying: 'This is now a private matter .. .' (Guardian 6 January 1971). The headlines 'Police search for magistrate' (Observer 3 January 1971)5 'Dogs in J.P. Hunt' (The Sunday Times 3 January 1971)3 or 'Director went "on-the-run"' (Guardian 18 February 1971)5 are more compelling than 'Relatives sought' (Guardian 4 February 1971). Within our 'sample' of cases, husbands who have left their wives and families have usually stated that they went away to make a 'fresh start' or recoup their financial losses. What has impressed us is the lengths these so-called 'inadequate' husbands and wives will go to in very constraining circumstances to try to maintain the economic viability of their lives. When desertion and depression appear to augur no possible return of the missing spouse, it often seems to be the case that they have temporarily, at least, exhausted all the possible ways open to them of 'coping with their responsibilities'. The parents (or one parent) of children in care may return years after the children have been abandoned or deliberately fostered and attempt in less restricted economic circumstances to provide a home for them. It is a comment on the often one-sided appreciation of the situation of going missing that some of these parents find it difficult to understand why conventional reciprocal familial relations cannot be resumed almost overnight or are proving difficult to achieve. Within the confines of culturally prescribed familial roles there are, therefore, a variety of personal interpretations of the rights and duties appropriate under particular circumstances. Wives sometimes run away from their husbands and refuse to disclose their whereabouts through fear of physical attack. The realities of such fears need not be easily assessed by external observers and may only emerge following prolonged investigations of a case during the course of which a less reticent relative may be encountered. Cf. the 'battered baby syndrome'. Probation officers have told us that in their experience the most significant cause of going missing is domestic disharmony. Some members of families, like the mother who always had her coat on 'ready to be oif', are apparently perpetually poised for flight. It is remarkable when there is so much emphasis upon childhood and adolescence as emerging states of self-awareness that we should accredit the insights which youngsters have into their development in relationship to others with so little value. Invitations from adults to retrieved youngsters who have absconded or in some way gone missing to 'speak frankly' or 'to be forthcoming' take place in just such a cultural context which provides for the maximum degree of discouragement, disbelief or reinterpretation to suit the exigencies of the moment or the strategy of the auditor.

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42 Witness all the currently popular methods which can be employed to misunderstand the possible range of social meanings permeating such statements as 'A groupie has to be prepared for anything' ('The bed-sitter jungle'. News of the World 13 December 1970). 43 For instance a mentally retarded, illiterate young woman could have wandered off and become lost because she was unable to appreciate the consequences of her actions or how to orient herself to others. She could also have been abducted and exploited. 44 As in a case when a mother of a family suddenly disappeared leaving behind a spinal jacket and a pump vital for the alleviation of her asthma. 'No reason' was here given for the woman's disappearance and all attempts to find her failed. Over a year later she was heard to be alive and well in London. Girls or women bearing illegitimate or unwanted children are also a cause for concern. 45 In this respect missing persons resemble suicides. See in particular Atkinson's discussion of 'Life history and mental condition' as related to the explanation of suicide by coroners, in his essay (1971). 46 Cf. the category 'A' of long-term adult prisoners and the problems in defining such a group encountered and published by the Advisory Council on the Penal System (1968). 47 While the educational psychologist Tyerman (1968) asserts that a great deal of truancy can be attributed to 'maladjustment' of the individual, he also points out that: 'Even when a doctor or the members of a child guidance team do investigate a child's attitude to his school by questioning the teachers, possible problems are often difficult to detect; for it is not the objective view of the school that is important, but the subjective feeling of the child himself; not the school through the eyes of a detached adult, but through those of the child.' 48 By and large the police take a blase view of missing person cases. Although they keep a register, this tends to be rather a peremptory exercise as far as adults are concerned since the private citizen has a right not to return home if he so wishes. 49 See, for example, the Guardian report (14 October 1970) of a boy's disappearance which included the comment from his former school that he had given up his education there for 'slightly complicated reasons'. 50 One mother of a girl who frequently went missing seemed more concerned about what the neighbours thought than about her daughter's whereabouts and consequently did not instantly inform the police every time the girl disappeared. Of course, once a number of people have lived through the initial period of publicity accompanying someone's absence they may find

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it is the return of the missing person which becomes a source of embarrassment. This can happen when divorce proceedings affecting a person no longer present are under way or others have financial expectations of someone hitherto believed to be deceased. 51 Embarrassment is seen in this context as the product of relational rule-breaking behaviour. Denzin's (1970) concept of 'relational-release' comes in useful again here: those who go missing and are sought after can be said to have 'gone without permission', as it were. Going without permission implies that the ties allegedly binding an individual to another person or group are weak (when the norm is that they are expected to be strong, e.g. child to parents, husband to wife) or that the controls which are considered appropriate to maintain the relationships intact are inadequately applied. In both situations those left behind although often treated sympathetically by whatever audience to which they are exposed - are faced with the possible embarrassment of feeling that those around consider them in some way to have failed in the performance of their social roles. (See, in this connexion, Hunt (1968).) Anticipating possible intrusion, those left behind must defend themselves as best they can; one method of defence is to produce explanations for the physical absence of someone which either implicitly discredit the person who has disappeared or which suggest victimization. If we accept this analysis as having at least some validity then it becomes possible to see why, even in the face of clear evidence of a voluntary and deliberate act of social disengagement, those left behind seek for explanations which exclude as far as possible the likelihood of a self-conscious act by the missing person, thus seeking to minimize what Denzin calls 'self-threat'. Cf. Goffman (1956) where he defines embarrassment as the projection within social encounters of incompatible definitions of the self which leads to feelings of discomfiture. Significantly, Goffman stresses that 'to appear flustered, in our society, at least, is considered evidence of weakness, inferiority, low status, moral guilt, defeat, and other unenviable attributes'. See also Warnock (1970). 52 Consciousness of uneven reciprocity and the power of others to judge an individual rather than to understand him colours the life of Harry Howard as recorded by Lloyd and Williamson (1968). At one stage Harry Howard informed his interviewers: 'I've often been told that I'm a psychopath, that I have a psychopathic personality. But the reason psychiatrists say that is just that I stand against all authority. You see if you fight against authority there's something wrong with you, you're not normal.'

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53 The inability of the individual to preserve the status quo is obviously accepted in the wake of a natural disaster. Many people are categorized as 'missing' in the aftermath of earthquakes, hurricanes and floods. Similarly, difficulty frequently occurs in tracing individuals in the wake of man-made disasters resulting from, for example, warfare. In both these cases the individual may not express any wish to go missing, but is often forcibly parted from his customary situation. 54 See Allsop (1967) who refers to a survey of 200,000 adolescents who had ended their tramping in Los Angeles' free flop-houses and midnight missions in the year 1932. Two-thirds said that they left home for economic reasons (some 35 per cent of their families being on relief). Only one-seventh admitted to 'predicative wanderlust'. Also quoted is the similar conclusion reached by Minehan (1934) who indicated that out of 466 youngsters he interviewed, 387 gave the reason 'hard times' as an explanation of their tramping. As society has become more complex and regulated there has apparently been a notable decline in the incidence of hobos as casual workers. This decline in the working class casual work force has perhaps been paralleled by an increase in the incidence of the wandering groups of middle-class derivation who demonstrate a different order of economic problem - the hippies. 55 One case sympathetically described to us involved a woman who had left behind her an unemployed husband, ten children and a house in which there was no food or coal. These material and social deprivations were interpreted as in themselves constituting a situation within which it was virtually impossible for the mother to solve the problems facing her. Imputations of intentionah'ty of this order by social workers frequently emerge, in our experience, in a context where the workers concerned have no immediate acquaintanceship with those who have actually disappeared. 56 Ellison (1966) informs us: 'No one is more completely the victim of circumstances than the young child. There is always the terrible fear that so small a being could fall an easy prey to a maniac's fury, with neither the strength to struggle nor the voice to cry out.' 57 In company with Cloete (1970) and Williams (1969), Ellison stresses the significant role played by enforced prostitution in the process of going missing. Both Ellison and Williams imply that 'young country girls', whose first lonely encounter with the city is on the platform of one of the large terminal railway stations, are often easy prey to the Hogarthian wiles of 'ponces' and 'madams'. The exploitation of innocence is rightly seen as rewarding: Ellison quotes a report to the French National Assembly by Madame Francine Lefebvre in 1956 in which she produced documentary evidence

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showing that 'Young French girls fetch fantastic sums in the white slave markets of North Africa, South America and the Middle East.' Such discussions are more likely to 'amplify' the problem through the expression of shock and horror at the threat to innocence posed by certain evil-minded minority groups in society than to offer substantial evidence of the widespread nature of these practices. Middlesbrough Evening Gazette 8 October 1970. The danger that innocent teenage girls will be picked up by older men who 'charm away their fears' and persuade the girls to live with them, was illustrated in a feature article by F. Grieg: 'On the road that leads to nowhere', Middlesbrough Evening Gazette 20 October 1970. He states: 'Then there is the danger of the professional girl chaser. He'll drive around in his sports car, deliberately looking for girls whatever their age is. His smooth talk and casual assurances will often lead a bewildered naive girl, already confused as a result of her decision to run away from home, being accommodated at his flat.' Hesketh Pearson (1954) tells us that W. S. Gilbert was so impressed by his experience of being kidnapped in Naples at a very early age that he made the changeling theme a central feature of the satirical opera 'The Gondoliers'. Richardson, 'Still trapped by Agatha', the Observer Magazine 22 November 1970, mentions that Agatha Christie was missing from home on 7 December 1926, after her car was found abandoned in Surrey. He writes: 'A week later she was found staying at the Harrogate Hydro under an assumed name. She was suffering from loss of memory, the reaction of a sensitive person to stress. She still gets quite understandably cross when anyone suggests that her disappearance was a publicity stunt.' See Williams (1969) and Ellison (1966). In one of our case histories a woman voluntarily went missing, but fell a victim to amnesia whilst she was away from home. After leaving her husband and children she was involved in an accident which apparently resulted in partial loss of memory and temporary blindness. In this state of partial amnesia she was walking along the beach at the Isle of Wight when she saw a name on a wall which she said stimulated an immediate recognition of her 'true' identity. She then remembered that she had left her husband and children and attempted to regain contact with them through the social services. The accident was verified by the hospital in which she received treatment, but there was no clinical explication of the state of amnesia which affected her behaviour. Similarly a slightly older girl was said to have been 'defeated by the need for self-discipline' and described as a 'rootless drifting girl' who was 'impulsive and irresponsible'.

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Such theories, of course, can be gainfully re-interpreted and thus re-phrased to give greater insight into the problems of those missing. Thus, Rosalie Shann, recording the work of Mrs Evelyn Schaffer, who has interviewed one hundred runaways between the ages of twelve and sixteen in Glasgow, states: 'She (Mrs Schaffer) believes the average runaway far from being delinquent is a very disturbed human being who desperately needs help usually in the form of adult communication9 (our emphasis). 'When your daughter runs away', News of the World 25 October 1970. 64 Williams (1969) also introduces the views of a colleague, LieutenantColonel Albert Sligh, who observes, 'The chief reason for wives' desertion is the extra-marital affair - some women lose their sense of balance and reason and become so intoxicated by passion that their family doesn't mean anything to them.' 65 We are adopting here the distinction between shame and guilt which appears in Lynd (1958), for whom experiences of shame involve 'exposure to one's own eyes' of 'peculiarly sensitive, intimate, vulnerable aspects of the self. While, therefore, she interprets shame as resulting from a revealed failure to live up to one's own personal standards of behaviour, guilt is seen to result from the experience of violating the behavioural standards of others. Both processes have intimate connexions with self-consciousness in interaction. In general public usage, of course, these two terms tend to exhibit a degree of interchangeability and overlap. 66 Goffinan (1968) gives an account of a wife's sense of shame attending her husband's committal to a mental hospital. Her strategy to avoid the shame was to go missing from her friends. Goffman quotes the wife as saying: 'I've cut off all our other friends. I didn't tell them that I was giving up the apartment and I had the phone disconnected without telling anyone so they don't know how to get in touch with me.' 67 During the course of our enquiries the following anecdote was recounted to us. A social worker went to visit a man working on a building site to ask him to sign some routine papers. The man was pointed out working on the roof of a high building. On seeing the social worker (who was wearing a dark suit, carrying a briefcase and bearing a general 'official demeanour') the builder stopped working and suddenly 'took off'. The social worker pursued him for a short distance in an attempt to tell him that there was 'nothing to worry about', but was unable to catch up with him. Apparently this man has not been seen since by his workmates, friends, or the social worker concerned. It seems that no one knows what his reason was for running away in such a dramatic fashion.

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68 In the heyday of the British Empire the troublesome upper class 'black sheep' of the family could be given a 'regular account' and despatched to some remote part of the world in order to protect the family from the embarrassment engendered by his presence. See, for example, Saki's novel (1965) which points to the colonial fate of a disturbing member of high society in Edwardian England. An interesting variant of 'working the folks' in the 19605 is mentioned by Polsky (1967). He observes that some upper class beats are 'as often as not remittance men, that is they are sent money by their parents to stay away from home'. A vital discussion of some of the interactional implications of social disengagement of this kind occurs in Lemert's three papers on 'systematic' and 'naive' cheque forgers (1967). These works, of course, incorporate a detailed processual analysis of one form of inauthentic interaction and its implied consequences for personal identity and mental health in society. 69 Occurrences have been described to us where married working class women living near ports supposedly 'went on the boats for a good time' and 'some extra pocket-money', and occasionally remained on the boats when they put out to sea. Apparently a number of these women have later been located working in factories and cafes in Copenhagen and Hamburg. 70 The term 'constraint' is used to summarize the range of deterministic explanations discussed previously. 71 A marriage guidance counsellor told us of one case in which a middleclass wife, who was apparently happily married, suddenly went missing without giving her husband or children any indication that she was 'unhappy' or 'unsettled'. The husband received a letter from his wife some three months later, in which she said she had worked for a while in London and finally met another man; she ended the letter by saying that she was 'sorry she couldn't explain but life was too strong'. 72 It is also sociologically acceptable; Berger and Luckmann (1966) argue that there exists a plurality of sub-universes of meaning in modern society. Individuals will thus possibly be aware of other ways of viewing the world. This awareness may indicate alternative possibilities of identity development to those people, as well as revealing (by their very existence) the contingent and precarious nature of present social identities. Other sociologists have suggested that individuals seek and find fulfilment in the construction of a meaningful personal identity in the private sphere. Subjective selfdevelopment is seen, therefore, as an important theme in society. However, the individual who is involved in this particular quest could experience a number of tensions, for in the absence of a rigidly defined

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model of the identity he should construct in the private area, and the knowledge of the existence of other possible identities which he could be engaged in developing, the individual may experience considerable uncertainty. 73 Schutz points out, in his essay (1964): 'The cultural pattern of the approached group is to the stranger not a shelter, but a field of adventure ...' and 'Seen from the point of view of the approached group the stranger is a man without a history.' 74 A change in physical location may be sought by the individual in order to think out and reassess his identity. In this context going missing is seen both by those who are left behind and those who care' missing as a temporary state which precedes the resumption of a more coherent and 'stable' form of interaction. Love (1958) tells us in his 'Introduction' to a series of pen-portraits of 'dropouts' that 'A few years ago I was caught up in a whirlwind of my own. When it all ended I found myself walking the streets. I needed more than just a job. I needed to reassess life.... It seemed to me at the time that the reassessment was more important than the material side of things. I had to think. I had to have time to think. So I drifted.' In 'Mystery of the hideaway priest and nun', News of the World i November 1970, we learn how a reporter had tried to interview the Reverend John Kieth, 'a hermit isolated in the Kintyre Hills above Tayinloan, Argyll'. This man, who had disappeared from a hermitage in Kent where he had retreated after advocating 'cellular living', had apparently decided to think out his life and the possibilities of modern society in isolation. When asked by the reporter, 'Was he a "dropout" - a fugitive from the world like today's hippies and beatniks?' he is said to have replied, 'I cannot answer that. I cannot tell you why we are here. Perhaps in ten or twenty years ...' This man has obviously been located and categorized but he may still be considered missing by some others. 75 Most commentators lay stress upon the 'pull of other places': Phelan (1949) refers to a kind of terrestrial force: 'it's just the road'. John Steinbeck, quoted in Allsop (1967) speaks of, 'the virus of restlessness'. Anderson (1961) is unable to resist the notion of 'wanderlust'. Park (1925) explains this type of social mobility in terms of 'seeking change for the sake of change'. The problem is that in attempting to provide us with causal explanations of this wandering behaviour these writers (and there are many more), although apparently united, differ widely in their conceptions of how the forces cited affect the individual and motivate him to remove himself from one geographical scene to another. It is not simply a question of historical context since explanations offered

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in the i88os and 18905 in both this country and the United States will recur and are in fact applied to widely divergent and loosely defined groups (for instance, hippies as distinct from hobos). Thus some writers and workers emphasize specific socio-economic pressures; some see the causative factors in natural universal imperatives; yet others feel that tramps are people who have contracted a quasimedical condition - a sort of Virus' now 'in the blood'. Some articulate men who have lived the life produce highly personal accounts which deny the simple pressure of economic necessity. See Jack London (1964): 'Every once in a while, in newspapers, magazines, and biographical dictionaries, I run upon sketches of my life, wherein delicately phrased I learn that it was in order to study sociology that I became a tramp. This is very nice and thoughtful of the biographers, but it is inaccurate. I became a tramp - well because of the life that was in me, of the wanderlust in my blood that would not let me rest. Sociology was merely incidental; it came afterwards, in the same manner that a wet skin follows a ducking. I went on 'The Road' because I couldn't keep away from it, because I hadn't the price of the railroad fare in my jeans; because I was so made that I couldn't work all my life on 'one same shift', because - well just because it was easier to than not to.' 76 Anderson, writing under the pseudonym of 'Dean Stiff' (1931) reveals his sociological confusion when he writes: 'The hobo is always born a hobo - the American hobo is born to the cast.' A similar confusion of socio-economic pressures and psychobiological determinism was offered by Dr R. C. Van Riggle, a psychiatrist working for the Florida Transient Service in 1935. Riggle saw the myriads on the road as a result of '... a deep inner need to escape from a known condition into an unknown condition, to remove the old, and to discover the new, to break restricting bonds and to find freedom, to renounce the too obvious "real" for the "more glitteringly unreal". Stability in life had always meant sacrifice.' (Quoted in Allsop 1967.) Times have changed but the need to provide substitute explanations by those left behind still persists. 77 Stuart Hall (1968) gives us a nice articulation of the themes associated with the hippies. His title 'An American Moment' intimates the transitory nature of the world-view which he attempts to penetrate. 78 Ware (1965) and Zorbaugh (1929). Zorbaugh observes that 'The Towertownof today (i.e. Chicago's Bohemia)... is largely made up of individuals who have sought in its unconventionality and anonymity ... escape from the conventions and repressions of small town life or the outlying more stable communities of the city.' 'Occasionally, however, one finds behind these masques young persons who are

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79

80

81

82 83 84

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struggling to live out their lives, to remake the world a bit more after the fashion of their dreams.' Carol Ware says of Greenwich Village that, 'Here congregated those for whom the traditional pattern in which they grew up had become so empty or distorted that they could no longer continue a part of it and submit to the social controls which it imposed. Many who were drawn to the Village, came to seek escape from their communities, their families or themselves.' Hall (1968) detects that 'A sort of unanxious, perpetual search for pleasure, a diffused hedonism, coupled with a militant resistance to the tyranny of work, is characteristic of hippie life in general.' Polsky (1967) regards the beat response to straight society as the 'permanent strike' which 'seems to be tragically mistaken, destructive of the self as well as incapable of provoking social change, but it is a virtuous error arising out of dismay at things that are rotten in the social fabric.' Attempts by the hippies to focus on 'untrammelled experience' are considered by some commentators to constitute a fraudulent short-cut to enlightenment. Thus Bingham (1969) in concluding a survey of the hippy culture finds that the average hippy is relatively untutored, ignorant of the workings of society and that 'All in all... often ends up with less self-knowledge than his square contemporary. Trying directly to "find oneself" seems paradoxically less effective than first becoming the kind of person upon whom others can rely and then learning existentially from this revealing experience.' (See Bingham 1969.) In line with the social confusions of freedom and necessity there is a great deal of ambivalence in the public attitude towards tramps and tramping and, of course, all those who seem to be leading 'an unsettled way of life' in an increasingly routinized society. Allsop (1967) indicates that 'It was the responsible citizen's muddle of guilt and envy that elevated the hobo to both a folk and cultural hero. In his more sentimental moods he indulged himself with wistful yearnings for the vagabond content he erratically invested in the hobo.' Neville (1970) writes approvingly of 'The Road to Katmandu'. In this chapter he states hopefully that more and more people are rejecting conventional society and setting out on the road to self-discovery by travelling in non-tourist style to the East. Quoted in Halmos (1952). A new category of missing persons (or fugitives from others) has now appeared: 'illegal immigrants'. See Rolph (1957). Rolph quotes Sir William Darling, who during the course of a meeting in London called to protest against the National

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Registration Act 1939 observed with regard to 'Identity Cards': 'We should throw them on to the bonfire, and announce to the world that we have done so. We have become a docile, dumb people, a nation of subservient cattle.' 85 Things are 'closing in' for those uneasily tolerated wanderers who have sought roads to freedom through a conspicuous rejection of the conventional social order. The 'Road to Katmandu' is now very often seen as the 'road to ruin'. Kerouac (1968) wrote that: 'Great sinister tax-paid police-cars are likely to bear down at any moment on the hobo in his idealistic lope to freedom and the hills of holy silence and holy privacy.' In the same book he stated that around 1956 he abandoned the life of a hobo 'because of increasing television stories about the abominations of strangers with packs passing through by themselves independently...' 86 The search for a new life can lead to a happier reproduction of earlier associations (particularly marriage) or a replication of earlier disastrous relationships, as was the case of a woman who reappeared to see her teenage daughter of a first marriage after years of being missing, only to confess she had made as big a mess of her second marriage and subsequent family as of the first.

References ADVISORY COUNCIL ON THE PENAL SYSTEM. 1968. The Regime For Long Term Prisoners in Conditions of Maximum Security. London: H.M.S.O. ALL SOP, K. 1967. Hard Travellin9: The Hobo and His History. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ANDERSON, N. ('DEAN STIFF'). 1931. The Milk and Honey Route. New York: Vanguard Press. 1961. The Hobo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ATKINSON, j. M. 1971. Societal Reactions to Suicide: the Role of Coroners' Definitions. In S. Cohen (ed.) Images of Deviance. Harmondsworth: Penguin. BERGER, P. & LUCKMANN, T. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality. London: Allen Lane. BINGHAM, j. 1969. The Intelligent Square's Guide to Hippie Land. In S. Dinitz, R. Dynes & A. C. Clarke (eds.) Deviance: Studies in the Process of Stigmatization and Societal Reaction. London: Oxford University Press. BITTNER, E. 1967. The Police on Skid-Row: A Study of Peace Keeping. American Sociological Review 32: 699-715.

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BUTLER, E. w. & MERCER, j. R. 1967. Disengagement of the Aged Population and Response Differentials in Survey Research. Social Forces 46: 89-96. CLOETE, s. 1970. The Abductors. London: Fontana. COLES, R. 1968. The Strength of the Child. New Society No. 295. COOPER, D. 1967. Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry. London: Tavistock Publications. DENZIN, N. K. 1970. Rules of Conduct and the Study of Deviant Behaviour: Some Notes on the Social Relationship. In J. D. Douglas (1970). D E L A T O R R E , L. 1968. Elizabeth is Missing. Halifax: Portway. DOUGLAS, j. D. (ed.) 1970. Deviance and Respectability. New York: Basic Books. ELLISON, M. 1966. Missing From Home. London: Pan. GLASER, B. G. & STRAUSS, A. L. 1966. Awareness of Dying: a Sociological Study of Attitude Towards The Patient Dying in Hospital. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. GOFFMAN, E. 1956. Embarrassment and Social Organisation. American Journal of Sociology 62 (November): 264-71. 1957. Alienation from Interaction. Human Relations 10: 47-60. 1963. Stigma: Notes On The Management of Spoiled Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1968. The Underlife of a Public Institution: A Study of Ways of Making Out in a Mental Hospital. In Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of the Mental Patient and Other Inmates. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1969. Where The Action Is: Three Essays. London: Allen Lane. GOULDNER, A. w. 1960. The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement. American Sociological Review 25 (April): 161-78. HALL, s. 1968. The Hippies: An American Moment. University of Birmingham. HALMOS, p. 1952. Solitude and Privacy: A Study of Social Isolation Its Causes and Therapy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. HEP WORTH, M. 1971. Deviants in Disguise: Blackmail and Social Acceptance. In S. Cohen (ed.) Images of Deviance. Harmondsworth: Penguin. HUMPHREYS, L. 1970. Tea-Room Trade. Chicago: Aldine. HUNT, M. M. 1968. The World of the Formerly Married. London: Allen Lane. JOOS, J., DEBUYST, C. & SEPULCHRE-CASSIERS, M. 1970. Boys who

Run Away From Home: A Belgian Study. International Journal of Offender Therapy 14 (2). KEROUAC, j. 1968. Lonesome Traveller. London: Mayfair.

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KLAPP, o. E. 1969. The Collective Search For Identity. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. LAING, R. D. 1969. Intervention in Social Situations. London: Association of Family Caseworkers and Philadelphia Association. LEMERT, E. 1967. Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall. LLOYD, R. & WILLIAMSON, s. 1968. Born To Trouble: Portrait of a Psychopath. Oxford: Cassirer. LONDON, j. 1964. The Road. In The Pan Jack London Vol. 2. London: Pan Books. LOVE, E. G. 1958. Subways Are For Sleeping. London: Gollancz. LYND, H. M. 1958. On Shame and the Search for Identity. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. MCCORMICK, D. I97O. Murder by Perfection. London: John Long. MINEHAM, T. 1934. Boy and Girl Tramps of America. New York: Farrar & Rinehard. MUNRO, H. H. (SAKI). 1912. The Unbearable Bassington. London: John Lane. NEVILLE, R. 1970. The Road to Katmandu. In Play Power. London: Paladin. O'CONNOR, p. 1963. Vagrancy. Harmondsworth: Penguin. PARK, R. E. 1925. The Mind of the Hobo. In Park, R. E. & Burgess, E W. The City. Chicago: Chicago University Press. PEARSON, H. 1954. Gilbert and Sullivan. Harmondsworth: Penguin. PERRUCHOT, H. 1958. Gaugin. London: Methuen. PHELAN, j. 1949. We Follow the Roads. London: Phoenix House. PIPER, E. 1966. Bunny Lake is Missing. London: Fontana. POL SKY, N. (ed.) 1967. The Village Beat Scene 1960. In Hustlers, Beats and Others. Chicago: Aldine. ROLPH, c. H. 1957. Personal Identity. London: Michael Joseph. RUBIN, j. 1970. Do It. London: Cape. RUBINGTON, E. 1968. Variations in Bottle-Gang Controls. In E. Rubington & M. S. Weinberg (eds.) Deviance: the Interactionist Perspective. London: Macmillan. SCHUTZ, A. 1964. The Stranger. In Collected Papers Vol. 2. The Hague: Nijhoff. SHIBUTANI, T. 1962. Reference Groups and Social Control. In A. M. Rose (ed.) Human Behaviour and Social Processes: an Interactionist Approach. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. SILVERS, R. j. 1970. The Modern Artist's Associability: Constructing a Situated Moral Revolution. In J. D. Douglas (ed.) Deviance and Respectability. New York: Basic Books.

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TIMMS, N. 1968. Rootless in the City. London: Bedford Square Press. TYERMAN, M. j. 1968. Truancy. London: University of London Press. WARE, c. c. 1965. Greenwich Village. New York: Harper & Row. WALLACE, s. E. 1969. Skid Row. In S. Dinitz, R. R. Dynes and A. C. Clarke (eds.) Deviance: Studies in the Process of Stigmatisation and Societal Reaction. London: Oxford University Press. WARNOCK, M. 1970. Everyone is Looking at You. New Society No. 405. WILLIAMS, R. 1969. Missing: a Study of the World-wide Missing Persons Enigma and Salvation Army Response. London: Hodder & Stoughton. WOODRUFF, D. 1957. The Tichborne Claimant: a Victorian Mystery. London: Hollis & Carter. ZORBAUGH, H. 1929. The Gold Coast and the Slum. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

GERALD MARS

Dock pilferage A case study in occupational theft This paper presents part of a wider study of longshoremen1 undertaken as an anthropologist in St Johns, Newfoundland, and more fully reported elsewhere (Mars 1972). It is also one of a number of case studies in occupational pilferage on which I am currently working, most collected through participant observation.2 Participant observation in this case was necessarily limited. I spent eighteen months in field work as an anthropologist, living, drinking, and spending my leisure with the longshoremen concerned. But since the amount of work in this port was limited - Newfoundland has a winter unemployment rate over 40 per cent and a summer one over 12 per cent - I was unable to work on the dock. Instead, I spent much time in the Union Hall, wandering round the wharfs and sheds and on and in vessels observing and chatting to men as they worked and drinking with them in the evenings. My interest in pilferage as a specific area of inquiry was peripheral to other interests and arose relatively late in fieldwork. In this paper I am primarily concerned to examine how 'normal' work roles are adapted to serve the needs of institutionalized pilferage, how this influences relationships on the dock - particularly within the dock work gang and how the men involved perceive their actions in terms of a prevailing morality. Suggestions are then offered for extensions of the analysis. B A C K G R O U N D TO THE PORT AND ITS O P E R A T I O N S

St Johns hires the labour it needs on a casual basis by a procedure known as 'the shape-up.'3 When a ship docks, a hiring foreman stands on deck, men form a horseshoe beneath him and the foreman then picks from this 'shape' the twenty-six men for the gang he will

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later supervise. The picking of men is carried out in the same way as schoolboys pick their football teams. Men are hired only for a particular boat which may give as little as two or as much as twenty hours work and they are paid hourly. In 1964 the hourly rate was $2 and average annual pay of regularly chosen gang members amounted only to about $2,000. 'Outside men' - those not normally hired as regular gang members - fill in on vacancies when they occur. Their earnings are lower than those of regular men and their access to pilferage much less. In spite of the apparently casual nature of hiring, close observation revealed that predominantly the same men were rehired at each shape-up by their regular foremen. This is because a bargain exists between members of the tightly organized work gang, who need security of selection, and the foreman, who needs an output of work satisfactory to his superiors. One strand of the bargain gained by the men is job security - another is access to pilferage. Gangs are tightly knit, inward-looking groups of friends and neighbours, who spend their leisure together and among whom there frequently exist considerable kinship connexions. The gang is, therefore, the unit of work and leisure. It is also the unit by which pilferage of cargo is organized and distributed. Foremen, excluded from social activities, have in recent years largely moved away from longshore areas of residence and take no part in obtaining or distributing pilfered cargo. The techniques governing pilferage can be explained only in the context of normal work roles and their organization. This is because organization of both legitimate and illegitimate work is based on the same work group structure - the dock work gang. It is therefore only by understanding normal working that we can see how work roles are adapted by men to carry out illegitimate tasks under cover of legitimacy. Working normally, when a vessel is unloading general cargo, men start the process in the bowels of the ship - the hold. Cargo has to be lifted by winch or crane and dropped alongside the vessel to the quay. Here it is loaded onto a fork truck and moved to a shed or warehouse for sorting, stacking, and checking. The total task is performed in much the same way in any port, which means that the dock work gang system is, with variations, basically universal. This discussion can be regarded, therefore, as having a wider application than its single source might suggest.4 Figure i reveals the working situation in St Johns and shows the

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distribution of a twenty-six man gang among its different sections. The discussion refers to a gang structure designed to unload cargo, since this is the predominant type of gang structure in the port.

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FIGURE I : Deployment of a twenty-six man gang for unloading general cargo The vessel crew The eight holdsmen. Men who work in the hold, often collectively called 'the hatchcrew', are organized in four pairs. Where possible, two pairs move cargo to the sling and two pairs load the sling together. Sometimes it is not feasible for all members of a hatchcrew to work together - a cargo's nature or the way it is packed might mean that two pairs of men have to stand idly by until their workmates have cleared a sufficient space. This enforced idleness contributes to the high incidence of pilferage from ships' holds. Most pilfering of cargo takes place here rather than in the sheds. Another contributory factor is that normal work involves burrowing for cargo below the level of the hatch and therefore legitimately working for much of the time out of sight of passersby on deck.

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There are two slings to each hatch. A sling is a square board, to each corner of which is fixed a hawser; these are linked to a cable and hoisted or lowered by power-operated winch. Each sling is loaded alternately and when it is fully stacked men in the hold pass a signal by hand to a signaller standing on deck who similarly transmits it to the winch driver. The loaded sling is then raised, swung out over the ship's side, lowered to the quay, and an empty sling lowered into the hold in its place. This in its turn is reloaded and the process continued until the hold is empty. Winch drivers and deckman (or signaller). The two winchmen and the deckman work in close partnership both with each other and with men in the hold. Perched in the rigging, one on either side of the hatch, winchmen perform a highly skilled job, as, in response to signals of the deckman below, they raise and lower slings in and out of the hatch beneath them and over the vessel's side to the quay. They are completely dependent on signals from the deckman since they are usually behind the line of vision into the hatch: it says much for the skill of these three men that accidents are relatively few. It seems almost incredible to an outside observer that, acting purely in response to signals, the winchmen can, with practised ease, deposit a swaying, heavily laden sling exactly where it is required on the quay from its loading area in the hold while often unable to see either loading area or quayside. To obtain such polished, almost elegant handling demands a rapport between winchmen and signaller that requires considerable time to perfect. 'You've got to be buddies to do this job,' one winchdriver remarked, 'and you've got to understand his signals - they've all got different signals.' This rapport unites all the vessel crew and though derived from legitimate work organization is, as we shall see, indispensable to the illegitimate organization of pilferage. The shore crew Skidsmen. Skidsmen work on the quay at the side of a ship. In this situation they are both physically and socially isolated from the gang's two main sections. Skidsmen work as a pair and handle the sling as the winchman lowers it over the ship's side. If the fork truck is waiting to load they manoeuvre the contents onto the truck's fork: if the truck is in the shed they see the sling unloaded directly to the quay.

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The job is unskilled and rated low on prestige. Skidsmen have little autonomy since their rate of work is entirely set by the vessel crew. The job has a further disadvantage in that it is visible to anyone walking along the quay. This means that superintendents or managers can at any time detect an absentee or investigate a pile-up of cargo on the quayside. This visibility also of course inhibits skidsmen from pilfering and helps make the job the least desired of any in the longshore work gang. Fork truck drivers. Truck drivers are regarded by longshoremen as relatively skilled men. The ability to manoeuvre not very easily controlled trucks in and out of narrow passageways is rated lower in skill than the winchdriver's job but higher than the stower's. The job involves collecting cargo from the quay and taking it to stowers in the shed. The truck drivers can seriously affect the stowers' task; a fast moving driver, working with a fast moving vessel crew, can set a pace beyond what stowers consider reasonable. Further, a truck driver not in harmony with his stowers can make their job even more difficult by dropping cargo some distance from their sorting area, forcing them to manhandle it to their sorting area. The social position of the fork truck driver is somewhat ambiguous. Sometimes he is regarded as a foreman's man. As one stower remarked, 'he'll work for the foreman - not the gang - he sets the pace for the stowers.' He will, however, sometimes act as a medium of communication between stowers and vessel crew when grumbles come from the shed that the vessel crew are 'hoisting' too much too quickly. This area of ambiguity about his role is thus, in part, a reflection of his physical position in the gang. Working on his own as he does, trundling his truck between shed and quay, he is - like the skidsmen in little position to integrate with any group. Yet truck drivers do not always 'work for the foreman'. Just as his position in the gang allows him to serve the foreman by setting a pace for shed stowers, so it also allows him to perform certain services for the gang. These services include facilitating pilferage. The stowers. The eleven stowers are divided into two groups, of five and six. Working under direction of the hatch checker, they sort cargo in the shed brought from the quay by the truck drivers. The job is regarded as unskilled, not requiring specific abilities, and not very onerous. Among stowing gangs are older men who are

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'carried' by the other members, men who have been injured (more often in the hold than elsewhere), men recovering from sickness, and newly inducted outside men. It is among the stowers that most executive members of the Union are found - a result of their opportunity to communicate at work to a degree not available to other gang members. Holdsmen are isolated in groups of eight and work in pairs; winchmen and signallers relate as a group of three, while the skidsmen and truck drivers are relatively isolated. Stowers, on the other hand, in the normal course of work mix with at least four or five, more usually with ten or eleven, co-workers, and also have opportunities to contact stowers in other gangs throughout the shed. Because of this stowers are able to offer more complicated support to each other in organizing pilferage and stowers of one gang sometimes give warning of the approach of authority to stowers of adjacent gangs. Hatch checkers. A hatch checker's job is two-fold: to check cargo against documents and to guide the work of stowers in allocating cargo, in piles, to await individual consignees. A hatch checker is regarded as the foreman's unofficial deputy in the shed. He must be literate and highly skilled at 'knowing the marks'.5 His position vis-a-vis the foreman is extremely secure as this knowledge is not widespread and many foremen are illiterate. He is not paid extra for his knowledge,6 but he gains in security. One experienced member of the Union executive described checkers as 'unpaid policemen'. By this he hastened to add he knew of no cases where a hatch checker had reported a man for theft, but rather he felt some checkers limited the amount men took. I could find no evidence of antagonism between checkers and stowers. All hatch checkers during my field work seemed well established, and relationships between them and stowers were affable. One event serves to point out the nature of this relationship. During field work one hatch checker who had a record of sickness was off on holiday. His replacement was a shed checker whose position in the shed was regarded as none too permanent and who, it was suspected by some of the stowers, was 'after Hughie's place'. They combined to mis-sort cargo so the relief checker had no idea where any specific consignee's material would be found. By constantly mixing up different cargo they made the checker's job intolerable. There is some measure of ambiguity in the relationship of a hatch

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checker to his stowers. The case above demonstrated dependence of the checker upon stowers. In pilferage, however, as we shall see, stowers necessarily depend upon the checker. In this connexion it is noteworthy that most checkers and stowers enjoy a symmetrical joking relationship (Radcliffe-Brown 1952). One checker, for instance, was constantly ribbed at the vast amount he was alleged to have pilfered. 'Clears 'em out Hughie does, don't you Hughie?' Hughie's reply was always jocular! With this account of 'normal working' by a twenty-six man gang engaged in unloading general cargo, we can see how they perform an interrelated series of tasks. We must now consider how these work roles are adapted and how they interrelate for the performance of covert and illegitimate tasks. FOUR CASES OF THEFT

It must first be made clear that I was not able to observe actual examples of theft taking place in the dock. Details of instances were obtained initially from management or from traders who suffered loss in their consignments. Later in field work, material was obtained from longshoremen themselves but again without direct observation. With such information, however, it was possible to go back to several informants and to cross-check material received. Case i: Men's suits I first heard from a manager of one wharf that a cargo of men's suits had been broken into and some pilfered. In checking with the trader, I found thirteen out of a consignment of a hundred suits had disappeared between despatch in Montreal and arrival in St Johns. With this background of information I then went to informants who worked on the wharf concerned. The sequence of events was fairly clear and cross-checking with several informants confirmed what had happened. The hatch checker had been alerted by details on his bills of lading concerning the contents of the crates: messages had passed from shed to vessel crew to warn them of 'good pickings' to be expected. The crates were then loaded by the hold crew so that two would fall when the winch was jerked. At the appropriate moment, as the sling was poised over the quay, the signaller gave an all-clear sign to the winchman, the winch-

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man adjusted his levers, the winch jerked and the crates fell. They were only slightly damaged but this was enough to permit entry. Following normal procedure, the crates were then moved by fork truck to the shed for attention of the stowers. The shed is hardly a safe place for pilferage as the wharf superintendent or even the company manager may appear. Superintendents, in particular, frequently walk round the sheds to make sure that work is proceeding, and, presumably, also to restrict pilferage. In this shed (as in several others) the situation of the superintendent's office is a further hazard to stowers. This is commonly set high in the shed's roof and typically has large glass windows, so the superintendent, sitting at his desk, has an overview of operations throughout the shed. First then, it is necessary to block off this view of what was going on in the sorting and unloading area. In this instance, much other cargo unloaded with the suits was bulky and packed in large cases. The fork truck driver stacked this cargo to block off the superintendent's line of vision so he could not see the sorting area from his office. At the same time the driver also built up some other of the packing cases to form a hollow square. This enclosure then served as a changing room. Thus equipped, men were able to choose their suits at leisure, trying on different ones for size and being secure from the prying eyes of the superintendent in the roof. Throughout the day, holdsmen, signaller, and winchmen left the vessel and made their way individually to 'the changing room'. Stowers, as they went about their normal job, kept a wary eye open for authority, but the procedure went unobserved. This cargo was removed from the dock in the usual way, secreted in the clothing of men who took the goods home at the end of the day. Men are extremely skilful in this matter. (I once walked with a man half a mile through busy streets to his home. Once inside he pulled out bottle after bottle of whisky until there were six bottles on the kitchen table.) The following day the hatch checker reported that two crates had arrived damaged. By this time the missing suits had already been moved and were almost impossible to trace. Neither was it possible to localize the pilferage to St Johns: there was no evidence to prove the crates could not have been opened in Montreal, while the vessel was at sea, or at other ports on its route. In this connexion it must be pointed out that cargo often arrives in the port that has been inter-

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fered with prior to arrival, and longshoremen in the port are often blamed for pilferage they know has been accomplished elsewhere. In this case, though cooperation of vessel crew, stowers, and fork truck driver were all necessary for a successful operation, actual pilferage was effected in the shed. Both management and men, however, are of the view that most pilferage occurs whilst cargo is still in the hold. Case 2: Transistor radios I heard about this case, involving a cargo of radios from Germany, when discussing the general question of pilferage with one of the superintendents. 'Oh yes - they'll steal anything. They're the worst thieves in the world - only last week a crate of radios en route to Montreal was completely cleared out.' I asked how he was so sure they'd been taken in St Johns but he was hesitant to say. The account obtained from informants was as follows: With stereotyped Teutonic efficiency the forwarders had marked on the outside of their crate the name of the radios, a full description (which pointed out that they were portable!), and the quantity. The holdsmen had noticed this crate lying behind other cargo they were unloading. In a situation like this, however, one cannot just break into a crate; a member of the ship's crew will frequently be pacing the deck and occasionally peering into the hold. He is there specifically to restrict pilferage. Usually, this lookout is a ship's officer the mate or one of his deputies. Sometimes, if cargo is not particularly valuable or not easily pilfered, the job of lookout may be delegated to a more junior officer. In this case, the man keeping an eye on men in the hold was the ship's mate. The threat to security posed by the ship's officer is a serious one, though holdsmen can stay out of his line of vision if they know where he is positioned. On this occasion, as in other cases where holdsmen are involved, their insecurity was reduced by the signaller. His 'normal' job, discussed above, involves passing signals to the winchmen. By quick and deft movements of his hands, he tells the winchman by how much to raise, lower, and move the slings. To do this he must stand on the ship's deck on the vessel's shore-side. He is thus in perfect position not only to carry out his normal signalling but also to keep an eye on the ship's officer who, in his turn, is keeping observation on the hold crew. His arm movements, however, are not used

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only to coordinate the work of winch, hold, and skidsmen. In contribution to pilferage, they serve also to warn men in the hold below of the activities of the ship's officer above. So rapid and well understood can these signals be that I was never able to recognize or locate them. Though the crate was opened by holdsmen, its allocation was divided among all gang sections though I neglected to find out if this included the normally isolated skidsmen. My main informant, a stower, had two radios - one of which he sold. Not all the gang participated, and there were some disputed exchanges since several men were scared to steal such valuable items (these radios retailed for over $150 each). They were removed from the dock under men's coats. Except for the high value of items involved, the procedures in this case would appear to be more typical than those in the previous case in that activity was largely restricted to the vessel crew. The vessel crew's 'leavings' were then made available to stowers and, as this was a cargo in transit, there would presumably have been no need for cooperation from the hatch checker. I neglected to find how packaging had been disposed of in this case, as it was since 'the cargo had been completely cleared out'. The usual methods are for it to be broken up, find its way into the harbour, be carried out of the docks, stuffed into other cargo - cardboard for instance, being flat, is likely to be slipped into other cargo (particularly mattresses) or to end up minus identifying marking among the normal and considerable rubbish of the shed.7 Case 3: Whisky One British ship's captain recounted what happened on a previous trip while observing the unloading of whisky. As stated previously, overseeing men in the hold is normally the mate's duty. However, in situations where cargo is particularly likely to be pilfered, especially where high-value consumption items such as whisky, for which there is an almost insatiable demand, are involved, a captain might himself take on the task. On this occasion, as he was leaning over the hatch he saw that crates were not placed quite securely on the sling. As they were hoisted the sling wobbled and one crate fell back in the hold, landing on a corner. This was sufficient to break a couple of bottles which started to leak their precious liquid. 'Almost before the damned crate was down they were there with cups and cans and what-haveyou,' he stated. 'I was ready for it, you see. I knew what was going to

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happen. As soon as it fell, I shouted to them to stand back and made them wait till it had run away. They were pretty angry at that and wanted to know why I'd wasted the stuff - so I told them "because I don't want any more cases falling - alright?" They all laughed at that. Yes - you have a hard job with thieving. Mind you, it's not even safe to do this - they can be bloodyminded. Pilferage is found in any port, but it is worse here in my experience than anywhere else in North America. It's petty though - not organized on a large scale.' Such an operation's apparent casualness, as the captain was aware, requires practised cooperation of winchmen, hold crew, and signaller. First, the hold pair must load a crate on the sling with great care so it falls neither too early nor too late. Second, the signaller must be well aware of what has been arranged so he can pass signals to the winchman to treat this sling load rather differently from usual. Finally, the winchman, on whose particular expertise this operation largely depends, must know exactly when to shift his gears so that, with sound science and some elegance, he can cause the crate's demise. The captain told me that a friend of his, also a captain employed by the same company, had some years previously caught a man in the port red-handed and had called the police. The men 'for devilment' stole a lot more. 'Never again,' he swore, 'let the insurance pay up.' The captain said his company 'had largely stopped shipping general cargo to the port' and now mainly confined its operations to coal - 'directly because of this type of pilferage'. Case 4:

Foodstuffs

Having looked at some specific examples I now turn to consider pilferage of a general category of goods taken regularly in relatively small amounts. These are often foodstuffs, particularly those considered luxuries. Those actually stolen vary, therefore, with the tastes of each individual and of his family. Access to foodstuffs is particularly easy since their packaging is minimal - they usually arrive in single-thickness cardboard containers - and often these become damaged in the normal course of a cargo's discharge. Quite a lot of the men like sprouts, which are imported from the mainland and, being expensive, are considered something of a delicacy. When a cargo of sprouts arrives, it is usual for several men to fill a pocket or two. Holdsmen might also 'take care' of the interests

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of winchmen or signaller, and stowers similarly 'take care' of a truck driver. Some men have more esoteric tastes. One had a taste for anchovies, also considered luxury goods, a middle class treat. When this man, a stower, handled cargo including anchovies he pocketed two or three tins. He had a friend with similar tastes, a stower in another gang on the same wharf. When either gang handled anchovies each stower made sure his friend was also catered for. Men similarly take special foods for their wives. They will make an especial attempt to do so on occasions when liquor is also taken from the dock. Longshore women are generally against liquor; and anchovies, sprouts, or similar delicacies are used on these occasions to reconcile them to the heavy drinking that is likely to follow 'good liquor pickings'. Stolen liquor offends the more moralistic women on two grounds: that it is liquor and that it is stolen. The implication of wives as receivers serves therefore, to undermine wifely opposition on at least one of these grounds. A SYSTEM OF PILFERAGE

It is apparent that a system for the operation of pilferage exists, if by system we mean a set of inter-connected parts organized together to perform a particular job with the boundary to the system being largely congruent with the work gang. To state that pilferage operates within a system is not at all the same thing, however, as suggesting that pilferage in the port of St Johns is facilitated as an aspect of organized crime in the city. For one thing, pilferage appears to be random - advance planning has little place in its organization; secondly, its distribution does not usually involve financial profit; and thirdly, it provides a secondary source of resources restricted to men whose primary source of income is legitimate longshoring.8 To understand the social relationships involved in this system of pilferage, we must recognize two complementary facilities that need to be exploited for theft to occur. These are (with one exception to be discussed below) not found together in the same work role. The key to understanding the system lies in observing not only that these facilities are complementary but also in perceiving how they work in alliance. They may be termed facilities of access and support. (See Table I.) When we examine workroles of men in the longshore gang we find the technical system imposing a twofold specialization which has

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Table I The division of labour in the system of pilferage as organized in St Johns. Two clear groups emerge which correspond to the technical organization of the work gang. Extreme cases within the system are the skidsmen ( ) and the hatch checker (+ +). Foremen are excluded from the system. Work role

Pilferage function Access Support

fHoldsmen < Winchdrivers [Signaller Skidsmen

*

1 Vessel j crew

—

f Fork lift driver \Stowers Hatch checker

— + +

— Special case + \Shed — J crew + Special case

crucial effects on the way pilferage is organized. Some men spend their day actually handling cargo: these men who have access to cargo are holdsmen, stowers, and checkers. Other men, though involved in the process of moving cargo from ship to shed, do not actually handle goods but instead provide support for men who do in fact handle and have access to cargo. Thus the winchmen, signaller, and fork truck drivers perform services with or without machinery such that each may pass long periods without ever touching a crate. If men with access to cargo had direct and untrammelled opportunities to procure goods, then dependencies within the gang would be very different from what it is in fact. Access, as we have seen, however, is limited. Cargoes often arrive in cases that are difficult to open; men in the shed are subject to prying eyes of superiors; men in the hold must beware of ship's officers; documents have to be squared and evidence of packaging disposed of if 'access men' are to be successful pilferers. All these hazards to effective theft can only be overcome by use of the second facility-support. It was shown that for holdsmen to gain access to the contents of crates involves support of winchman and signaller. It is a dangerous operation for a winchman simply to drop a crate from a sling, whether this is done onto the deck or back into the hold. There are many people milling around when cargo is being unloaded, and without the

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sure guide of the signaller serious accidents would almost certainly occur. The signaller, therefore, minimizes this risk and at the same time grants support to the holdsmen by being in a position where he warns them of the presence of ship's officers. Within the shed, the facility of support for access men, the stowers, is provided by the fork truck drivers and the hatch checker. The truck driver's support, as we saw, is necessary to stower's access because he can move cargo to where it can (a) be more readily interfered with, and (b) provide a screen against outsider's eyes. Hatch checkers, as the table shows, occupy a distinctive place in this pilferage system: theirs is the only work role to combine both facilities of access and support (+ +). A hatch checker's normal work involves direct physical handling of cargo which grants him access while his support is necessary to others on two grounds. First, his support is necessary to square documents; secondly, 'knowing the marks' (i.e. recognizing contents of a box from its markings), and receiving bills of lading, he is in a strong position to point out the most fruitful crates or packages to open. Two workers are excluded from this system of dependencies: these are the skidsmen who lack access to cargo and who cannot gain support ( ). Their access is extremely limited because they work in the open on the quayside and, therefore, within sight of any passing member of the hierarchy. Further, their handling of any package is only transitory as they unload it from sling to fork truck; it usually needs time to delve into a box or wrench off a lid in order to get at its contents. Not only is their access thus limited, but skidsmen are also in no position to supply support to other gang members.9 The implications of the skidsmen's lack of function in this total system of dependencies overflows the work situation and affects non-work relationships. Skidsmen usually have no close kinship affiliations with the gang. They tend to have closer connexions with the foremen, and are likely also to be excluded from drinking cliques which stem from the work organization. We see from the table, therefore, that nearly all gang members are enmeshed in a system of mutual dependencies made necessary by the technical, safety, and security limitations which act against open access to cargo. It is because access and support are differentially allocated within the gang, however, that no one individual can exert a monopoly over either facility. This means that no one man is able, in pilferage or in other matters, to maximize his own benefits without incurring

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effective group sanctions. On one occasion a longshoreman, known to have a car off the dock stacked with cargo, returned to find it broken into, its contents completely cleared. It was well understood this had been accomplished by his workmates. This story was told and retold with some hilarity throughout the waterfront; the general view was that it served the victim right; he was known to be greedy and his behaviour was likely to prove a danger to all longshoremen involved in handling the same cargo. Convictions for pilferage in St Johns are extremely rare: there were no cases during the period of field work or in the immediate past. Managers, in discussion, always insist that the lack of convictions is due to the fact that longshoremen always stick together. You can never get one longshoreman to testify against another.' Managers and superintendents also realize they are in a poor position to institute proceedings. Even if they caught a man red-handed, testimony would involve retaliatory action which would make work relations even more difficult than usual. Men have walked off a boat because management once placed 'watchers' in the hold to supervise the unloading of whisky. Convictions, where they have occurred, have usually been instituted by men largely outside the waterfront system of relationships; they have usually been due to alert ships' officers rather than any measures taken by management. When longshoremen talk of relationships within their work gangs and indeed within the Union generally, they frequently emphasize the mutual trust that exists between members. Where cooperative illegal activity occurs, necessity for absolute confidence in dependability of colleagues is of crucial importance. When talking of the induction of new gang members one informant recounted the case of a Salvationist who moved into his gang before the war. Because he refused to take cargo men were suspicious and reluctant to confirm him to membership. At this time police inquiries started into the theft of a valuable cargo of wrist-watches, and they 'grilled' the new member over a period of three months. 'All that time he didn't give anything away' said my informant. 'He was really firm in the gang after that.' Pilferage, as a cooperatively organized illegal activity reinforces technical solidarity and serves therefore to bind members of gangs further into tight exclusive groups. But the institutionalization of pilferage also affects relationships beyond the gang and extends links beyond wharf boundaries. This extension of links derives from management who, when they have exceptionally secured a successful convic-

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tion, also suspend the culprit for six months from all work on the wharf concerned. One of my informants, a stower, had a conviction for being in possession of stolen groceries taken from the dock. He had been fined in the magistrates' court and the company then suspended him for six months from all hirings on their wharf. This extra-legal penalty could have reduced him to a position worse than that of any outside man, who at least could attend all the shape-ups on each wharf. Instead of this, however, his earnings actually increased. In those six months, Gerry, I was never out of a job. The men on Y's wharf saw I was always in. You see it could happen to anyone. Who knows when one of them might get caught and need a job on X's (his home) wharf?'

'WORKING THE VALUE OF THE BOAT': THE MORALITY AND REGULATION OF PILFERAGE When examination is made of different cargoes and attitudes taken to them, we find most longshoremen make a sharp distinction between cargo it is permissible to steal and that which should remain untouched. Normally all consumer goods are suitable for pilferage, but taking personal baggage is considered despicable. This distinction is seen and expressed in terms of, on the one hand, cargo addressed to impersonal firms and covered by insurance, and on the other hand personal property belonging to individuals. This distinction is well demonstrated in the following quotations: one longshoreman, justifying his dislike of another remarked: 'He'd take anything - he's even taken baggage - he's nothing more than a thief.' Another, discussing pilferage of general cargo, commented: 'I can't understand what they make all the fuss about, it's all insured and nobody's heard of an insurance company going broke. In any case, they've made millions out of this port and it's us who do the work.' When the first speaker used the word 'thief he limited the definition to cover a narrower range of behaviour than is usual. Pilferage of cargo other than baggage is by the implication of this view not regarded as theft. The second quotation makes this explicit: pilferage is here seen as a morally justified addition to wages; indeed, as an entitlement due from exploiting employers. Longshoremen have a phrase to describe the process of obtaining this entitlement - they call it 'working the value of the boat'. Thus, if a boat is expected to provide ten hours' work at $2 an hour then the

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boat is 'good for' $20 in wages. 'Working the value of a boat' in this case would mean obtaining cargo up to but not more than an estimated value of $20. The application of this concept can be seen to fulfil a number of functions. First, it tends to institutionalize pilferage - to grant it the status of a recognized and regularly occurring activity, and a normal part of life. Secondly, the concept expresses a level of achievement men should aspire to. To say of a man, 'he always works the value of a boat' is a compliment; a confirmation of his independence and ability to outwit employers. Not all longshoremen, however, engage in pilferage. Some members of the smaller religious sects are uncompromising in this respect. A few Salvationists and Seventh Day Adventists are known never to steal and are respected for their views. But the respect accorded them does not regard abstinence as an ideal to be emulated, indeed their behaviour is seen as crankish. One informant expressed the common view, in response to my suggestion that weren't these 'good people', when he said he thought they were 'good - but stunned' - meaning stupid. The men respect their self-sacrifice in the same way many people respect the strength of character of vegetarians, without feeling they should join them. In neither case does respect imply the regard for ideal behaviour felt by men who are only able to maintain a lower-level norm. A third function served by the idea of 'working the value of a boat' is the provision of a formula which attempts to fix an unequivocal limit beyond which pilferage, no longer thought laudable, is instead perceived as a danger to workmates. If men go above the value of a boat it is thought they are likely to attract official intervention. Persistently doing so involves a man in sanctions applied by his coworkers. Such a formula though readily applicable to the generality of cargo which normally arrives on regular runs is not so readily applied to exceptional items with high unit value such as the transistor radios discussed in Case II. When items such as these are taken a division of involvement and interests occurs between those who participate and those who do not and this is seen by men as a likely source of disruption to gang relationships. These occasions are, however, justified in terms of being exceptional occurrences - each occasion being regarded as a one-off event that does not disturb the validity of the general rule applicable to 'normal' cargo.

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This upper limit also serves to retain pilferage within the sphere of the moral and thus the justified. If a man takes more than the value of the boat, he is taking more than his moral entitlement and this alters the nature of his action. Though to an outsider the difference might well appear only one of degree, to a longshoreman the difference is essentially qualitative. Up to an agreed level pilfered cargo is seen as a moral entitlement; beyond this, additional pilferage is theft. Thus, when a gang sets levels of aspiration and operates controls to limit pilferage, it is acting not only from a standpoint of economic rationality but also, and this is a paradox not readily appreciated off the waterfront, from one set firmly in the prevailing morality.10 This fixing of an upper limit can be understood as allowing men to operate within limits of certainty: men know and can forecast not only the reactions of their workmates but also managerial reactions to pilferage only when it is kept to known and specific limits. This strongly suggests that managements are also, in a very real sense, conspirators with the men; that they in effect collude in accepting a specific level of pilferage as part of an understood indulgence pattern. More work needs to be done to determine the parameters of such collusion in a variety of industries and to assess factors permitting variable levels of pilferage in different milieux. Where pilferage is the norm it may well have implications for analysis of industrial unrest. It appears here that pilferage, in the actor's definition of his position, is perceived as a legitimate means of redressing an exploitive contractual situation. Considered in this light, pilferage can then be appreciated as having possible implications for working class consciousness. It is perhaps a device which, in part at least, expresses alienation in an alternative manner to more open industrial and political action. This may well be one reason why managements have been reluctant to take action to eradicate it - preferring instead, despite the cries of moralists, to devise limits to its growth. At local levels consideration should be given to the effects of technology and work organization, as these influence control over access and support facilities. In some work situations, such as the St Johns docks, technology, in determining how work is organized, has meant that these are distributed within the work group - a fact which has important effects on solidarity and the emergence of a group morality. In other situations technology or managerial direction could mean one or both facilities may well be held by persons outside the work group, or not distributed at all but monopolized by one individual. In some

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cases control over access and support may well be used to buttress or detract from formal authority. In others absence of control can perhaps distort planned hierarchies and relativities while similar results can follow encapsulation of both facilities within individual roles. It appears likely, therefore, that besides questions concerning morality and rule-making - processes upon which this inquiry has focused - questions concerning prestige, authority, and power at work might also better be understood if further detailed anthropological studies were made of the incidence and distribution of covert and illegitimate activities at work.

Notes 1 I carried out fieldwork as Research Fellow of the Newfoundland Institute of Social and Economic Research whose support I gratefully acknowledge. The fieldwork was carried on between 1962 and 1964. I briefly returned in 1966 when the situation was much the same. By 1972, when I last returned, technical and other changes had changed the earlier situation. A wide variety of longshore informants read the draft of this article during the last visit and there were no objections to publication. 2 These include studies of restaurant and hotel workers (see Mars I973)« Fairground star!, seaside deck chair attendants, health service consultants, ice cream sellers, public corporation executives, driver salesmen, storemen, barmen, and supermarket cashiers. 3 For the classic description of shape-up hiring see Larrowe (1955). 4 This discussion does not apply to the new wave of cargo handling technology in docks - containers, lighters aboard ship (LASH), or side- and end-loading vessels. 5 Being able to recognize contents of a package by code marks on its outside. 'Each parcel, known as a bill of lading from the covering document of title, bears a separate mark; this is shown as a rule, on each case, bag or carton. This identifying mark is known as the main mark; often there are sub-marks that denote the shipper or the quality and size of the contents' (Orarn 1965). 6 Due to the Union policy of 'not splitting the membership'. 7 As a general rule men try to take the whole of a case and to dispose of both contents and packaging, since an absent case is less likely to be noticed than one which has been tampered with. Sometimes though it is not possible to dispose of a whole case and inconspicuous entry is therefore necessary. In these cases nails are removed from wooden

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crates with sharp knives and are later carefully replaced. Razors are used to slice imperceptible U shapes in cardboard containers. 8 A very different situation is found in Bell (1959) reporting on the then situation in New York. 9 It was not always the case that skidsmen and truck drivers were not integrated into the gang, or that they had relatively little part to play in pilferage. In the forties and fifties when work was much more plentiful in St John's than in the sixties and seventies, night work was common. At night time 'good pickings' in one hold were occasionally loaded from the dockside not into the warehouse but into an adjacent hold. This operation required the coordination of skidsmen and truck drivers from both gangs. In return for their help they would often be allowed on board and into the hold. 10 See Gluckman's classic discussion of Reasonable' role playing (Gluckman 1955).

References BELL, D. 1959. 'The Racket Ridden Longshoremen.' Dissent VI (Autumn): 417-29. GLUCKMAN, M. 1955. The Judicial Process Among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester: Manchester University Press. LARROWE, c. P. 1955. Shape Up and Hiring Hall. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. MARS, G. 1972. An Anthropological Study of Longshoremen and of Industrial Relations in the Port of St John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Ph.D. Thesis: London University. 1973. Hotel Pilferage: A Case Study in Occupational Theft. In M. Warner (ed.) Sociology of the Workplace. London: Allen & Unwin. OR AM, R. B. 1965. Cargo Handling and the Modern Port. Oxford: Pergamon. RADCLIFFE-BROWNE, A. R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. Chapters IV and V. London: Cohen & West.

JOCK YOUNG

Mass media, drugs, and deviance1 THREE A P P R O A C H E S TO THE MEDIA

There are three basic types of theory which relate mass media to public opinion: the mass manipulative, the commercial laissez-faire, and the consensual paradigm. Historically, they emerged roughly in this order, but relatively sophisticated elements of all three theories remain in a competitive situation today. What I wish to do is examine the first two theories, outline their defects, and show how the third theory would seem to supersede them. Then I intend to detail the implications of the consensual-paradigm model for the portrayal of deviants in the mass media and its likely effects both on 'normals' and 'deviants'. I intend to use as my prime example the images of the drugtaker, but I have no intention of restricting myself solely to drug use as, I feel, the remarks and conclusions can be generalized to all forms of deviance. The mass-manipulative model pictures individuals in society as constituting an atomized mass and the media as a powerful agent for the manipulation of their unresisting opinions. Three different political stances centre around this model: those on the left see the media as a powerful source of mystification, those on the right see it as a propagator of permissiveness, and those in the centre (such as Park, Burgess, and Wirth) see it as a potent force for cohesion in a divided society. The commercial laissez-faire model emerged as a critique of the first theory (Brown 1963, Williams 1959). It argued that the following points minimized manipulation: (1) Variation: there is variation in the opinions carried by the media as a result of 'giving the public what it wants' - diversification of the market so that all variations in existing opinion are satisfied by the appropriate media. (2) Self-selection, differential perception: it is suggested that the individual as consumer selects those media which agree with his

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opinions, reads those parts of newspapers which agree with his attitudes, and selectively perceives the material to agree with his attitudes. (3) Inertia of attitudes: it is maintained that people's attitudes can be reinforced by the media but rarely changed in the opposite direction, except where they are unimportant; i.e. the effect is inversely proportional to importance of the attitude to the individual. (4) Importance of personal contacts and experience: it is argued that the prime influences on opinion are personal experience and faceto-face contact with a person whose opinion is highly valued (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944). The net effect of the mass media as characterized by this model is either reinforcement of existing attitudes or lack of change in attitudes which are at variance. This is held to be true only in democratic countries and preferably those with commercial media, for in totalitarian nations the market of opinions would be controlled and monopolized. My criticisms of the commercial laissez-faire model are that it makes mistaken assumptions (a) about the nature of the opinions presented to the population, and (b) about the nature of the opinions held by the population. ATTITUDES PRESENTED TO THE POPULATION

(1) To determine the degree of variation in news we need a criterion for judging, and it may well be that the variation which occurs is all within the limits of certain permitted discourse areas or models of interpretation. This may relate closely to the oligopolization of the media. (2) It should not be assumed that because the public watches television and reads newspapers the content of these media corresponds precisely to their desires and wishes. To be sure, there must be some connexion or the newspapers would be left unread and the television permanently switched off, but this does not mean that alternative news might not be consumed more avidly and endowed with much greater significance. The positive line of causality between public opinion and media content is dependent on a perfect market and there is little doubt that considerable oligopolization has occurred in ownership and control. (3) Attitudes are not presented as isolated atoms but, as part of

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specifiable structures or myths, they follow certain understandable patterns. The mass media provide models within which incidents, ideas, and social groups are given meaning and individual life-styles evaluated. As James Halloran pointed out: 'Attitude has been one of the central concepts in both social psychology and mass communication research for a long time, but there is a growing body of opinion which holds that attitude change has been over-used as the primary criterion of influence ... there is much more to television's influence than can be studied through direct changes in attitude and opinion as these have normally been defined and assessed. Television may provide models for identification, confer status on people and behaviour, spell out norms, define new situations, provide stereotypes, set frameworks of anticipation and indicate levels of acceptability, tolerance, and approval. Influence must not be equated with attitude change' (1970: 19). (4) The mass media can, in situations where there is limited knowledge of the attitudes of other groups, present themselves as reified public opinion. They can, therefore, purport to carry the consensual opinion on any incident, idea, or image of a deviant group. They can provide the 'facts' to society about what is consensual opinion and the 'facts' to deviant groups as to what image the consensus holds of themselves. (5) By presenting material with a startling immediacy and force, they can determine which 'facts' are held before the public independent of public attitudes towards these facts. They can provide the inventory of incidents, groups, and ideas to be evaluated. ATTITUDES HELD BY THE P O P U L A T I O N

(1) Because of increased social segregation pre-existing attitudes about new or remote social groups, incidents, experiences or ideas may in many cases be non-existent or hardly at all based on first-hand experience; i.e. social knowledge of such items may be largely limited to media reportage. (2) Even direct experience, where it occurs, is as C. Wright Mills (1963) puts it: 'not primary, not raw, not really direct. It is mediated and organized in stereotypes Experience is socially organized; the capacity for it socially implanted. Often the individual doesn't trust his own experience until it is confirmed by others or by the media.'

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The mass media then by providing models may structure direct experience and guide it continuously through the individual's life. (3) The model which the media present may correspond with important models widespread through the population, i.e. they may confirm consensual images in socialization and deny dissenting images. As Louis Wirth put it: 'The fact that the instrumentalities of mass communication operate in situations already prepared for them may lead to the mistaken impression that they or the content and symbols which they disseminate do the trick. It is rather the consensual basis that already exists in society which lends to mass communication its effectiveness' (1948: 6-7). For this reason it is necessary to study the long-term and interrelated effects of the media in the socialization of children and adults. (4) The notion of attitude change utilized in media sociology is largely that the media purveys attitude Ai, imposing on it a population with attitude Aa, where AI and A2 may either correspond or conflict. What is ignored is the widespread occurrence of contradictory attitudes among people, i.e. instead of a simple unambiguous, definite moral calculus - contradictions, conflicts, and vagueness are more characteristic.2 One of the major dimensions of contradiction - which I shall discuss later - is that between consensual and conflictful views of the social universe. The individual may therefore find that the media tend to weight certain of these contradictions in a censensual direction. (5) The models which the media provide may provide Gestalts into which isolated attitudes unorganized into coherent world views are categorized and given context. This may involve no change in direction of the attitude although a world of difference in meaning. Thus an attitude of support for the Ford strikers, which totters on the verge of a conflict model, may be transmuted by exposure to repeated media analyses which place the strike firmly in the consensual paradigm which views union-employer conflict as a natural democratic process but one in which the nadonal interest and the welfare of the nation is the final arbiter. Thus the individual's attitude to the strike may remain positive throughout although its meaning is totally reinterpreted in a consensual context. The individual provides the attitude whilst the media, in this case, provides the context in which the attitude can be interpreted.

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The above is a brief outline of the consensual paradigm view of the media. It is necessary now to turn to discuss the details of the widelyheld consensual model of society. THE CONSENSUS IMAGE OF SOCIETY

(1) People are seen to share common definitions of reality - agree as to what is normal and deviant behaviour, what activities are praiseworthy and what condemnable. (2) This consensus is seen to be functional to an organic system which they see as society. Behaviour violating the consensus is dysfunctional. (3) The major content of this model is geared to a neo-Keynsian image of the economy, a nuclear family image of sexuality, and a mundane concept of religious experience. Economically, the ideal citizen is one who works hard and acquires an increasing consumption power as a result. The consensus consists of a twin system of values which are brought into play at normatively appropriate times. Matza and Sykes (1961) described this consensual contradiction as that between official and subterranean values. I have elaborated this conception as follows: Formal work values Deferred gratification Planning future action Conformity to bureaucratic rules Fatalism: high control of detail, little over direction Routine, predictability Instrumental attitudes to work Hard productive work seen as a virtue

Subterranean values Short-term hedonism Spontaneity Ego-expressivity Autonomy: control of behaviour in detail and direction New experience, excitement Activities performed as an end-in-themselves Disdain for work

The formal values are related to the structure of modern industry. They are functional for the maintenance of diligent, consistent work and the realization of long-term productive goals. They are not, however, identical with the Protestant Ethic. For while the latter dictated that a man realized his true nature and position in the world through

234 hard work and painstaking application to duty, the formal values insist that work is merely instrumental. You work hard in order to earn money, which is spent in pursuit of leisure; it is in his free time that man really develops his sense of identity and purpose. As C. Wright Mills (1951) puts it:

'Each day men sell little pieces of themselves in order to try to buy them back each night and week-end with the coin of "fun". With amusement, with love, with movies, with vicarious intimacy, they pull themselves into some sort of whole again, and now they are different men. Thus the cycle of work and leisure gives rise to two quite different images of self: the everyday image, based upon work, and the holiday image, based upon leisure. The holiday image is often heavily tinged with aspired-to and dreamed-of features and is, of course, fed by mass-media personalities and happenings. "The rhythm of the week-end, with its birth, its planned gaieties and its announced end", Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it." The week-end, having nothing in common with the working week, lifts men and women out of the grey level tone of everyday work life, and forms a standard with which the working life is contrasted.' Society provides institutionalized periods in which these subterranean values are allowed to emerge and take precedence. Thus we have the world of leisure: of holidays, festivals, and sports in which subterranean values are expressed rather than the rules of work-a-day existence. Thus Matza and Sykes write: 'The search for adventure, excitement, and thrill is a subterranean value that... often exists side by side with the values of security, routinization, and the rest. It is not a deviant value, in any full sense, but must be held in abeyance until the proper moment and circumstances for its expression arrive' (1961: 716). In a similar fashion Peter Berger has noted how religious beliefs coexist beneath the surface of official mundane rationality: 'There is scattered evidence that secularization may not be as allembracing as some have thought, that the supernatural, banished from cognitive respectability by the intellectual authorities, may survive in hidden nooks and crannies of the culture. Some, for that matter, are not all that hidden. There continue to be quite massive

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manifestations of that sense of the uncanny that modern rationalism calls "superstition" - last but not least in the continuing and apparently flourishing existence of an astrological subculture! For whatever reasons, sizeable numbers of the specimen of "modern man" have not lost a propensity for awe, for the uncanny, for all those possibilities that are legislated against by the canons of secularized rationality. These subterranean rumblings of supernaturalism can, it seems, coexist with all sorts of upstairs rationalism' (1970: 39). All members of society hold these subterranean values. Normally they are maintained in balance with the formal values and allowed expression in leisure or special occasions. Certain groups, however, accentuate these values, disdain the work-a-day norms of official society and attempt to live all their life in a subterranean fashion. The juvenile delinquent and the hippie, to a varying extent, epitomize this position.3 It must not be thought, however, that contemporary man's work and leisure form watertight compartments. The factory-belt worker experiencing boredom and alienation does not come home in the evening to a life of undiluted hedonism and expressivity! The world of leisure and afterwork are intimately connected. The money earned by work is spent in one's leisure time. It is through the various life styles which are evolved that men confirm their occupational status. Leisure is concerned with consumption and work with production; a keynote of our bifurcated society, therefore, is that individuals within it must constantly consume in order to keep pace with the productive capacity of the economy. They must produce in order to consume and consume in order to produce. The interrelationship between formal and subterranean values is therefore seen in a new light: hedonism, for instance, is closely tied to what I will term the ethos of productivity. This states that a man is justified in expressing subterranean values if, and only if, he has earned the right to do so by working hard and being productive. Pleasure can only be legitimately purchased by the credit card of work. Men are encouraged both to discipline themselves for work and to release themselves in leisure, the contradiction between these two principles of socialization being resolved in the ethos of productivity. But there are cracks and strains in this moral code. People doubt both the sanity of alienated work and the validity of their leisure. For they cannot compartmentalize their lives in a satisfactory manner: their socialization for work in-

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hibits their leisure and their Utopias of leisure belittle their work. William Whyte caught this dilemma well when he noted: '"Hard work?" What price capitalism, the question is now so frequently asked, unless we turn our productivity into more leisure, more of the good life? To the organization man this makes abundant sense; and he is as sensitive to the bogy of overwork and ulcers as his forebears were to the bogy of slothfulness. But he is split. He believes in leisure, but so does he also believe in the Puritan insistence on hard, self-denying work - and there are, alas, only twenty-four hours a day. How, then, to be "broad gauge"? The "broad gauge" model we hear so much about these days is the man who keeps his work separate from leisure and the rest of his life. Any organization man who managed to accomplish this feat wouldn't get very far. He still works hard, in short, but now he has to feel somewhat guilty about it' (1963: 31-2). People feel as a result of this considerable unease at the rationality and justice of their lives. Are the sacrifices both in work and marriage really worth the socially approved rewards? This latest discontent leads, on the one hand, through a series of intermediate positions to downright rejection of the ethos and, on the other hand, to entrenchment: to the need for confirmation that the social universe is a just one and that past sacrifices have not been foolish. Moreover, adherence to formal values and to their subterranean counterparts coexist in the same psyche. This is the basis of moral indignation. MORAL INDIGNATION

Albert Cohen (1965) wrote: 'the dedicated pursuit of culturally approved goals, the adherence to normatively sanctioned means - these imply a certain self-restraint, effort, discipline, inhibition. What is the effect of others who, though their activities do not manifestly damage our own interests, are morally undisciplined, who give themselves up to idleness, self-indulgence, or forbidden vices? what effect does the propinquity of the wicked have upon the peace of mind of the virtuous?' What Cohen is arguing is that deviant activities, even although they may have no direct effect on the interests of those who observe them,

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may be condemned because they represent concrete examples of individuals who are, so to speak, dodging the rules. For if a person lives by a code of conduct which forbids certain pleasures, which involves the deferring of gratification in certain areas, it is hardly surprising that he will react strongly against those whom he sees to be taking short-cuts. This is a partial explanation of the vigorous repression of what Edwin Schur calls 'crimes without victims': homosexuality, prostitution, abortion, and drug taking. Specifically it is interesting to note how the social reaction against a particular form of drugtaking is, in general, proportional to the degree to which the group involved embraces values which are hedonistic and disdainful of work. Conversely, where drugtaking is linked to productivity, either in that it aids work or facilitates relaxation before or after work, it is viewed with much greater favour—if not encouraged. This becomes evident if we take a specific drug and note how social reaction to it varies with the group who use it and the ends which its use facilitates. Thus, compare the differential social reaction to amphetamine use: (1) Legal use: seventy-two million tablets issued to British forces during the war to be used to combat exhaustion; astronauts' stocks in case of emergency; civilians' use of them on prescription to slim and counteract depression. (2) Tolerated use: benzedrine taken by medical students to swot for examinations. (3) Condemned use: teenagers taking them to stay awake at allnight clubs and parties.4 The ethos of productivity is an important widespread consensual value. To make this claim is to suggest neither that such a consensus is the total description of the social universe, or that a consensual monolith held by the majority is faced by a plurality of minorities with deviant values. Rather it is to suggest with Albert Cohen (1955), Hyman Rodman (1963), Charles Valentine (1968), and others, that deviant and consensual values can be held simultaneously by individuals and groups. They exist in a fashion which is, as Matza suggests, subterranean to the dominant values but include values which are not merely in the right time and place supportive but those which are, despite their comparative ephemerality and flimsiness, downright subversive. The ethos of productivity, then, represents a consensus to the extent that it exists as a prominent factor in the moral calculus of most men in Western society. It has a higher order of legitimation to the

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extent that adherence to its premises can be justified by reference to a series of generally recognized official agencies: politicians, the church, the trade unions, the police, and very important - both as an independent and a mediating agent - the mass media which purport to represent a reified consensual public opinion as certain as the black and white with which it is represented. The language which the mass media use - I will call it consensualese - is supportive of the status quo: it is a language of order and control. Popular consciousness consists of a bricollage of contrary opinions and positions. It is both idealist and materialist, it embraces both free will and determinism, it is both individualistic and collectivist, it is optimistic and supremely fatalistic, it is consensual, it is downright subversive. Conversation consists of a skilful trapeze act straddling seemingly irreconcilable positions. The role of the media is systematically to reinforce the consensual part of this consciousness, castigating other tendencies as irrational and regrettable. Thus Tony Lane and Kenneth Roberts in their insightful analysis of the Pilkington Strike note how: 'despite the leanings of some reporters, despite the editorial policies of the different papers, all the press without exception managed to convey the impression that the whole thing was really rather lamentable. Certainly some lamentations were more subtle than others, certainly praise and blame was apportioned more carefully by some papers than others, certainly some papers tried harder than others to be neutral. But the odd phrase or word showed through the most patiently worded piece to render the most neutral less than neutral. The industrial status quo, in other words, always came out on top. This of course should not surprise anyone for the press itself is part of the status quo, but it does suggest that the idea of a "free press" has rather less substance than its proponents would have us believe. No doubt many newspapers readers would be rather shocked to find their paper saying what a good thing strikes were, but such a point of view, though quite as legitimate as the reverse, never makes an appearance. Strikes are never written about from the point of view of the striker. It may be that from time to time a pay claim is seen as justified and that the press is unanimous in this view, but a strike in its pursuit is nevertheless regarded as a matter for regret. A more balanced press would contain a few widely read papers rejoicing in strikes as subtly or as crudely as the existing press deplores them. As the press is presently constituted there is not much

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joy in it for the striker - the most he can hope for is the strained neutrality of papers such as the Financial Times' (1971: 75-6). If this is true in terms of strikes, how much more certain is it with drugs, where psychotropic deviation has far less aura of legitimacy? THE PRESSURE TOWARDS CONSENSUS

Why is it that the press carry the consensual image and write in consensualese? I would suggest that newspaper journalists are caught up in a tight network of influences which hold their stereotypes within a consensual pattern: (i) They have discovered that people read avidly news which titillates their sensibilities and confirms their prejudices. The ethos of 'give the public what it wants' involves a constant play on the normative worries of large segments of the population; it utilizes out-groups as living Rorschach blots on to which collective fears and doubts are projected. Moral indignation, if first galvanized by the newspapers and then resolved in a just fashion, makes a fine basis for newspaper readership. To this extent, then, the newspaper men are accurate when they suggest that they are just giving the public what it wants, only what this represents is reinforcing the consensual parts of popular consciousness. As Hans Enzensberger puts it: 'The electronic media do not owe their irresistible power to any sleight-of-hand but to the elemental power of deep social needs which come through even in the present depraved form of these media' (1970: 24). They hold their readers' attention by presenting material and sexual desiderata in an alluring, although forbidden, form. A common reaction to drug use is that of ambivalence for, as with so many social relationships between 'normal' and 'deviant', the normal person simultaneously both covets and castigates the deviant action. This after all is the basis of moral indignation, namely that the wicked are undeservedly realizing the covert desires of the virtuous. Richard Blum captured well this fascination-repulsion relationship to drug use when he wrote: 'Pharmaceutical materials do not dispense themselves and the illicit drugs are rarely given away, let alone forced on people. Consequently, the menace lies within the person, for there would be no drug threat without a drug attraction. Psychoanalytic observations on alcoholists suggest the presence of simultaneous repulsion and attraction in compulsive ingestion. The amount of public interest in

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stories about druggies suggests the same drug attraction and repulsion in ordinary citizens. "Fascination" is the better term since it implies witchcraft and enchantment. People are fascinated by drugs - because they are attracted to the states and conditions drugs are said to produce. That is another side to the fear of being disrupted; it is the desire for release, for escape, for magic, and for ecstatic joy. That is the derivation of the menace in drugs - their representation as keys to forbidden kingdoms inside ourselves. The Dreadful in the drug is the dreadful in ourselves' (1969: 335). They fascinate, titivate, and then reassure by finally condemning. (2) The structure of the ownership (i.e. the vested interests of the media industry and with it the interlocking directorships leading to industrial and property investment) make for the enforcement of consensual analysis. (3) The world-view of journalists and their socialization into the profession is in accord with consensual values. The notion of responsible reporting invariably approximates to supporting the ethos of productivity. Thus auto-censorship is well summed up in a verse, quoted approvingly by Hugh Cudlipp (1962: 359): 'One cannot hope to bribe or twist, Thank God, the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do Unbribed, there's no occasion to.' (4) The official language of democratic bodies is consensualese (e.g. politicians and police). In terms then of, first, information available from these bodies, PR, interviews, and direct contacts; secondly, the consensual position taken up by the press in its commercial role as 'the voice of the people'; and thirdly, the ability of the media to present itself as reified public opinion and influence democratic bodies, consensualese becomes an imperative if they are to speak with reason, influence, and conviction. THE MASS MEDIA IN A SEGREGATED SOCIETY

Quality of information The prime characteristic of large urban societies is the extreme social segregation that occurs within them. Class is segregated from class, young people from old, rich people from poor, criminals from non-

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criminals, coloured people from whites. This is precisely what Michael Harrington (1963) was referring to when he called the massive hidden poverty of America 'the invisible land'. It is in situations of pluralistic ignorance such as these that the images portrayed by the mass media become of prime importance. It is in precisely this type of society that one would expect the media to provide a large amount of one's social knowledge. The type of information which the mass media portrays is that which is 'newsworthy'. In a sentence, it selects events which are atypical, presents them in a stereotypical fashion and contrasts them against a backcloth of normality which is overtypical. The atypical is selected because the everyday or humdrum is not interesting to read or watch, it has litde news. As a result of this, if one has little face-to-face contact with young people, one's total information about them would be in terms of extremes: drugtaking, sex, and wanton violence on one hand and Voluntary Service Overseas and Outward Bound courses on the other. It is not, however, mere statistical unusualness which is required. For this would fall into the trap of the hydraulic model which most journalists propound. Namely, news is out there; it has an objective high rating in human interest, topicality, and unusualness which the invisible hand of the news market merely gathers in. This contradicts the essentially creative nature of news. Namely, that only certain events, however unusual, are deemed to be of public interest and that these events are cast into certain moulds by the journalist. For the touchstone of what is unusual is the consensual stereotype of social reality. Happenings which violate this stereotype are sometimes left out although more usually transmuted into some more harmless form. The atypical is thus portrayed in a stereotypical fashion with both causes and consequences derivative from consensual theory. The net effect is accentuation (to increase news value) and distortion (to fit consensual premises). Given the commercial grounding of moral indignation, events which particularly warrant interest and demand neutralizing are atypical pleasure unlinked to productivity. Drugs fit this bill remarkably well and are repeatedly portrayed as giving remarkably more pleasure, insight, or mystical experience than they actually do and resulting eventually in remarkably greater pain. A morality play demands giant size symbolic actors and this the media provide. The stereotypical distorted image of the deviant is then contrasted against the overtypical, hypothetical 'man-in-the-street' - that per-

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sistent illusion of consensual sociology and politics. Out of this, simple moral directives are produced demanding that something must be done about it: the solitary deviant faces the wrath of all society epitomized by its moral conscience, the popular newspaper. For instance, if we consider the headline in the People (21 September 1969) the atypical, the stereotypical, and the overtypical are fused into two magnificent sentences. 'HIPPIE THUGS - THE SORDID TRUTH: Drugtaking, couples making love while others look on, rule by a heavy mob armed with iron bars, foul language, filth, and stench, THAT is the scene inside the hippies' fortress in London's Piccadilly. These are not rumours but facts - sordid facts which will shock ordinary decent family loving people.' But the consensual model can be best understood by not merely looking at the isolated articles on deviants with their implicit man-inthe-street but by taking the media as a whole—looking at the total message its items, articles, advertisements, and stories give us.5 The consensual man, who contrasts with the deviant, is portrayed as the happy consumer, the hard worker, the stable, the reliable, the mannikin of the ethos of productivity. Quantity of Information I have discussed how the commercial and ideological imperatives of the media demand the portrayal of the atypical. I wish now to consider how the quantity of information available to the public is structured: The deviance implosion. We are immensely aware of deviants in the advanced industrial societies because of the constant bombardment of information via the mass media. Marshall McLuhan (1967) pictures the world as first expanding through the growth of the city and transport systems and then imploding as the media bring the world close together again. It is this implosive factor,' he writes, 'that alters the position of the Negro, the teenager, and some other groups. They can no longer be contained in the political sense of limited association. They are now involved in our lives as we in theirs, through electric media.' That is, in modern urban societies we cannot have little knowledge of or conveniently forget the deviant. He is brought to our hearth by the television set, his picture is on our breakfast table with the morning paper. Moreover, the mass media do not purvey opinions

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on all deviant groups: they create a universe of discourse for our segregated social world in which many groups are ignored - they simply do not exist in the consciousness of most men. Cathy Come Home is shown on television and suddenly, dramatically, the public are aware of a new social problem. The media then - in a sense - can create social problems; they can present them dramatically and overwhelmingly; and, what is most important, they can do it suddenly. It is possible for them rapidly to engineer a moral panic about a certain type of deviancy. Indeed, because of the phenomenon of overexposure—the glut of information over a short space on a topic so that it becomes uninteresting - there is institutionalized into the media the need to create moral panics and issues which will seize the imagination of the public. For instance, we may chart the course of the great panic over drug abuse which occurred during 1967 by examining the amount of newspaper space devoted to this topic. Thus the number of column inches in The Times for the four-week period beginning 29 May was 37. This exploded because of the Jagger trial to 709 in the period beginning 27 June, continued at a high level of 591 over the next period, and then began to abate. In the period from 21 August, the number of column inches was 107. The bittiness of experience. The demand for the atypical results in an event being only portrayed at its peaks (see Figure i).

Time FIGURE I

This creates a bittiness of knowledge about any event and makes very difficult any historical or biographical analysis of an occurrence solely in terms of information provided by the media.

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Alisdair Maclntyre (1962) suggests a classification of societies into three types according to their stock of concepts and beliefs. These are closed societies, open societies, and societies which were open but which are being turned back into closed societies. Primitive societies (especially isolated ones) tend to be closed: 'they have their concepts and beliefs; they move in a closed conceptual circle. Later societies are open, there are established modes of criticism - conflicting models of analysis of society'. In many societies, however - and he cites Stalinist Russia as a prime example - there is a concerted attempt to return to a closed circle with a monistic set of explanatory concepts. But: 'in order to control the apparatus which limits consciousness, you have to have agents. In order that they shall know what they are doing they must have a wider consciousness than they allow others to do.' The monolithic reality is, therefore, constantly in danger from these cynics who know too much. The structure is, because of this, intrinsically unstable. The way out of this paradox is, I believe, as Ronald Laing portrays in his essay 'The Obvious', to man the control apparatus and the communications industry not by cynics but by people who really believe the validity of what they are doing. 'To work smoothly it is necessary that those who use this stratagem do not themselves know that it is a stratagem. They should not be cynical or ruthless: they should be sincere and concerned' (1968: 18). Control is by innocent repression - it is a product of an editorial policy which genuinely sees the world in a consensual model, which admonishes other interpretations as being too abstract, or too political, or too irresponsible, or technically inadequate. If there is cynicism it is amongst the journalists who constantly face the indignity of having their product guillotined by editors to fit into the prerequisite space or programme time. But it is not - apart from the work on a few Sunday newspapers - a dishonest cynicism. I want to suggest that the media unwittingly have set themselves up as the guardians of consensus; that as the major providers of information about actions, events, groups, and ideas they forge this information in a closed consensual image. In short, in Peter Berger's terms, they mobilize a specifiable conceptual machinery to maintain the plausibility structures of the consensual universe. Further, I want to suggest that the myths generated and carried by the media although based on ignorance are not of a random nature. The myths are grounded in a particular view of society which throws up certain contradictions which they attempt to resolve. They contain certain simple structures irrespective of whether

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one considers the myth of the prostitute, the criminal, the striker, the pornographer, the delinquent, or the drugtaker. THE FIRST LEVEL CONTRADICTIONS

These revolve around the contradiction between the consensual role of the media and their desire for 'newsworthy' material. Thus: Portrayal of atypical worlds

v.

Portrayal of atypical pleasure

v.

Portrayal of atypical con- v. sumption (sexual and material) Advocacy of consensual lib- v. eralism (stress on individual freedom)

Avoidance of potential alternative realities Avoidance of encouragement of illicit pleasurable activities Maintenance of control and discipline Moral indignation (carefully delimited freedom)

Resolution Atypical realities. There is institutionalized into the mass media the need to select the unusual, that which is 'newsworthy1, and to change this regularly. Therefore, their audience is, at least, potentially aware of plural realities - of moral and material conflicts. The media are fascinated by precisely those realities which threaten their consensual imagery. This contradiction is resolved by maintaining that deviant activities are asocial - they lack norms rather than propound alternative values. In short, they insist that deviance is meaningless and that reality is monolithic. Atypical pleasure. Illicit pleasure, the tinder of moral indignation, is accentuated in reporting in order to maximize its newsvalue. The forbidden is thus potentially all the more tempting. To circumvent this, the myth contains the notion of in-built justice mechanisms. Atypical pleasure leads to atypical pain. Thus premarital sexual intercourse gives rise to VD, LSD to madness, and marihuana to pitiful degeneracy. Whatever the outcome the message is the same: deviance is unpleasurdble. Atypical consumption. The overtypical, honest, hardworking man-inthe-street has paraded before him a series of peerless consumer goods

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and sexual objects. He is faced with a spectacle of desiderata - all presented in the myth as being democratically accessible but always just that little bit out of reach. He sees better cars, better apartments, better food, and better women than he can realistically expect to gain. He is taught to covet in a manner which the anti-permissive lobby consider unprincipled and destructive. Thus Anthony Downs, consultant to Lyndon Johnson's Riot Commission, is quoted as saying: 'Through television we are encouraging, on the consumption side, things which are entirely inconsistent with the disciplines necessary for our production side. Look at what television advertising encourages: immediate gratification, do it now, buy it now, pay later, leisure time, hedonism' (Newsweek, 6 October 1969:

31-2).

This notion of the disinhibiting effect of the mass media arises from content analysis based only on those segments of the media (usually advertisements) which concentrate solely on the overtypical man. If we look at the media as a totality, the balance is redressed. For all the various deviant means of achieving the material desiderata which the normal man cannot in fact achieve otherwise are heavily censored: strikes, drugs, illicit sex, crime - the message is try but try only legitimate ways. Uninhibited pursuit of pleasure, unrelated to the ethos of productivity, is always punished. Justice must always be seen to be done. Thus deviance is inevitably punished. Consensual liberalism. The media must on the one hand maintain the notion of man as a free agent - free to choose anything so long as it does not harm others - and on the other maintain the moral indignation which hedonistic drug use engenders. This problem is solved by casting the deviant as sick and therefore in need of help (whatever he may think). Thus the deviant is seen as sick. All of these traits are brought together in Figure 2. Thus initially there is a bifurcation of the world and human nature into: (1) The normal rational average citizen who lives in well-normed communities, shares common values, and displays a well-deserved happiness - he is the vast majority. (2) The tiny minority of psychologically sick whose actions are determined by their affliction and who either live in or are a product of social disorganization. Moreover, their deviance has an inbuilt punish-

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The media

Sick deviant

FIGURE 2

ment. They are unhappy because of their deviance. Normality is seen to be rewarded and deviance punished. The underlying message is simple: the rational is the pleasurable is the handsomely rewarded is the freely chosen is the meaningful is the non-deviant; the irrational is the painful is the punished is the determined is the meaningless is the deviant. No-one chooses to be deviant.6 The emergence of significant moral and material conflicts on a collective scale is impossible. Thus the overtypical man stands on a neo-Keynsian plain, onedimensional and ahistorical, making free choices to work hard, marry, and consume regularly. He relaxes at the right time and place with beer and cigarettes which give him 'luxury' and 'deep pleasure' but do not threaten either the ethos of productivity or the mundane world of taken-for-granted experience. Every day attempts are made in the newspapers to lay the ghost of deviation. Every day the same message is repeated, the same morality play enacted, the same parameters drawn, the same doubts and fears dispelled. But the simple bifurcation model comes in certain instances to face further contradictions which must also be met: SECOND ORDER C O N T R A D I C T I O N S

Size Now and then large numbers of individuals engage in activities which are palpably deviant, e.g. strikes, rioting, and marihuana smoking. The simple consensual model would not seem to fit this. For the 'normal' young person, the 'normal' working class individual, the 'normal' woman etc. must of necessity embrace the consensus. To circumvent

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this it is sometimes merely sufficient to insist that what was thought of as deviance is, in fact, not 'true' deviance at all. This is the mismanagement model. This holds that there has been mismanagement of a social situation by politicians, businessmen, or the police and deviance is due to people's adjusting sensibly to an awkward situation. Deviance in this light is adaptive. For example: the notion of the functional strike against a 'fuddy duddy' business which won't keep up with the times by using modern management techniques. But it is impossible to argue that actions which patently violate the ethos of productivity are merely adaptations to mismanagement. For this reason the model is merely of marginal and interim importance and a significant elaboration of the basic myth is necessary in order to deal with large-scale deviation (see Figure 3).

Wicked or foreign The media Innocent or ignorant Sick

FIGURE 3

This postulates a body of innocents within society who are corrupted by normal people who are wicked, who seek to gain from their fellows' weakness. Thus we have the following two media descriptions: 'The docks, the car industry, mines, major airports, electricity, the building trade, and the students have all been steadily infiltrated in one guise or another until the militants can disrupt the national life at will' (Daily Express 9 December 1970).

'DRUGS: THE REAL CRIMINALS 'The drug pusher - the contemptible creature who peddles poison for profit - deserves no mercy from the law. The criminal who sets out

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to hook young people on drugs deserves far more implacable retribution than the victim of the evil' (Daily Mirror 12 March 1970). The simple bifurcation of the social universe becomes now a fourfold split: (a) sick (who can't help it); (b) innocent (who are corrupted); (c) wicked (who are corrupt); and a reduced number of (d) the normal. Thus we have the sick who must be treated and cured, the innocent who must be saved, the wicked who must be punished, and the normal who must be congratulated and rewarded. Deviance, then, does not ever occur out of volition (for after all it is essentially unpleasurable); it occurs out of either sickness or corruption. Indeed, for every example of widespread deviance it is possible to detect the intervention of some corruption. Thus: strikers student sit-ins prostitutes spiritualists illegal immigrants marihuana smokers junkies

agitators foreign agitators pimps con-men immigrant runners pushers junkie doctors

Collectively chosen deviant solutions to problems caused by common problems are thus impossible.7 The corrupter image of deviance is the reverse side of the individualist theory of history. This is what Galtung and Ruge (1970) in their study of news term personification: 'news has a tendency to present events as sentences where there is a subject, a named person or collectivity consisting of a few persons, and the event is then seen as a consequence of the actions of this person or these persons. The alternative would be to present events as the outcome of "social forces", as structural more than idiosyncratic outcomes of the society which produced them. In a structural presentation the names of the actors would disappear much as they do in sociological analysis and much for the same reason - the thesis is that the presentation actually found is more similar to what one finds in traditional personified historical analysis Personification is an outcome of cultural idealism according to which man is master of his own destiny and events can be seen as the outcome of an act of free will' (1970: 266).

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But the vital difference in the common sense theory of consensus is that not all action is seen as freely willed. Only 'normal' behaviour is free; deviant behaviour outside of the ranks of the corrupters is determined. It is both idealist and positivist - but idealism is restricted to the normal and positivism to the deviant. Not that these categories are watertight - as mentioned previously,6 in some sense deviants are both determined and responsible and the normal person is free but it is only certain individuals who are seen to transcend the narrow limitations, the tight matrix of normality. Moreover, there are the corrupters - the only truly voluntaristic deviants. But this contradiction in consensualese (itself necessary to explain the contradiction between deviancy and size) is resolved to some extent by suggesting that the corrupters either act for monetary (i.e. 'normal') aims and do not indulge in the deviancy themselves (e.g. 'Moscow gold', the 'pusher', the spiritualist's 'con-man'); or are foreign (and therefore given carte blanche as far as deviant interpretation of reality is concerned). Schematically the world view of the consensual media can be seen as a five-fold classification based on two axes: that of voluntary v. determined and that of morally laudable v. condemnable. VOLUNTARY

Wicked Punish

Saintly Follow

THE

NORMAL

BAD.

Sick Treat

Innocent Instruct

DETERMINED FIGURE 4

where o=the overtypical

. GOOD

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All history is seen as the voluntaristic activity of individuals - the only explanations evoked are in terms of individual biography together with the loosest of structural forces (such as the 'rising tide of permissiveness'). Contradictory evidence If a growing body of opinion palpably maintains that certain illicit activities are pleasurable, then the inbuilt-punishment model faces a crisis of confidence. This is solved by what I shall term the nemesis effect. It is stated that those individuals who violate the natural law of happiness and productivity ineluctably suffer in the long run. Thus in the long run deviancy must be seen to be unpleasurable. In this mould the stereotype of marihuana has changed: 'The stereotypical effects of marihuana reflect the exaggerated ambivalence of the mass media towards drugs. Thus, they hold promise of uninhibited pleasure, yet plummet the taker into unmitigated misery. So we have a distorted spectrum ranging from extreme sexuality, through aggressive criminality, to wildly psychotic episodes. The informed journalist, more recently, has found this model difficult to affix to marihuana usage. He has therefore switched gear and indicated how the innocuous pleasures of smoking are paid for by the sacrificial few who mysteriously escalate to the nightmares of heroin addiction' (Young i^jib: 187). Similarly, the American journalist William Braden (1970) notes how the press reporting of LSD went through three stages: (1) Favourable reporting: in the early sixties LSD was seen as a therapeutic aid to the mentally ill and the addicted (i.e. as a vehicle back to a normality it was in accord with dominant values). (2) Initial negative reporting: LSD was simultaneously identified with an ineffable mystical experience and as a cause of suicide, violence, and madness (i.e. this was concomitant with the movement of LSD out of the hands of the therapists into the psychedelic subculture centring around Timothy Leary - from sub- to contra-cultural use). (3) Secondary negative reporting: The discovery that LSD might result in abnormal chromosome breakage obviated both the sticky problems of mysticism that the psychedelics were giving rise to, plus finally providing tangible evidence that LSD was really dangerous

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after all. As Chicago's American put it: 'LSD: THE "FLY NOW, DIE LATER" DRUG' (the best example of the nemesis effect that I've come across). Thus the press found itself armed with a hard 'incontrovertible' fact to use against the growing contraculture of pro-LSD advocates. The expressive irony The constraints on expressivity imposed by the ethos of productivity are such as to inhibit artistic production and design. Because of this, commercial interests soon realize that groups such as the hippies, who have developed strong subterranean traditions, are not only a new market for leisure goods, but excellent innovators in the fields of music, design, clothes, and fashion. Thus what is initially deprecated is also, in the long run, necessary in order to provide fuel for the leisure industries and copy for the art, music, and fashion sections of the media. Here, media and commerce combine to turn the execrable into the saleable - and thus resolve the contradiction. For the leisure industry, like the mass media, is constantly in search of the new and just as the media perform a symbolic defusion on alternative realities, commerce delivers a more subtle blow - it buys the style of revolt lock, stock, and barrel. 'All the revolutionaries are on CBS', Che posters sell well (till the market is saturated), and psychedelic design makes gorgeous carrier bags. Thus, that which is initially condemned is defused by media, assimilated by commercial interests, and then propagated by the media as a new fashion - a new mode of consumption and part of the good life. EFFECTS

Effects on the consensus (i) The ahistorical bittiness of social knowledge which the media foster leads to a mystification of reality so that the individual who is not provided with any other information is completely in the dark when confronted with many situations. Thus the man whose sorrow about his soldier son being killed in Northern Ireland was used to make the News of the World (7 February 71) headline I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT MY SON DIED FOR, didn't know because all his knowledge was derived from papers like the News of the World.

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(2) More importantly, the media fundamentally transform the nature of the consensus. Thomas Scheff, in a paper written in 1967, propounds a definition of consensus which relies not so much on the empirical extent of agreement as on the perceived measure of agreement. It is, moreover, dependent on co-orientation not necessarily individual agreement. What is essential to know is the following: (a) to what extent each individual actually agrees with attitude X; (b) to what extent each individual in society believes that all men in society agree with X; (c) to what extent each individual in society realizes that other men realize that he believes in X. That is what Laing, Phillipson, and Lee (1966) call the perceptions and metaperceptions of a situation. Such a consensus acquires a focal power of its own and, as Scheff points out: This is just the sense that Durkheim intended for his statement about the exteriority and constraint of social facts. The collective representations are felt as powerful exterior constraints because each individual agrees, recognizes that his neighbours agree, that they each recognize that he agrees, that he recognizes they recognize, and so on indefinitely. Although he agrees (or disagrees) with the sentiment, it is also something beyond his power to change, or even completely explore. The potentially endless mirror reflections of each of the others' recognitions is felt as something utterly final. From this formulation it follows that each actor feels the presence of the collective representation with a sense of exteriority and constraint, even though he, as an individual, is himself wholeheartedly dedicated or opposed to the representation' (1967: 36). But how does one arrive at these generalized estimations of the other's view? Scheff believes that: 'It is not necessary for the actor to actually explore the degrees of co-orientation higher than the second or the third to be aware of the massiveness of a collective representation. Just as in the endless chain of reflections in two opposing mirrors, the details that are reflected coalesce, after a few reflections, into a formless blur, so the actor can feel the weight of the collective representation, without necessarily making a detailed, level-by-level examination of its form and extent' (1967: 37). But however true this may be of face-to-face interaction, it be-

254 fak Young comes problematic in large-scale societies. It is at this point that the mass media enter the arena, for they provide: (a) opinions and models which create and reinforce consensus; (b) information to the individual as to the beliefs of all men in society; (c) knowledge for the individual that, as all men are served by the media, all will realize that he holds these consensual beliefs. Diagrammatically, they provide: (a) individual (b) individual (c) individual where

> > > X > they

X (they > X) (they > (individual ^X)) = the attitude in question = perception of = the posited consensus (das Man

FIGURE 5 I have argued that, although the direct influence of the media on opinion has been underrated, the major sphere of media power is in creating a consensus that there is a consensus and the experience of a consensual monolith to both 'deviant' and 'normal' alike. Effects of mass media on deviants Deviants' perception of consensus. Because of social segregation the deviant's knowledge of the perception that people have of him, his perception of public life, his insight into the collective conscience, derive from the mass media. And, because of the nature of the information presented to him, consensus and ban had come to be experienced as all the more reified and monolithic. The media provide for the deviant a major source of knowledge as to the posited consensual image of him. Further, in those cases where the deviant is not part of a strongly cohesive, ideologically buttressed contraculture, the mass media can: (a) provide guidelines for how one is supposed to act; (b) provide information as to the beliefs and behaviour of one's fellow deviants. The solitary drug-user, for example, is particularly prone to such

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misinformation. As William Braden (1970), reporter with the Chicago Sun-Times, suggests: 'Just suppose. Here all of a sudden is this Greek chorus of doctors and psychiatrists warning young people to avoid LSD: it might drive them crazy. And the warnings are dutifully passed on by the press. This doesn't stop the young people from taking LSD, of course; but it could possibly create a subliminal anxiety that results in either a bad trip or in a panic reaction at some later date. Since LSD subjects are so highly suggestible, as is well known, it could be that they oblige the doctors and the press by doing exactly what they were told they would do. They flip out' (1970: 410). A recent anti-drug poster, showing a padded cell complete with a strait-jacket and the caption 'LSD is a terrifyingly dangerous hallucinogenic drug' and 'LSD can take you places you never dreamt of, is pernicious. As is the headline: 'LSD induces the urge to kill, report says.' The myths about drugs are not their reality but, especially where the user is not part of a strongly based subculture, they can profoundly shape and alter the drug experience. On the aetiology of deviance. Social segregation by itself might well lower the aspirations of the population, for if we do not live next to the rich, we do not directly see how they live. But the mass media provide detailed information about the material and erotic activities of others. The media are very near to the mainspring of deviancy in so far as they are both a powerful source of aspirations and a source of moral guidance as to the legitimate and illegitimate. They induce deviance through encouraging high economic and sexual aspirations and simultaneously provide models of condemnation. The cultural sellout. Deviant cultures which carry the subterranean tradition are focused on by the media, a select few of their number incorporated and bought out by the leisure industries, and a distortion of their life style fashionably propagated in the mass media. Their culture becomes commercialized, their coinage corroded whilst still in their hands. As Freddie Cooke put it in International Times: 'This rapid-turnover status-ridden fashion-infested shit heap is the perfect playground for straight society. Through the culture market the Power (overground) and the Glory (underground) are

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reunited in the person of the hip financier, the boutique-owning Deb, "Cosmic Comics Incorporated", and the frilly-shirted Vidalscissored teenage-toy tycoon. Having no style of their own, they culture-slummed and bought yours. Freak Revolution becomes straight rave. You kicked them in the balls: they calmly took a Polaroid shot of it, framed it and hung you in the middle of the lounge wall along with the Picasso print, the Oxfam subscription card, and all their other claims to a tolerant liberal conscience. No, I'm not sufficiently purist or naive to claim that everything that's a commercial success is automatically a hype or a sell-out. But it generally is - or at least paves the way for one. Pats on the head and cheques in the bank can be rather more lethal than machine-guns' (1970: 9). Deviance amplification. Lastly, the mass media by fanning up moral panics contribute to the misperception of deviants, the intensity of social reaction, and the extent to which deviance amplification occurs.8 I have suggested that the mass media, by raising material and erotic aspirations, are a likely source of deviance. I have also mentioned that moral indignation is a target for mass media agitation and that it would be expected that precisely those groups which suffer deprivation, yet do not (because of moral inability or lack of opportunity) resort to illegitimate solutions, who would be amongst the most morally indignant. The motivation both for deviance and for righteously indignant normality may be fostered by the mass media. In the latter case the heightening of aspirations coupled with the condemnation of the illegitimate means necessary to achieve them is sufficient fuel for the scapegoating process which singles out the mass media deviant as the cause of the personal frustration and the country's ailments. I use the term cscapegoating' because I am convinced of the irrationality of the response. For it is difficult to argue that the frustrations experienced by the population are a product of marihuana smoking, strikes, burglary, student rebellion, immigrants, or pornography but somehow these have become our consensual deviants. It is, in this fashion, that a sense of solidarity is engendered throughout the social structure. As Erikson (1966), echoing Durkheim, put it: The deviant act creates a sense of mutuality among the people of a community by supplying a focus for group feeling. Like a war, a flood, or some other emergency, deviancy makes people more

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alert to the interests they share in common and draws attention to those values which constitute the "collective conscience" of the community. Unless the rhythm of group life is punctuated by occasional moments of deviant behaviour, presumably, social organization would be impossible' (1966: 4). It is my contention that the mass media portrayal performs a central role in this process of signifying deviance, that the message carried is a sophisticated mystification, and that the role of the criminologist must be to decode the myths, to expose the innocent guile of the controllers of the media.

Notes 1 This essay owes much to discussion with Stanley Cohen and Stuart Hall and to work evolved by the Enfield Mass Media Project. 2 For a discussion of the role of contradictory opinion and class consciousness see Blackburn (1969: 200-1). 3 I discuss the subterranean tradition of the 'hippie' in 'The Hippie Solution' (Young 1973). 4 The relationship between the ethos of productivity, subterranean values and drug use is discussed in detail in Young (i97ib). 5 Methodologically I have taken a position which argues for a holistic study of the mass media in that (a) the media myths must be seen as a product of and producing the consensual perspective widespread throughout society; (b) attitudes must be studied in the context of these and alternative perspectives - not as isolated atoms; (c) the mass media must be analysed as a whole: not just reports of deviancy but also advertisements and reports of 'normality', not just the press but also television and radio. The total message is important, not any small portion of it. 6 It is interesting how this commonsense conception of deviance bridges both idealist and positivist positions on the role of punishment. For the transgressor is both sick and wicked, he is to be treated because he is already being punished. The message is a trapeze job: do not choose this form of deviancy because it is unpleasurable (i.e. punished); besides only a sick man would do so. 7 It might seem that I am suggesting that the contradictions within the myth are satisfactorily resolved. Rather I would view it as a series of almost Ptolemaic epicycles, each new attempt to contain the news creating fresh difficulties. Moreover, it is the contradictions between the material possibilities of the mass media and the controlled uses to

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which they are put, between the blinkered position that the journalist finds himself in and the potential role that he could have, which threatens the stability of this system. 8 See the account of such a process in Young (19713).

References BERGER, P. 1970. A Rumour of Angels. London: Allen Lane. BLACKBURN, R. 1969. A Brief Guide to Bourgeois Ideology. In A. Cockburn & R. Blackburn (eds.) Student Power. Harmondsworth: Penguin. BLUM, R. 1969. Society and Drugs. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. BRADEN, w. 1970. LSD and the Press. In B. Aaronson & H. Osmond (eds.) Psychedelic*. New York: Anchor. BROWN, j. A. c. 1963. Techniques of Persuasion. Harmondsworth: Penguin. COHEN, A. K. 1955. Delinquent Boys: the Culture of the Gang. New York: Free Press. 1965. The Sociology of the Deviant Act. American Sociological Review 30: 5-14. COOKE, F. 1970. The Reality Makers. International Times 76. CUDLIPP, H. 1962. At Your Peril. London: Daily Mirror Newspapers. ENZENBERGER, H. I97O. The Consciousness Industry. New Left Review 64: 13-36. ERIKSON, K. T. 1966. Wayward Puritans. New York: Wiley. GALTUNG, j. & RUGE, M. 1970. The Structure of Foreign News. In J. Tunstall (ed.) Media Sociology. London: Constable. HALLORAN, J. 1970. The Effects of Television. London: Panther. HARRINGTON, H. 1963. The Other America. Harmondsworth: Penguin. LAING, R., PHILLIPSON, H. & LEE, A. 1966. Interpersonal Perception. London: Tavistock Publications. LAING, R. D. 1968. The Obvious. In D. Cooper (ed.) The Dialectics of Liberation. Harmondsworth: Penguin. LANE, T. & ROBERTS, K. 1971. Strike at Pilkingtons. London: Fontana. LAZARSFELD, P. F., BERELSON, B. R. & GAUDET, H. 1944. The People's

Choice. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce. MACINTYRE, A. c. 1962. A Mistake about Causality in Social Science. In P. Laslett & W. G. Runciman (eds.) Philosophy, Politics, and Society: Second Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MCLUHAN, M. 1964. Understanding Media. London: Routledge& Kegan Paul. MATZA, D. & SYKES, G. 1961. Juvenile Delinquency and Subterranean Values. American Sociological Review 26: 712. MILLS, c. w. 1951. White Collar. New York: Oxford University Press.

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MILLS, C. W. 1963. Mass Media and Public Opinion. In Power, Politics and People. New York: Oxford University Press. RODMAN, H. 1963. The Lower Class Value Stretch. Social Forces 42: 205-15. SCHEFF, T. 1967. Towards a Sociological Model of Consensus. American Sociological Review 32: 32-46. VALENTINE, c. 1968. Culture and Poverty. Chicago: Chicago University Press. WHYTE, w. H. 1960. The Organization Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin. WILLIAMS, F. 1959. Dangerous Estate. London: Arrow. WIRTH, L. 1948. Consensus and Mass Communications. American Sociological Review 13. YOUNG, j. 19713. The Police as Amplifiers of Deviancy. In S. Cohen (ed.) Images of Deviance. Harmondsworth: Penguin. I97ib. The Drugtakers. London: Paladin. 1973. The Hippie Solution. In I. Taylor & C. Taylor (eds.) Politics and Deviancy. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

STUART HALL

Deviance, politics, and the media This paper is largely speculative.1 It refers to a piece of work on the way certain forms of political deviance and political activism are handled by the mass media and labelled in the political domain. The research is still in its early stages. It is not, therefore, possible to present any substantive findings or a resume of the empirical evidence. But we are now at the stage of sketching out our working hypotheses, and as these suggest certain links between the study of deviance, political behaviour, and mass media research, it seems opportune to present, in a compressed and provisional form, the process of ad hoc theorizing for comment and discussion.

Political deviance does not figure prominently in the study of deviant behaviour. Becker (1967) suggests that this is because, in many forms of social deviance, 'The conflicting segments or ranks are not organized for conflict; no one attempts to alter the shape of the hierarchy.' Yet it is clear that the process by which certain deviant acts come to be defined as 'social problems', the labelling process itself, and the enforcement of social controls all contain an intrinsically political component. Horowitz and Liebowitz (1968) argue that 'Deviance has been studied by employing a consensus welfare model rather than a conflict model.' This model has tended to suppress the political element in deviant transactions with 'straight' society. Lemert (1967) appears to be one of the earliest deviancy theorists in the interactionist school to have openly acknowledged the close interpenetration of labelling theory with power and ideology: 'Social action and control usually emanate from elite power groups who have their own systems of values, which differ from those of the general population, from those of other groups, and even from those of individual members of the elites. The organizational values

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of such elites and their rules of procedure also have a strong bearing on controlling events. The position of groups and individuals at the point of their interaction in a social structure is of great significance in predicting the resultant action taken by a society to control or decontrol ' Horowitz and Liebowitz (1968) argue that, conventionally, deviance theory has accepted a 'highly formalistic vision of polities' which confines politics 'to the formal juridical aspects of social life, such as the electoral process and to the maintenance of a party apparatus through procedural norms In this view, only behavior within the electoral process is defined as political in character.' From such a vantage point, certainly, the study of deviance and of politics have little or nothing to say to one another. Yet events in the real world are increasingly revealing the operational and ideological content of this formal proposition about politics. From the normative point of view, all political action which is not expressed via the electoral process, which does not contribute to the maintenance of party apparatuses, and is not governed by procedural norms is, by definition, deviant with respect to politics. But, as in all labelling theory, the question is, who defines which action belongs where? Operationally, the maintenance of boundaries between 'polities' and 'nonpolities' and the casting of certain 'political' acts into the 'non-political' domain, are themselves political acts, and reflect the structure of power and interest. These acts of labelling in the political domain, far from being self-evident, or a law of the natural world, constitute a form of continuing political 'work' on the part of the elites of power: they are, indeed, often the opening salvo in the whole process of political control. The crisp distinction between socially and politically deviant behaviour is increasingly difficult to sustain. There are at least five reasons for this. First, many socially deviant groups are being politicized. Secondly, political activist groups are frequently also 'deviant' in life-style and values. Thirdly, the 'polities' of deviant groups has, in contrast with the more 'objective' content of traditional class politics, a distinctive cultural or existential content: their dissociation from the status quo is expressed as much in cultural attitudes, ideology, and life-style, as in programme or economic disadvantage. Fourthly, the collective organization and activities of such political minorities have had the effect of transferring some questions from the

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'social problem' to the 'political issue' category. In this way the hidden political element inside deviant behaviour is rendered transparent, and the map of social deviance is altered. Fifthly, under pressure from events, the consensual nature of sociological theory - to which the earlier forms of deviant theory of, say, the Mertonian variety, belonged - has been polarized and fragmented.2 Models of social action predicated on the assumption of an integrative and self-regulative functional social order are progressively challenged by models in which, precisely, the internal cohesiveness of the 'social system' and its ability to 'tension-manage' dissidents and deviants are rendered problematic. The elaboration of such counter-theories clearly apply in equal measure to the analysis of socially deviant and politically conflictful behaviour. Thus, at different levels, both of action and theory, new, more radical perspectives on the phenomenon of deviance have opened up, in which hard-and-fast distinctions between deviance and politics are weakened. Horowitz and Liebowitz (1968) therefore seem correct when they declare the distinction between 'political marginality' and 'social deviance' to be, increasingly 'an obsolete distinction'. This presents us with new problems of definition which, in turn, open the lines of confluence once again between deviance and politics. Lemert (1967) gives a classic formulation of the distinction between 'deviant groups' and 'political minorities'. 'Groups of individuals whose values are being sacrificed by intoxication and drunkenness may have no structure to formulate their vaguely felt dissatisfactions. On the other hand, minorities, because their programmes are defined and their power is organized and well timed, more readily have their values cast into an emergent pattern of social action.' This distinction, too, is no longer so clear-cut. Certainly, we need some way of distinguishing between behaviour labelled deviant, where the participants formulate no programme of action, and require only to be left alone by the authorities of control, or more organized form of political activism. Many so-called 'crimes without victims' or 'crimes' where the only victims are the participants themselves, fall within the first category. Such forms of action differ from the actions of political minorities whose 'values' are more readily cast 'into an emergent pattern of social action'. Yet, deviant groups who regularly, because of their deviation, fall foul of the law, and are harassed by law-enforcing agencies and the courts, may, in response, develop pro-

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grammes, organizations, and actions directed at ending their stigmatization or redefining the legal injunctions against them. This represents, at the very least, the inception of a process of politicization of deviant subcultures along at least two dimensions: by opposing constituted authority in the form of the courts, political legislation and social control agencies, such groups take up an organized existence against the locus of authority as such. They undertake projects 'to alter the shape of the hierarchy'. This, in turn, may lead to the forging of formal or informal coalitions with other groups who are also ranged against the hierarchy on other grounds. Secondly, in the course of organizing themselves, deviant groups come, retrospectively, to redefine the social stigmas against them in political terms. Hence, in recent years, many deviant groups - drug addicts, homosexuals, welfare claimants, etc. - have begun, on their own as well as in company with other, more overtly political groupings, to 'pioneer the development of organization responses to harassment'. In return (especially within the spectrum of 'new left' politics) such deviant subcultures provide 'a broad base for political organizing'. The extent to which a 'soft drug' culture is common both to deviant and political minority groupings in the United States is one indication of the coalescence of deviant and political elements within what might be broadly labelled a 'generational underground' (Hall 1969). This process of mutual interpenetration has been facilitated by the fact that, in any case, the political groupings with which deviant subcultures are most likely to ally themselves rarely throw up clear and permanent organizational forms, and are only loosely, if at all, attached to a stated programme of political reforms.3 In many cases, the 'members' of deviant groups and of politically activist minorities are one and the same. This process of coalescence is attested to in the widespread convergence of criminal and ideological labels applied, without much distinction, by labelling agencies to dissenting minorities of both a 'deviant' and 'political' type. Horowitz and Liebowitz (1968) suggest that 'the right to dissent' is traditionally accorded to many organized political minorities but traditionally denied to most deviant groups. But, as political minorities increasingly cross the line from legal demonstrations to illegal forms of protest, and as deviants cross the line from privatized deviancy to public protest, so the 'traditional right to dissent', for both groups, becomes problematic and is contested. Horowitz and Liebowitz (1968) also argue that the conventional

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wisdom about deviance in its liberal form is based on the 'majoritarian formulation of polities'. This is a framework limited to the political strategies available to majorities or to powerful minorities (my italics) having access to £lite groups. The strategies available to disenfranchized minorities are largely ignored and thus the politics of deviance also go unexamined.' This suggests an important distinction which we cannot neglect. In classic democratic theory, of course, a very simple model was preserved in which political decisions were arrived at through the conflict and interaction of organized majorities representing the broad sections of the population, within the framework of a written or unwritten constitution, the electoral process, parliamentary representation, and the state. It is now clearly recognized, even by its defenders, that such a simple majoritarian model of democratic politics has little or no relevance as a portrait of the modern industrial state. 'With the emergence of mass politics ... all hope of this immediacy and comprehensibility was irrevocably lost' (Wolfe 1965). Between the organized majorities of an electorate and the process of political decision-taking there has grown up the great corporate industrial state-within-the-state, intermediary bureaucratic organizations associated with national and local administration and government, the web of voluntary organizations and the intricate network of private associations, pressure and interest groups, all of which, systematically, mediate and transform a simple, majoritarian model of the political process. While democratic theory in its simple sense is vestigially retained, as a sort of ideological and legitimating myth, political theory has itself had to come to terms with the much more complex and ramified nature of the modern state, and especially with the complex of intermediary associations which stand in between organized electoral majorities and the political process. As Partridge (1971) observes: 'Only the naive now entertain the model of a political system in which policy initiatives proceed from the body of the citizens and the function of government is to give effect to the popular will. For a great number of empirical reasons we recognize that the politics of complex societies cannot work like that; that political parties and other organizations, leaders and elites, bureaucracies and governments necessarily assume such functions as selecting and defin-

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ing issues or problems, assembling and distributing information, proposing policies and advocating them, engaging in public persuasion, demonstrating the satisfactoriness of general lines of policy by initiating practical measures that are seen to work These are among the ways in which governments (and other influential political organizations and groups) may forge, consolidate, and expand the approval or support which enables them to continue to enjoy and deploy authority—or, as we commonly say, manufacture consent.' This modification in the simple variant of 'majoritarian polities' is usually defined as a shift towards a theory of democratic elitism, or democratic pluralism. But, within the theory of democratic pluralism, there is all the distinction in the world between those large corporate institutions and the web of powerful minority interest or pressure groups which operate within and upon the organs of the state, on the one hand, and the small, emergent, marginal, disenfranchized minority groupings not institutionalized within the processes of political bargaining and compromise. While in theory democratic pluralism allows for the entry of new groups and associations into the political arena, concretely and in practice it operates in such a way as systematically to ignore and disenfranchize certain emergent groups and interests which are outside the consensus, while maintaining intact the existing structure of political interests. Writing about the application of democratic pluralism in the context of American political life, Wolfe (1965) has observed: 'There is a very sharp distinction in the public domain between legitimate interests and those which are absolutely beyond the pale. If a group or interest is within the framework of acceptability, then it can be sure of winning some measure of what it seeks, for the process of national politics is distributive and compromising. On the other hand, if an interest falls outside the circle of the acceptable, it receives no attention whatsoever and its proponents are treated as crackpots, extremists, or foreign agents. With bewildering speed, an interest can move from "outside" to "inside" and its partisans, who have been scorned by the solid and established in the community, become presidential advisers and newspaper columnists Thus the "vector-sum" version of pluralist theory functions ideologically by tending to deny new groups or interests

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access to the political plateau. It does this by ignoring their existence in practice, not by denying their claim in theory.' For our purpose, then, the important distinction is not that between a 'majoritarian' and a 'minority' formulation of politics, but that between the powerful, legitimate minorities and the weak, emergent, marginal minorities. Powerful political minority groups, whether hereditary, voluntary, pressure-group, or interest based, share with Elites and with organized majorities the right to exercise influence, to organize to further their views, and to dissent: they are understood to act in a 'political' manner. Weak, marginal, non-institutionalized, and illegitimate political minorities share with social deviants the definition of their actions in terms of a 'social problem' paradigm: they are 'explained' within a welfare-state, therapeutic or psychological framework: their actions are, by definition, 'non-political'. If one looks at the political spectrum as a whole, within this perspective, it is clear that while some emergent minority interests gain ready access to the political process, are accorded a legitimate place within the process of bargaining about decisions or scarce resources, and flower as successfully formed interests, others - which share many social characteristics with deviant groups - are themselves defined as 'deviant' with respect to the political process itself: different models of explanation are applied to the latter, and they are subject to quite different processes of social stigmatization and control. We may now formulate one of the central problems of the emergence of deviant political minorities in the following way: (1) When new political movements come into existence, it is a matter of critical importance whether they are legitimized publicly within the 'political' category, or de-legitimized by being assigned to the 'deviant' category. Deviant groups and individuals may be sick, disadvantaged, corrupted by others, led astray, or subject to social disorganization: but they are not exploited. Consequently, they can be made well again (therapeutic), isolated from contagion (segregated) or supported (welfare state) - but they cannot organize or dissent. (2) Under certain circumstances, legitimate political minorities are subjected to severe 'status degradation' ceremonies, and are lumped with the more marginal groups. They are then subject to quite different forms of public opprobrium, stigmatization, and exclusion. They have been symbolically de-legitimated. In general terms, then, the line between social deviance and

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minority political militancy is disappearing. The alliance between some types of social deviance and political marginality has been strengthened: politics has become more 'deviant' with respect to social norms, and deviancy is progressively politicized. .The latent political content of the deviant process and the deviant element in radical politics now emerge together as a single phenomenon. 'As this happens, political dissent by deviant means will become subject to the types of repression that have been a traditional response to social deviance' (Horowitz and Liebowitz 1968). II

For the purpose of this paper, political deviance is very loosely defined.4 The projects of such groups must contain some manifest political aim or goal, as well as perhaps a latent content of socially deviant attitudes and life-style. Their activities tend to fall outside the consensual norms which regulate political conflict, and they are willing to employ means commonly defined as 'illegitimate' to further or secure their ends. In life-style, attitude and relationships they are socially unorthodox, permissive, even subversive. They are marginal to the more powerful groups - organized majorities, legitimate minorities, interest-groups, elites - institutionalized in the political domain. They challenge the representative/electoral/parliamentary framework which stabilizes the British political structure, with its complicated mechanisms for negotiating conflict. They tend to by-pass the 'reformism' of the organized mass parties of the 'left' and the 'economism' of the trade unions. The forms of political deviance I have in mind here all have a radical political perspective and are recent arrivals on the stage of political life in advanced industrial societies. Centrally, we are concerned here with movements involving students and young people, ethnic and religious minorities. These groupings and formations are complexly structured by class, but are not explicitly classbased. They are largely extra-parliamentary in form. The types of deviant political activities involved include student militancy and protest (confrontations with university authorities, sit-ins, occupations, etc.); militant extra-parliamentary demonstrations, which might involve conflict with the police; urban rioting and rebellion (e.g. Watts) and urban insurgency (e.g. Ulster); sporadic incidents of bombing incendiarism, attacks on property for political reasons (Weathermen or 'Angry Brigade' activities); squatters' movements, rent strikes, mili-

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tant tenants' action; ethnically-oriented 'Black Power' or Panther-style activities. It will at once be clear that all these groups' activities fall roughly within the category of the 'new polities' or extra-parliamentary oppositional groups which have so decisively emerged on the political stage of the advanced capitalist societies in the West in the past decide. I want also to consider, as a special transitional category, the case of 'unofficial strikes' - industrial strikes originating through shop floor organization rather than via the initiative of union bureaucracies, which, even when subsequently sanctioned by official sponsorship, are systematically defined as 'deviant' to the political system as such, and contrary to 'the national interest'. One might also include the resistance - sometimes with official union sponsorship - to the recent attempts by both political parties to legislate for control over the unions by some form of Industrial Relations Bill. Our concern is specifically with the way these emergent forms of political militancy are defined and labelled. But it is necessary, first, to understand their emergence and position in relation to the sociopolitical structure as a whole. This constitutes at least a paper on its own, and a full account cannot be attempted here. But, briefly, we may say that, in the years immediately following the Second World War, the armed rivalry between East and West served to stabilize the internal political systems of the West. The expansion of welfare capitalist structures, the dominance of mass parties of the centre-left and centre-right, and the evolution of social-democratic parties towards a general accommodation with capitalism were integral aspects of this process. This enforced stabilization of advanced capitalist societies has, in recent years, been broken: first, by the liberation movements and armed struggles of the 'third world', second by the emergence of militant minority movements within the Western capitalist world itself. In the majority of cases, these latter emergent political groupings occupy positions marginal to the institutional power groups and the institutionalized forms of class conflict upon which the welfare-capitalist consensus was based. In many cases, these activist minorities also remain marginal to the traditional class agencies of change. Even where they openly and consciously espouse a revolutionary class perspective, they remain largely segregated from the organized industrial working class. Such groupings may work for, and temporarily succeed in forging, alliances and coalitions with class formations: events in France in May 1968 represent the clearest example of such a convergence. In other circumstances, such groupings are

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clearly in one sense or another Vanguard elements' in relation to class conflict, articulating and promoting protest from the outside amongst such wider sectors as well as on their behalf. Thus 'black power' militants clearly speak and organize on behalf of the disenfranchized black majorities of the Deep South and the disadvantaged black poor of the urban ghettos: the early Civil Rights movement in Northern Ireland ardculated the structural discontents of the poor, disenfranchized Catholic minorities of Ulster. There is, clearly, a spectrum here in terms of the relation between emergent political minorities of this new type and their real or potential 'constituents'. But, by and large, the pace, content, style, direction, and tempo of development among such minority activist groups move at a different rate from the growth of organized protest amongst the disadvantaged classes and majorities. The relation here between the extra-parliamentary opposition and the articulation of class conflict in the more traditional sense exhibits all the characteristics of a 'combined and uneven development'.5 Their relative marginality, not only to the political heartland of their own societies, but also to the groups and classes on whose behalf they are active, remains one of their defining characteristics. As Raymond Williams (1971) has remarked, 'it seems to be true that in late capitalist societies some of the most powerful campaigns begin from specific unabsorbed (and therefore necessarily marginal) experiences and situations. Black Power in the United States, civil rights in Ulster, the language movement in Wales, are experiences comparable in this respect to the student movement and to women's liberation. In their early stages these campaigns tend to stress as absolutes those local experiences which are of course authentic and yet most important as indices of the crisis of the wider society.' Despite the many differences within and between such groups, they share, by and large, certain features in common. In social composition, they tend to recruit most successfully outside the sphere of productive relations proper: either - as in black movements, ghetto rebellions, tenants' and claimants' organizations, etc. - from the 'Lumpen' under-classes, or from other groups - lower professionals, students, social deviants and drop-outs, intellectuals and bohemians - marginal to the structure of productive class relations. Typically, they define their alienation from the prevailing structure in social, cultural, and experiential, as well as economic, terms: as Juliet Mitchell (1971)

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remarks, their position enables them to embrace a 'totalist' attack on capitalism' - and thus to transcend the economism which has so effectively neutralized working class organizations cast in the trade-union or social-democratic moulds. In many cases, students have provided the core-recruits to such groupings - recruits precisely from the sphere of expanded higher and technical education, itself a consequence of the growing sophistication and differentiation of the modes of reproduction and the advanced division of labour in technically sophisticated, mature, capitalist societies. Typically, such groups do not seek to advance their cause via the traditional access to elite influence; they do not seek to enhance their position within the system of political bargaining. Instead, they embrace militant, activist, 'extremist' political tactics, and explicitly challenge the system itself and its 'rules of the game'. Their techniques of protest and dissent contravene the norms of political legitimacy which institutionalize political conflict. They take up deviant issues, adopt deviant life-styles and attitudes, in part because of the elective affinity between their political aims and socially-subversive values, in part as a way of dramatizing and symbolizing their alienation from the dominant orientations of the hegemonic system. Far from seeking to win their way by the traditional means of influence and negotiation, from the margins to the mainstream of power, they accent their disaffiliation from majority consensual values. They are especially sensitive to the hidden mechanisms by which the dominant system wins and manipulates consent to its own hegemony - socialization through the family and secondary institutions, the manipulative content and constraints of the education process, the creation of an environment of consensus in the mass media. That is, their position makes them acutely sensitive to the spheres of ideological domination and coercion.6 This sensitivity occurs at precisely the stage, historically, when ideological domination plays a special role in the pacification of class conflict. 'In a consumer society the role of ideology is so important that it is within the sphere of ideology that the oppressions of the whole system sometimes manifest themselves most apparently. It is here that middle-class radicalism has its place' (Mitchell 1971). It is essentially groupings, activities, strategies of this type which attract to themselves the stigma of political deviance. Briefly, then, these emergent forms of political militancy appear at a highly contingent moment, historically, in the evolution of ad-

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vanced, late-industrial capitalist societies. They are the product of, as well as the response to, the corporatist structure and consensual style of managed capitalist societies. (They are also the product of more specific, contingent structural features of such societies: their appearance in the same historical moment is, therefore, doubly determined, 'over-determined'.) 'Consensus polities' has become, in one variant or another, the stable form of institutional politics in managed capitalism.7 In Britain in the post-war period, both major political parties have been in active pursuit of a basis of legitimacy rooted, not in class, or in group, or sectional interests, but in a loosely-defined political consensus. Consensus politics does not represent a real decentralization of power and authority. Rather, it is the form in which elite class power manages the consent of 'masses' in socially stratified, differentiated, socalled 'pluralist' societies. In the ideology and rhetoric of 'consensus polities', the 'national interest' is represented as transcending all other collective social interests. We draw a distinction between the 'welfare state' and 'consensual' variants of capitalist politics: in the 'welfare state' variant, conflicts of interest are recognized, but are mitigated by reforms and regulated; in the 'consensual' model, 'all good men and true', whatever their class and social position or outlook, are supposed to have an over-riding interest in maintaining and advancing the consensual goals. Conflict, especially of an open or radical kind, is symbolically displaced to the political margins. Those who engage in conflict-politics, or interpret society in conflict terms, are powerfully stigmatized. The essential task for consensus politics is: 'to construct around each issue by means of bargaining and compromise a coalition of interests; to associate with this legislative programme the big battalions of power in the state; and from this base to manage public consent and isolate or exclude dissent' (Hall 1967). In Britain, the move towards 'consensus polities' has been underwritten by persistent economic stagnation and crisis. The rhetoric of 'consensus polities' in Britain thus pivots on a basically economistic definition of 'over-riding national interest'. The post-war effort, by Conservative and Labour administration alike, has been to win over the traditional agencies of working class organization and defence to active integration within and collusion with the system of politicoeconomic management. Elsewhere (Williams 1968) we have argued

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that social democratic parties, like the Labour Party, have played a peculiarly adaptive role in pioneering the path of integration and incorporation, though nowhere has this process been successfully accomplished or completed. The politics of the extra-parliamentary opposition is specifically the politics of this stage in the evolution of 'integrated5 capitalist societies. That is not to say it is the only form of politics - it exists as a new strand of political dissent alongside and in a complex relation to more traditional agencies of change: capitalism, in seeking stability at this higher level of integration, has not eliminated, but further compounded its untranscended contradictions. But the politics of deviance is a specific and contingent response to the specific stage of evolution of modern capitalism. This form of political protest emerges at just this stage (a) because the position of such groups is now more pivotal than at earlier stages of the system to the system's mode of reproduction; (b) because of the partial containment of the traditional agencies of change; and (c) because such groups are peculiarly responsive to modes of ideological domination which depend, in part, upon the repressive and coercive functions of 'the state', in part upon the invisible lines of coordination and integration operating in the ideological and socializing spheres, or what have been called 'ideological state apparatuses' (Althusser 1971). The protests from students - the privileged but alienated cadres of the new society - and from blacks - the permanently Lumpen strata of an 'affluent' society - are the loci of political conflict in moments when the classic class agencies of change are temporarily contained inside the structures of the state, the mitigating institutions of welfare, labourism as a political practice and economism. Hegemonic demands arose, in their displayed, proto-political form, among supernumerary social strata which remain, nevertheless, neither developed nor evolved sufficiently to be, on their own account, pivotal to revolutionary political transformation. Societies moving ambiguously towards 'consensus polities' therefore provoke a specific counter-politics - the politics of deviance. Since the form and content of consensus is highly problematic, it has to be powerfully advanced in ideological terms. The drive to install consensual forms of domination at the heart of the political process itself is countered, specifically, in the ideological zone by the promulgation and articulation of counter-norms and values: that is, by countercultural or 'deviant' forms of political action. Shared norms, values, and institutions - the 'sacred' character of the consensus itself - are

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stressed: conflicts of outlook and interest are repressed. Alternative minority politics is therefore impelled, not simply to advance counterinterests within the pattern of regulated class conflict and cdue process', but to exaggerate their degree of deviation from institutionalized processes as such. New systematic contradictions which arise are displaced, in the search for consensus, from the heart of political life. Groups which express these grievances and contradictions, having been given marginal political status, are labelled 'marginal': they develop coalitions with groups and issues already so stigmatized, they crystallize their self-images in 'deviant' terms: their deviance is then made the basis for public denunciation and symbolic status-degradation, which legitimates the enforcement of 'consensual norms' - and repressive social control. A classic political version of a deviance amplification spiral is joined.8 Thus the drift and drive to consensus politics not only engenders its own types of conflict, but tends to produce, as a response, a specific type of oppositional movement: political deviance. Political deviance is the form in which conflict reasserts itself at certain nodal points in a system drifting and driving towards 'consensus' management of the state. The deviant character and form of minority politics is an unintended consequence - but also a determinate negation - of the movement towards consensualism in the institutionalized life and management of advanced capitalist societies.

in We argue that militant political deviance is engendered - in its location incidence and form - as a counter-praxis to institutionalized consensual politics. But consensus, in either its political or its ideological form, does not spontaneously evolve: it must be actively constructed. That is the praxis to which deviant politics is a counter. The rise of conflict politics in its deviant form is, therefore, problematic for the society, and requires its own 'interpretative work'. Problematic situations are those in which the available public meanings and definitions fail to account for, and cannot easily be extended to cover, new developments.9 New political developments, which are both dramatic and 'meaningless' within the consensually validated norms, pose a challenge to the normative world. They render problematic not only how the political world is defined, but how it ought to be. They 'breach our expectancies'.10 They interrupt the 'seen but unnoticed, expected background features' of everyday political scenes which we

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use as schemes of interpretation for comprehending political life (Garfinkel 1967). When such practical reasons and accounts are breached, and we are 'deprived' of consensual support for alternative definitions of social reality, the active work of constructing new meanings and 'definitions of the situation' begins. This social construction of meanings is not to be confused with the elaboration of theories and explanatory models (though it often comprises the ad hoc element in them): the latter are systematic accounts, governed by a more formal logic of propositions, which attempt to be internally coherent and consistent. Political structures engender their own characteristic ideologies and theorizing or, better, political structures, ideological and theoretical forms are inter-penetrating elements or 'practices' in any specific social formation which is 'structured in dominance' (Althusser 1971); but the work of public and pragmatic management of political reality cannot be accomplished at this level.11 We are dealing, rather, with the construction of ad hoc 'explanations', accounts 'for all practical purposes', working definitions of political reality, with their own situational logic (or 'logic-in-use') which serve to 'make sense of problematic situations, and which then become the 'socially-sanctioned grounds of inference and action that people use in their everyday affairs and which we assume others use in the same way' (Garfinkel 1967). As Berger and Luckmann (1967) have suggested: 'If the integration of an institutional order can be understood only in terms of the "knowledge" that its members have of it, it follows that the analysis of that "knowledge" will be essential for an analysis of the institutional order in question. It is important to stress that this does not exclusively or even primarily involve a preoccupation with complex theoretical systems serving as legitimations for the institutional order. Theories also have to be taken into account, of course. But theoretical knowledge is only a small part and by no means the most important part of what passes for knowledge in a society The primary knowledge about the institutional order is knowledge on the pre-theoretical level It is the sum total of "what everybody knows" about a social world, an assemblage of maxims, proverbial nuggets of wisdom, values and beliefs, myths and so forth, the theoretical integration of which requires considerable intellectual fortitude in itself ' The social construction and the 'interpretative work' involved in explanations at this level, which resolve problematic, troubling, or

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deviant events, is, nevertheless, a complex process. The work of establishing new kinds of 'knowledge' about problematic features of social or political life is accomplished through the mediation of language: the transactions of public language are the specific praxis - the praxis of public signification - through which such new 'knowledge' is objectivated.12 The relationship between this 'knowledge' and its social base 'is a dialectical one': 'that is, knowledge is a social product and knowledge is a factor in social change. This principle of the dialectic between social production and the objectivated world that is its product has already been explicated' (Berger and Luckmann 1967). The social production of new definitions in problematic areas produces both 'explanations' and 'justifications'. 'Legitimation is this process of "explaining" and justifying.' 'Legitimation "explains" the institutional order by ascribing cognitive validity to its objectivated meanings. Legitimation justifies the institutional order by giving a normative dignity to its practical imperatives. It is important to understand that legitimation has a cognitive as well as a normative element Legitimation not only tells the individual why he should perform one action and not another; it also tells him why things are what they are' (Berger and Luckmann 1967). In complexly-structured, socially differentiated societies like Britain or the United States, based on an advanced division of labour, groups lead highly segregated lives, and maintain apparently discrete, often contradictory, 'maps of problematic social reality'. In such societies, Durkheim observed, 'representations collectives become increasingly indeterminate'. This is especially true of the political domain, which progressively becomes a segregated area, requiring a special expertise, familiarity, or commitment: a finite province of the social world. 'Modern mass societies, indeed, are made up of a bewildering variety of social worlds. Each is an organized outlook built up by people in their interaction with one another; hence each communication channel gives rise to a separate world Each of these worlds is a unity of order, a universe of regularized mutual response. Each is an area in which there is some structure which permits reasonable anticipation of the behaviour of others, hence, an

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area in which one may act with a sense of security and confidence. Each social world, then, is a culture area, the boundaries of which are set neither by territory nor by formal group membership but by the limits of effective communication' (Shibutani 1955). This does not mean that there are no prevailing and dominant symbolic universes which 'integrate different provinces of meaning and encompass the institutional order in a symbolic totality' (Berger and Luckmann 1967). But it does mean that such symbolic universes operate at a high degree of typification, and are experienced by the majority as, at best, sedimented and stereotypical constructs.13 It also means that those who are not directly concerned with enforcing norms and definitions in a problematic or contested area of political life are heavily dependent for their 'working definitions' on those agents, institutions, and channels which have access to power and have appropriated the means of signification. This accords with our knowledge about the situations in which typically the mass media exert innovatory power. The mass media cannot imprint their meanings and messages on us as if we were mentally tabula rasa. But they do have an integrative, clarifying, and legitimating power to shape and define political reality, especially in those situations which are unfamiliar, problematic, or threatening: where no 'traditional wisdom', no firm networks of personal influence, no cohesive culture, no precedents for relevant action or response, and no first-hand way of testing or validating the propositions are at our disposal with which to confront or modify their innovatory power. The sort of 'effectiveness' we have in mind here is not reflected at the primitive behavioural level normally pursued in traditional mass media studies. It is best expressed, as it has been by Halloran (1970), in the following terms: 'The sort of situation I have in mind is where television puts across an attitude or mode of behaviour by presenting it as an essential component of required behaviour in a valued group. It is stated or implied that certain forms of behaviour, attitudes, possessions, etc. are necessary if the individual is to remain a member in a group.... Those who do not have what it takes or refuse to make the effort may be presented as deviants or non-conformists. The appropriate social sanctions for deviance and the modes of approval for acceptance are sometimes explained and illustrated. Adoption of the behaviour or attitudes may also be presented as conducive to the

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integration and general welfare of the group What is involved in this type of influence is the provision of social realities where they did not exist before, or the giving of new directions to tendencies already present, in such a way that the adoption of the new attitude or form of behaviour is made a socially acceptable mode of conduct, whilst failure to adopt is represented as socially disapproved deviance.' In the area of political deviance, the prevailing, emergent 'commonsense' definitions have largely been the product of three main agencies: professional politicians (or trade union leaderships) - the legitimate 'gate-keepers' of the political domain; agents or representatives of face-to-face control; and the mass media.14 Each of these agencies for the definition of political reality has a different perspective on the phenomenon of political deviance: but, like all the elements in a social formation 'structured in dominance', these perspectives show a strong disposition, in the fact of overt challenge, to 'hang together'. By political gate-keepers we mean, of course, both the organized mass parties, since each has a vested interest in the 'sacred' nature of the consensus. By mass media we mean, essentially, television, the press (regional, national, and local), and radio. By 'agencies of face-to-face control' we mean vice-chancellors and university administrators with respect to student militancy; public spokesmen and the army with respect to Ulster; official trade union functionaries with respect to 'unofficial strikes'; the police and the social welfare agencies with respect to squatting, rent strikes, militant demonstrations, 'Black Power' militants, etc. IV

Geertz (1964) has argued that the study of ideology as a specific social praxis lacks 'anything more than the most rudimentary conception of the processes of symbolic formulation'. 'The links between the causes of ideology and its effects seem adventitious because the connecting element - the autonomous process of symbolic formulation - is passed over in virtual silence. Both interest theory and strain theory go directly from source analysis to consequence analysis without ever seriously examining ideologies as systems of interacting symbols, as patterns of interworking meanings. Themes are outlined, of course; among the con-

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tent analysts, they are even counted. But they are referred for elucidation, not to other themes nor to any sort of semantic theory, but either backward to the affect they presumably mirror or forward to the society reality they presumably distort. The problem of how ideologies transform sentiment into significance and so make it socially available is short-circuited ' The new definitions of political deviance do not emerge once-andfor-all, as 'full-bloom, inevitable totalities'. The work of 'classifying out' the political universe, of building up meaningful 'semantic zones' to which deviant political acts can be assigned and within which they 'make sense', the processes of telescoping, of ascription, of amplifying descriptions and the attribution of 'secondary status traits', the use of charged associative metaphors which summon up old meanings in the service of explaining the unfamiliar, the way discrete events are selectively composed into composite 'action-images' and 'scenarios' of political action, the use of analogies and metaphors which 'transform sentiment into significance', win plausibility and command the assent of uninformed and remote publics: these, and other processes, compose the specificity of the praxis of political signification as a discrete level within the 'ensemble of social relations'. Such interpretative work is, at one and the same moment, social and symbolic: its study constitutes a reflexive theoretical practice and its own - that study once described by Levi-Strauss as 'the study of the life of signs at the heart of social life'. 'Not only is the semantic structure of an [ideological] figure a good deal more complex than it appears on the surface, but an analysis of that structure forces one into tracing a multiplicity of referential connexions between it and social reality, so that the final picture is one of a configuration of dissimilar meanings out of whose interworking both the expressive power and the rhetorical force of the final symbol derive. This interworking is itself a social process, an occurrence not "in the head" but in that public world where "people" talk together, name things, make assertions, and to a degree understand each other' (Geertz 1964). Such theoretical work, as a necessary and integral part of the study of deviance (and of political deviance in particular), as well as of politics and the media, is only just beginning.15 All too often we still employ the much cruder concepts of 'intentional bias' and 'deliberate

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distortion' (rather than, say, the more structural notions of 'unwitting bias' and 'systematically distorted communications').16 These notions are based on either simple functionalist or simple reflexive models of the relation of consciousness to social being wholly inadequate to the situations they are called upon to explain. They repress the reciprocally structured interaction of social experience and the cultural forms in which experience is handled. The process by which certain kinds of political deviance come to be signified in a distinctive way, and the relation of the agents of signification to this process are complex, and can only be enforced by detailed analysis. The events dealt with here, and the quotations, are intended for illustrative purposes only. Nor is there space to develop the argument about how this kind of analysis can be carried through. But we must insist that analysis of political signification through linguistic transaction in the public domain must give special weight to the linguistic mediation, and the process of symbolization itself, as Geertz (1964) has argued. In our analysis, we have adopted the method of 'immanent structural analysis', in preference to quantitative analysis of the manifest content of political communications. This method is concerned both with the 'interior relations' which linguistic forms establish within a 'system' of discourse, and with the 'codes' and the 'logics-in-use' which integrate linguistic items within an inferential structure of argument. The logic is a 'situated logic' proceeding (via the basic tropes of condensation and displacement) as much by inference as by direct statement. Special attention is paid to stylistic and rhetorical features of expression. 'Structural analysis proposes... such a framework in which the style is the level of integration of content in the code from which it arises. Thus, analysis of style, and particularly analysis of figures of rhetoric of content in the interior of the code is the best way to reach the code. The figures of rhetoric are... the moment where the code (normally unconscious) betrays and confesses its presence' (Burgelin 1968). Analysis of political communications concerning political deviance conducted by this method of semiological analysis reveals one dominant pervasive deep structure in the material.17 This is the structure we call minorities/majorities. All the agents of signification when dealing with this type of political behaviour employ the minority/ majority distinction. The world of political deviance is systematically

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'classified out' in terms of this basic opposition. Politicians of local and national status, in public speeches and reported statements, the media in all its forms, and the agents of face-to-face control all consistently employ the minority/majority explanatory model. One brief comparison suggests how powerful this minority/majority structure is. The two cases concern the incidents around the destruction of the gates within the building at LSE in January/February 1969, and the occupation of the main administration block by students at Birmingham University in December 1968. The first was one incident in a series of militant confrontations between students and university authorities at LSE over a period of three years: the second was an isolated incident at a university noted for its conservative outlook and political quiescence. The first involved the destruction of property, several incidents of milling and scuffling: the second involved no destruction of property, and no incidents which could be labelled as 'political violence'. The first involved the closing of the School for several days: in the second, only the administration block was occupied, and normal teaching continued throughout. Yet a study of the way both incidents were signified reveals a convergent use of the minority/majority paradigm. In both cases, the active political groups were defined as 'small minorities' exploiting the majority of their compatriots, and holding their institutions and the public at large 'up to ransom'. This image of a conspiratorial group survives, in the LSE case, the virtually unanimous vote, on 3 February, in favour of two motions supporting militant action; and, in the Birmingham case, the fact that the occupation was supported by an overwhelming majority of those voting in the relevant extraordinary meeting of the Guild of Undergraduates. The events at LSE were widely reported in the national press. The Birmingham occupation was sparsely reported, the main coverage being on the regional television and radio news, and in the local press. A clear example of the minority/majority paradigm as applied in the LSE situation is the following report in the Daily Sketch (27 January 1969): 'A cabal of about 300 students at the London School of Economics has, for patently selfish and confused reasons, caused 2,700 other students to be denied their studies. They deliberately engineered a closure of the College. The majority suffer. The hooligan clique withdrew to repair their wounds and

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excite themselves in yet another storm of public outrage 1 believe that even the people who have been prepared to tolerate student idiosyncrasy have now had their fill of this calculated anarchy. The group of 300, including foreigners ' Another example may be quoted from the Evening News (28 January 1969): 'It is an astonishing piece of anarchy... 3,000 students, the bulk of who want to work and appreciate their privileged position, are being deprived of their rights by a comparative handful of revolutionary socialists (probably not more than fifty) whose avowed aim is to create physical havoc to overthrow the LSE regime - and the nation's regime, too What these revolutionaries want is violence for its own sake.' This structure of argument was common to press reports of the LSE events as a whole, though there was the usual distinction, in terms of tone and sensationalism, between the popular and the 'posh' papers. Thus the Daily Telegraph (3 February 1969) predicted, more sedately: 'Students from the LSE are likely to dissociate themselves from the militant minority at a Union meeting at Euston today.' The prediction was wrong. Reports in the press and television, as a whole, were full of the 'wreckers of the School'; this was also the occasion of the now-famous remarks by the then Secretary for Education, Mr Short, about 'academic thugs' and 'Brand X revolutionaries'. Exactly the same paradigm dominates the coverage of the Birmingham events in the local press (Birmingham Post and Evening Mail). The simplest way of characterizing this coverage is to quote from the lead editorial of the Post for Saturday, 30 November - the second of five editorials on the subject in the relevant eight days: 'The real affliction for Vice-Chancellors is that universities are also collecting grounds for small minorities who, under a multiplicity of labels, advocate revolution and are out to stir up trouble. Although their aims are principally political these can make effective use of genuine student discontents or aspirations. Vice-Chancellors have the duty to meet the just aspirations of the majority while at the same time giving no ground to deliberate trouble makers.'

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On the following Tuesday, the Post printed on the front page, running across the top of the page, and pre-empting the main news headlines of the day, a letter from 61 students, condemning 'militant extremist minority'. It introduced the letter to its readers thus: The Post believes that the activities at Birmingham university are stimulated by a minority group. Unhappily, there is growing evidence that the public is tending to associate all students with the extremists. This letter underlines what we feel is the attitude of the majority.' The same inferential structure of argument is to be found throughout the reports of comments made by local councillors and aldermen about the occupation, as well as by representatives of the university administration. One councillor spoke of 'a small minority of agitating adolescents' holding up 'the life of the whole university'. Another said, 'I believe that the majority of students are quite sound and want to get on with their studies ' In the vast majority of the press and television reports covering militant student protest in the period of high activity between 1967 and 1969, the majority/minority paradigm is employed. The same is true of public statements by representative politicians and by face-toface agencies of control. It has become ubiquitous as a 'common sense explanation' of the perplexing phenomenon of why student protest has made its appearance on the political stage, and of why it should assume such militant forms. It thus serves the latent function of resolving into intelligible terms a highly problematic phenomenon. It is a powerful labelling device. It has cognitive power, effectively classifying 'students' into two groups. It has evaluative power, since it attaches to the favoured group the preferred title of 'majority', transferring to this category the sacred symbolism attaching to all 'majorities' in a parliamentary democracy. It has crystallizing value, in that it separates out the complex groupings and proto-formations within student radicalism into simple, stereotypical units, resolving ambiguities. It has generative power. On the basis of this simple polarization, all sorts of 'secondary status attributions' can be made. The classified groups can now be particularized and concretized by attributing to them status traits, drawn from other deviant areas, where the stereotypical classifications already exist. Thus 'minorities' become 'extremists', and, in the course of time, accrete a variety of other qualitative attributes: they are 'hooligans'... 'a hooligan clique'... 'wreckers'...

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'agitating adolescents'... 'a cabal'... 'thugs'... 'adolescent hooligans' ... 'mentally disturbed'... a 'smash-now-and-think-later-caucus'... 'outside agitators'... 'rowdies'... 'plotters'. It also has expressive power, providing a framework for the minting of new epithets which are powerfully picturesque: 'Brand X revolutionaries'... 'a bunch of hairy coconuts'. Above all, it has explanatory and predictive power. For it is only if the student world can be polarized into a minorityextremist-clique and a majority of dupes, 'judgemental dopes', whose desire for legitimate reform and whose attention to their studies is being subverted and exploited by the minority 'who have something else in mind', that the phenomenon of student militancy can be rendered accountable within the consensual norms of what politics should be. Finally, it has consolatory power: if only the small handful of agitators can be isolated - 'probably not more than fifty' at LSE - normalcy can be restored, the status quo affirmed. The minority/majority paradigm is also a persuasive definition. It is employed not simply to explain and account for the phenomenon of student militancy, but contains its own implicit strategies for containment and its own inferred call for retributive punishment. In almost all cases, the minority/majority paradigm attempts to build a coalition between the moderates and the agencies of control. It attempts to win over 'majority dupes' to a position of active cooperation with the authorities. The clearest example of this is in the Post editorial already quoted: 'At the very least five-sixths of the 6,000 or so students at Birmingham University have held aloof from the movement that inaugurated the "direct action", and it is safe to assume that even more disapprove of the actual form this has now taken. The Vice-Chancellor is entitled to look for support not only to the public but to the general student body, because he is upholding their right not to have their studies and university life interfered with by a clamant and apparently intolerant minority group. Unfortunately, when in like circumstances, firm action has been contemplated elsewhere against an activist minority the majority has sometimes felt it should side with those being disciplined. The student majority should remember that if Birmingham University had to be closed because of student indiscipline, the general public would probably bear it with considerable fortitude. It is the student majority that would suffer.'

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The 'explanation' thus frequently assumes a characteristic rhetorical forms.18 It splits the student body into two simple and opposed groups - the 'pure' (but stupid) and the 'polluted': it seeks to 'win over' the majority to the side of the reasonable., the rational, the normal, the natural (all these normative elements are centrally built-in to the paradigm itself and are actively present in its actual use): but it also counterposes to students as a whole - as if audiences to a spectacle the 'general public', whose relation to what is going on, it is inferred, cannot be anything but distant, passive, disinterested, and remote. If the paradigm serves to stereotype the minority as military extremists., intent on violence for its own sake, and the majority as reasonable but simple men, whose good-will is being used and exploited, it also stereotypes the public, as a distant, heterogeneous, and uninvolved mass - spectators to a dangerous but diverting symbolic drama, linked only by their as yet unexpressed wish to see the reasonable, the normal - 'due process' - resume its steady course once again: a silent majority. This process of splitting/isolation and projection is the precise rhetorical form assumed by elite power in the society of 'masses'. It is the new symbolic version of the ancient principle of 'divide and rule'. The significant fact, for our purposes, is that this minority/majority paradigm in its amplified form has become one of the most persistent 'inferential structures' in the signification of political deviance of all types in the political domain and in the media. It has long since become a standard 'deep structure' in the definition and labelling of militant political demonstrations, such as the protests against the South African cricket and Springboks' tour, and the famous Hyde Park/Grosvenor Square demonstration against the Vietnam War of 27 October 1968. The Times, for example, reported Mr Callaghan, then Home Secretary, as saying in the House of Commons on the Friday before the Vietnam demonstration: 'The organization of the demonstration, Mr Callaghan said, carried a heavy responsibility when they called large numbers of people together. The overwhelming number of people in the march were likely to be concerned passionately with the issue of peace in Vietnam. They must be careful, he said, not to allow themselves to be exploited by a tiny minority who were basically not concerned with this issue but with undermining and destroying the institutions that enabled protests to be made.'

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Taking his cue from this paradigm, Mr Marcus Lipton then undertook his own private piece of amplification, referring to the organizers as a 'motley crew of crackpots ...'. It has for long also been the dominant definition applied to 'unofficial strikes' - the notion of conspiratorial cliques, challenging the due authority of their own leaderships and holding the innocent public up to ransom. For a long period, the use of this paradigm in respect of 'unofficial strikes' had a strong element of 'coalition-building' - it was designed to 'win over' union leaderships and the TUG to support for the Government in the effort to restrain certain types of trade union conflict, and to 'distance' the mass of the public (the consumers/audience) from any commitment to the event. Its use has certainly also been a common feature of the process of public signification associated with developments in Northern Ireland. With respect especially to events in Ulster since the later months of 1970, this paradigm has indeed attained the status of a 'self-fulfilling prophecy', with the emergence of the IRA stigmatized, split off from, and counterposed to the vast majority of 'good and reasonable folk' of both religious persuasions in Ulster, whose grievances are being exploited for the pursuance by a tiny minority of a 'holy war' against Stormont, Whitehall, the army, and the forces of moderation and reform. Indeed, the emergence of the IRA - a known, labelled, stigmatized, extremist group, committed to the policies of armed insurrection and physical force - has powerfully crystallized and simplified the complex problems of signifying the Ulster crisis to the British public. It permitted the agencies of signification - the political manager both at Stormont and at Whitehall, the agents of face-to-face control in the shape of the army and its public relations machinery, and the media of press, radio, and television - to extract, isolate, and stereotype a small, organized, band of 'foreign' insurgents, committed to violence against the state, from the complex structure of exploitation, disenfranchizement, and oppression of the Ulster minorities, and, behind that, from the interlocking complex of immediate class-rule at Stormont and distant colonial oppression in the continuing links between Britain and the Protestant ascendancy. Accounts of engagements between the para-military forces of the IRA and the army could now be depicted in simple form as a straight confrontation between a minority extremist element and a peace-keeping force. In the language of the weekly and nightly accounts of bombings, explosions, street encoun-

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ters, etc., the IRA is consistently attributed an active, destructive role, the army a passive, neutral one. Thus the girl inadvertently shot by a sniper bullet is described in the press headline as 'Girl shot by IRA sniper', but the girl inadvertently wounded by army fire is described as 'Girl shot in IRA-Army crossfire'.19 The difficult task of extracting a political solution to the Ulster crisis has been, accordingly, suppressed, replaced by the call for military measures to 'end the violence'. On this basis, the public has been brought to collude with such developments as the imposition of internment without trial, and the use of repressive and coercive methods of interrogation on the basis of the inferred logic that 'the gunmen and the bombers must be brought to heel'. The power of the paradigm to crystallize a complex political situation in stereotypical and simplified terms may be evidenced in a BBC television news broadcaster of 27 February 1971. The Ulster correspondent observed that 'the Northern Ireland situation is resolving itself into a straight battle between small groups of armed agitators and the British army'. But this comment was accompanied by film clips from incidents in Belfast on that same day, showing a block of flats ('predominantly Catholic') where 'youths' (but also, visibly, women and children) were involved in persistent stonethrowing and pan-rattling at soldiers and in which the army had to attack the flats in order to 'root out the rioters'. The form in which these events were signified simply left no room in which the most critical question could be posed: that which would have exposed the fact that the army were unlikely to isolate and destroy the IRA gunmen precisely because they were tacitly and actively sheltered, supported, forewarned, and assisted by the vast majority of the workingclass Catholics in the predominantly Catholic areas. The power of signification to legitimate repressive control and methods of intimidation was nowhere so powerfully attested to as in the whole episode surrounding the revelation of the methods used to interrogate detainees. The plain fact is that the vast majority of the allegations of physical brutality investigated by the Compton Report, and widely reported on in the press and television, were confirmed: but the meaning of the physical forms of interrogation was symbolically legitimated by a purely semantic device: that of re-defining the methods not as 'brutality' (unacceptable) but as 'physical ill-treatment' (acceptable). As Compton (1971) asserts: 'Where we have concluded that physical ill-treatment took place,

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we are not making a finding of brutality on the part of those who handled these complainists. We consider that brutality is an inhuman or savage form of cruelty and that cruelty implies a disposition to inflict suffering, coupled with indifference to, or pleasure in, the victim's pain. We do not think this happened here.' It is a nice distinction. The generative and associative power of the paradigm is evidenced in an interview with a Stormont politician, transmitted in the 7.00 p.m. Newsdesk on BBC radio, in which, in reply to a question as to whether the 'young hoodlums' on the street were organized, replied: 'Yes, by men described as shadowy figures Just the sort of person of inelegant mentality such as lay behind the bombing incident with Mr Carr... anarchists, protorevolutionaries, call them what you will.' These are only a few, brief examples taken at random from the coverage of the Ulster crisis. In any substantive analysis of the process of political signification, events in Ulster provides an almost paradigmatic instance. The paradigm was also, significantly, employed with reference to the activities, not simply of the unofficial minorities in strike situations, but to the official trade union leaderships in so far as their wage demands threatened to attempt to control the level of wages by both Labour and Conservative governments: and more recently, as unions undertook strike action in defence of their claims, and one-day strikes in opposition to the proposed Industrial Relations Bill. The escalation of the use of the minority-extremists/majority moderates common sense explanation in response to the actions of groups which can in no sense be labelled 'political deviants' - that is, the transfer of the more militant actions of powerful majorities and legitimate minorities to the 'deviant' category - can be pin-pointed in the renowned speech by Mr Wilson in June 1966 concerning the strike by the National Union of Seamen: 'A natural democratic revolt is now giving way, in the name of militancy, to pressures which are anything but democratic ... a few individuals have brought pressure to bear on a select few on the Executive Council of the NUS,, who in turn have been able to dominate the majority of that otherwise sturdy union ... this tightly knit group of politically motivated men ' A more recent example was Mr Carr's televised speech, on the eve of the second one-day strike against the IRB (17 March 1971), in which he described the action as one of 'mindless militancy', a 'denial of democratic leadership', the 'acts of a small minority recognizing no responsibility to

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anyone or anything' and contrary to the wishes of the Vast majority., including those who oppose the Bill'. The minority/majority, extremist/moderate way of labelling acts of political deviance is not being applied to situations which are intrinsically quite different in manifest character. This process of 'crossattribution' and amplification is characteristic of persuasive inferential explanations which try to resolve ambiguities at the same time as they actively contain threatening and problematic political developments. A close analysis of the way this process of stigmatization and signification is carried through yields other deep paradigms which, in a similar way, tap sacred and symbolic values which are widely shared (e.g. the sanctity of majorities, the 'due process' of negotiation as a way of resolving conflict, the taboo against violence and confrontation, the role of reasonableness, rationality, moderation, and compromise in the regulation of conflict - the sacred values of British institutional political life), and either 'map' them on to new, problematic situations, or 'map' emergent political phenomena in terms of already known and legitimate values.20

Some problems of considerable complexity are posed by the model and account offered above. These can only be briefly resumed here. The first cluster of problems concerns the relationship, at both theoretical and empirical levels, between the dominant and subordinate forms of ideological consciousness present in a society at a specific historical moment on the one hand, and on the other the level of ideological 'work' and praxis with which we have been primarily concerned. Such a discussion must take as its departure Gramsci's (1971) concept of hegemonic and corporate class formations and, linked with that, the essence of the Marxian notion of dominant and subordinate value systems - the classic formulation of which is The German Ideology. In a useful amplification of this model, Parkin (1971) suggests that we must concern ourselves with at least three levels of ideological consciousness: a dominant value-system - 'those groups in society which occupy positions of the greatest power and privilege will also tend to have the greatest access to the means of legitimation'; a subordinate value system, the generating milieu of which is 'the local working class community', and whose content is both different from, but also subordinate to and accommodated within the dominant value-

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system - it is a 'negotiated version of the dominant value system' and what he calls a radical value-system, which is in effect a counter system of values to the hegemonic ideology. Though all ideological systems contain the interests of hegemonic class forces imprinted in them, dominant value-systems represent themselves as the natural mental environment and horizon of the whole society, and the explanations of or accounting for new problematic events tend to be accomplished within the mental universe, the symbolic forms and the embedded interests of such forms of consciousness. As Marx (1965) observed, 'each new class ... is compelled ... to represent its interests as the common interest of all the members of a society... expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones'. Installed ideological perspectives of this type are thus not only the symbolic bearers of the social interests of ruling groups, but tend to be amplified into what Lefebvre (1968) calls 'a vision or conception of the world, a Weltanschauung based on extrapolations and interpretations'. Their function is not simply to assert, in a naked, open, or direct manner, the establishment of class power, but to provide for society as a whole what Harris (1968) calls 'a more or less coherent organization for our experience'. Ideologies are one of the principal mechanisms which expand and amplify the dominance of certain class interests into a hegemonic formation. Their role, as Lefebvre remarks, 'is to secure the assent of the oppressed and exploited. Ideologies represent the latter to themselves in such a way as to wrest from them, in addition to material wealth, their "spiritual" acceptance of this situation, even their support.' The crucial point, made by Poulantzas (1971) is that 'the dominant ideology does not simply reflect the life conditions of the dominant class-subject "pure and simple", but the political relationship in a social formation between the dominant and dominated classes'. In the gloss by Steadman-Jones (1972), 'ideologies are not simply the subjective product of the "will to power" of different classes: they are objective systems determined by the whole field of struggle between contending classes'. Thus, though we can see, over time, the continuity in themes, interests, and content of a dominant ideological formation, we nevertheless have to deal with the process by which ideologies are reproduced, seek and win consent in a contending situation, the social praxis through which they renew themselves at the heart of social life, and gain legitimation as dominant

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perspectives. This process is compounded by at least two further factors. First, the social division of labour, the distribution of power, and the segmentation and differentiation of different classes and groups will work in such a way as 'to stress different elements in the given orthodoxy'. As Harris (1968) comments: 'Orthodoxies have an elastic quality to cover very different social groups, to unite them within a common terminology, but inevitably the version of the orthodoxy held by different social groups will be different, incorporating each group's specific perspective.' The second point is that ideologies survive only if they are able to change, transform, and amplify themselves so as to take account of, and integrate, within the existing mental environment, new events and developments in social conflict. As Geertz insists, ideologies are 'maps of problematic social reality' (our italics). Ideologies which are thoroughly fixed in their forms and content are not flexible enough to sustain themselves in the face of problematic and threatening events. Thus, though ideologies may remain, at one level, stable and persistent over time, in terms of the class interests they represent and the constituent elements legitimate within them, at another level they require to be continually reproduced, amplified, and elaborated so as to 'cover' the unexplained. As Lefebvre remarks: 'No historical situation can ever be stabilized once and for all, though that is what ideologies aim at'. The objectivation of social knowledge within the environment of a specific ideological formation is, therefore, an ongoing social process with its own specific contradictions (Althusser 1971). This process constitutes ideological work as a specific social praxis - and it is this aspect of elaboration which we have tried to 'net' in our concept of 'signification within the public discourse'. It follows from this that ideological discourse is characterized by the rigidity of its structuring at the level of 'deep' interests, and by the relative 'openness' - theflexibility,the labile quality of its forms - at the 'surface' level. The borrowing of a Chomskyian metaphor of 'deep' and 'surface' structures for the study of ideological discourse is not fortuitous, since the study of ideologies as a specific level of a social formation requires precisely such a model by which quite unrestricted elements give rise, via 'rules' of transformation, and by way of specified forms of praxis (signification) and institutions (e.g. the mass media), to a heterodox variety of 'surface' forms. Recent studies of the nature of ideological discourse stress its polysemic character.

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Althusser (1970) has observed that, though specific ideologies have a history, there can be no 'history of ideology' as such: 'Unlike a science, an ideology is both theoretically closed and politically supple and adaptable. It bends to the interests of the times, but without apparent movement, being content to reflect the historical changes which is its mission to assimilate and master by some imperceptible modification of its peculiar internal relations Ideology changes therefore, but imperceptibly conserving its ideological form; it moves, but with an immobile motion which maintains it where it is, in its place and its ideological role.' The polysemic or polyvocal character of ideological discourse presents us with another set of problems whose range can only be sketchily touched upon here. The mediatory role played by rhetoric and symbolization in the elaboration of ideological formations has been emphasized by Geertz. Ideologies, like other cultural 'systems', consist of symbolic items, rich and diverse in their connotational power, which have been ordered and disposed, through human use and through social structures into diverse and interpenetrating meaning-systems. Barthes (1971) and other semiologists have, correctly, drawn our attention to the fact that since individual items in such meaning-systems are 'arbitrary', what matters is the relational system (correspondence and opposition) into which the elements are integrated. It is the relation between the elements in a constituted symbolic field - or, as Levi-Strauss would put it, the relations of difference within a system of meanings - which specify and signify. Harris observes 'The central role of culture ... is to present us with a diversity of partial or coherent systems with which to organize our experience, so that by identifying objects and attributing systematic meaning to them, we shall be able to overcome the problems we face in seeking to survive Of course, the same object may be identified in a host of different ways within different systems.' It is the structure of social relations which establish, maintain, and preserve certain meaningsystems in being, generating around them the quality of a stable, 'taken-for-granted' world, which permits certain ideological clusters to retain their power to specify new and troubling events in old and legitimated terms, and which tend to 'rule out of court' other, alternative meanings. In this way, through their continued production or objectivation within a special social formation, certain meanings come to represent what Berger and Luckmann call 'the social stock of know-

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ledge at hand' which supplies us with 'typificatory schemes required for the major routines of social life, not only the typifications of others... but typifications of all sorts of events and experiences both social and natural'. 'When government becomes as changeable as the men who constitute it, when the apparent objectivity of institutions dissolves into no more than the contradictory subjectivities of an uncoordinated mass of individual men, it is no wonder that some onlookers feel a "sense of meaninglessness" ' (Harris 1968). Not only will ideological systems be polyvocal in their symbolic content: they will frequently be extended and amplified to deal with new situations by 'putting together', often in an illogical or incoherent way, what were, previously, the fragments of more ordered or stable meaning-systems. As they evolve, ideologies employ what Gramsci has called traces embedded in previously accumulated cultural traditions. The process of ideological elaboration is thus closer, as Harris has noted, to Levi-Strauss's process of briccolage, than it is to the consistent elaboration of theoretical or philosophical 'world views'. The usual mode of ideological analysis, common, say, in the work of Lukacs or Goldmann, which analyses ideological formations at their most representative and coherent point, linking them with major philosophical totalizations, misses the critical ad hoc level at which ideologies are brought to bear on specific situations, and organize the experience of particular groups and classes of men. The distinction Harris suggests between 'higher' and 'lower order' meaning systems is an important one, because it distinguishes the great conceptual schemas and totalizations, historically embedded or sedimented over time, or articulated with a rare logical consistency, from 'lower order' systems, which are more directly related to immediate experience, and which are concerned with 'particular ways we use this logic, the association we make and unmake'. 'It is the lower order systems about which men argue, which change, which vary between social groups, between studies of different kinds, between historical periods. Of higher order systems, philosophers examine perhaps the tip of the iceberg, giving an account of some of the rules presupposed by our ordinary use ' In line with this, it seems to follow, as Berger and Luckmann argue, that the critical study of ideology must deal with the continued pro-

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duction of everyday knowledge itself, in so far as this knowledge provides us with the terms, categories, and the classifications within which social reality itself is apprehended and maintained. As they remark: 'Only a very limited group of people in any society engages in theorizing, in the business of "ideas" and the construction of Weltanschauungen. But everyone in society participates in its "knowledge" in one way or another.' Such a critical study must therefore take as its object of reflection the forms, content, and production of 'everything that passes for "knowledge" in society' - or, to put it another way, with the everyday forms of ideological consciousness, including the process by which new kinds of knowledge are legitimated and win assent for their plausibility in the real world. This brings us to the third cluster of problems: the relationship between what we have called the different 'agents of signification', or the role which the institutions charged with the production and amplification of 'knowledge' play within a social formation which is complexly structured in dominance. The starting-point for such a discussion must be Gramsci's (1971) notion of the production and maintenance of social hegemony. 'What we can do... is to fix two major superstructural "levels": the one that can be called "civil society", that is the ensemble of organisms commonly called "private", and that of "political society" or the State. These two levels correspond on the one hand to the function of "hegemony" which the dominant group exercises throughout society and on the other hand to that of "direct domination" or command exercised through the State and "juridical" government. The functions in question are precisely organizational and connective. The intellectuals are the dominant group's "deputies" exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government.' The functions for this double structure which Gramsci anticipated included the organization of 'spontaneous' consent, 'given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group', and the exercise of coercive power, which '"legally" enforces discipline on those groups who do not "consent" either actively or passively'. Gramsci's (1971)

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formulations are based on the notion of the distinctive role and position within the State of 'the coercive apparatus', which brings 'the mass of the people into conformity with the specific type of production and the specific economy at a given moment', and the apparatus for the maintenance of social hegemony, 'exercised through the socalled private organizations, like the Church, the trade unions, the schools, etc.'. He adds that 'it is precisely in civil society that intellectuals operate especially'. This distinction has recently been expanded by such theorists as Althusser and Poulantzas who, while differing precisely in the way they conceive the relations between what Althusser (1971) has called 'the State Apparatus' and the 'Ideological State Apparatuses', nevertheless share, with Gramsci, a fundamental determination to 'think' the specificity of the ideological or superstructural level within a complex social formation. In essence, both insist that a dominant social class maintains its rule and legitimacy, not only through the coercive agencies of the state, but also via 'the whole institutional superstructure of bourgeois class power: parties, reformist trade unions, newspapers, schools, churches, families...' (Steadman-Jones 1972): both insist, therefore, on the specificity, the 'relative autonomy' - until the 'last instance' - of the various levels of the superstructure. Poulantzas (1970) argues that though state power imposes limits on the ideological institutions, 'power relations in the State ideological apparatuses do not depend directly on the class nature of the State power and are not exhaustively determined by it'. Thus, 'in a social formation several contradictory and antagonistic ideologies exist'. Althusser (1971) argues that 'ideologies are realized in institutions, their rituals and practices' - 'it is by the installation of the Ideological State Apparatuses in which this ideology is realised itself that it becomes the ruling ideology'. 'But this installation is not achieved all by itself; on the contrary, it is the stake in a bitter and continuous class struggle: first against the former ruling classes and their positions in the old and new ISAs, then against the exploited class In fact, the struggle in the ISAs is indeed an aspect of the class struggle, sometimes an important and symptomatic one But the class struggles in the ISAs is only one aspect of a class struggle which goes beyond the ISAs.' Despite the important differences of emphasis between these theorists,

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the important questions to which they are addressed concern the relations of unity and difference within the ideological or signifying agencies, between the ideological institutions of 'indirect hegemony' and the State institutions of 'direct domination'. Only by concrete analysis can we determine the degree to which the signifying agencies may undertake their work of amplifying and elaborating a specific form of ideological consciousness within limits set by the prevailing structures of power and interest, and yet not be 'exhaustively determined by it' - becoming, that is, the locus of contending and conflictful definitions of the situation, the focus of struggle at the level of authority and consent (as Althusser puts it), 'the seat and the stake' of ideological class struggle. 'Ideologies are not "born" in the ISAs but from the social classes at grips in the class struggle: from their conditions of existence, their practices, their experiences of the struggle, etc.' (Althusser 1971)In any specific historical conjuncture, therefore, we are required to examine the specificity of the role and the work which such agencies of signification undertake; to acknowledge that contradictory definitions contend for hegemony within their orbit: at the same time recognizing that their form, content, and direction cannot be deduced from some abstract 'dominant ideology' which is taken, in a process of conflict-free realization, to saturate all the complex levels of a social formation from one end to another in an unproblematic manner. As Gramsci observed: 'The dominant group is coordinated concretely with the general interests of the subordinate groups, and the life of the State is conceived of as a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria... between the interests of the fundamental group and those of the subordinate groups - equilibria in which the interests of the dominant group prevail, but only up to a certain point, i.e. stopping short of narrowly corporate economic interests.' In our case, we are required to offer an analysis which would clarify where the dominant paradigms of an ideological consensus originate: what the role of the media, the political apparatus, and the judicial and other agencies of face-to-face control play in elaborating those definitions: the existence of disjunctures between the different levels of civil and state institutions in the amplifying of such 'maps of

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problematic social reality': the differences between the different institutions, and yet their complex unity-in-dominance: the locale of struggle and conflict in the elaboration of consensual perspectives: and the forms of class struggle expressed by these similarities and differences. We cannot undertake such an analysis here. But this resume of problems posed by our initial analysis allows us to formulate, more precisely, the nexus of issues which this paper explores. It is an attempt to explore the mediations between a rhetoric and ideological discourse, its social location and functions. The position adopted is that these levels must be studied, at once, with attention to their full specificity, and, simultaneously, in terms of their place in a complexly structured social formation. This attempt necessitates what might at first appear to be a theoretical detour, by way of certain key concepts and perspectives of phenomenology, symbolic interaction, and ethnomethodological ideas. In this detour, what in former paradigms which have given this problem a sustained attention is presented either as an unmediated determinism (vulgar Marxist) or a formal determinism (structuralism) is translated back into the concepts of praxis - signification maintaining and interpreting a social reality, definitional work, etc. Ideological discourse about problematic political events are not conceived as following, full blown, from the heads of practical bourgeois men and institutions, as unproblematic for them as they are for those who are enclosed with their horizons of thought. 'Explanations' of political events are conceived as normative structures which have to be objectivated by their own specific social practices, evolved and realized by specific groups and institutions, maintained and sustained amidst contending definitions, in situations, and only with some difficulty winning assent among subordinate groups. Such 'explanations' are related to more stable, more comprehensive historical ideological formations, in that, at a lower level of specificity, they rehearse, thematically, linguistically, rhetorically, the 'vocabularies of motive', the historical interests and experience of dominant groups and classes which lie embedded within the environment of a public language, and which are drawn on - made active - in a persuasive sort of 'labour', in specific settings of dominance. There are points at which such definitions are minted anew, when the work of ideological briccolage is accomplished for the first time: there are other times when these rhetorical elements, in their truncated form, lie sleeping in the public language, awaiting an appropriate sequence of events to

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awaken them. In crisis moments, when the ad hoc formulas which serve, 'for all practical purposes', to classify the political world meaningfully and within the limits of legitimacy are rendered problematic, and new problems and new groupings emerge to threaten and challenge the ruling positions of power and their social hegemony, we are in a special position to observe the work of persuasive definition in the course of its formation. This is a privileged moment for the student of ideologies. In this process the mass media play an extremely important role: but they remain only one of the several institutions in which this process of signification is realized. The relation at any specific moment between the ad hoc definitions arrived at within their domain and the structure of a prevailing or dominant ideology: the relation between the work of managing the definition of social reality and reproducing the relations of production and power: the relation between the ideological and the coercive apparatuses of the state: the outcome of the groups which contend on its terrain over the means and modes of signification: the relation, above all, of the operative definitions of power and control which are employed by the state apparatus, to the structure of definitions 'determined by the whole field of struggle between contending classes' - the area of consensus, to which the media seem too powerfully attached: these and other related issues can only be clarified by the study of a specific conjuncture between the different levels of practice and institution in a historical moment. We said such a study was only possible on the basis of a theoretical detour. But the route by which such insight is gained into the specificity of ideological discourse cannot be the final resting place of theory. Phenomenology teaches us to attend, once again, to the level of meaning: symbolic interaction presses on us the decisive level of 'definitions of the situation' as critical intervening variables: ethnomethodology refers us to the interactive work by which normative features of interpreted social situations are sustained, and the indexable character of expressions. Yet, in the end, these different aspects of the process by which abnormal political events are signified must be returned to the level of the social formation, via the critical concepts of power, ideology, and conflict. 'The question', Dreitzel (1970) has recently observed, 'is to understand how the assignment of significance to social actions and events works.... We have to analyse the construction of such norms and typifications through the pattern of interpretive communication.' But,

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'in order to overcome the limitation imposed by phenomenological bracketing, studies of communicative behaviour should be open to the fact that the rules of interpretation are not invariant essences of the social life-world, but are themselves subject to other social processes In fact, communicative behaviour rests on work and power relations as well as on language; and if we comprehend the typification schemes of language as the most fundamental rules of everyday life, we also have to notice that even language is subject to distortions caused by the condition of our life-style The interpretive paradigm may well serve to bring a deeper understanding of the potentialities as well as the limitations of the patterns of communicative behaviour that produce and reproduce the social reality However the social world is structured not only by language but also by the modes and forces of material production and by the systems of domination ' VI

Militant political activity of the kind described in this paper is a real, new, emergent feature of political conflict in our society. Its significance as a form of 'political deviance', while not wholly attributable to the cultural process by which such acts are labelled and defined as deviant, appears in large measure as an aspect best understood in terms of that process. Events are real enough, but they are appropriated in social consciousness only as they are culturally signified and defined. Our analysis must therefore attempt to discover the ideas, values, and attitudes which inform those definitions. It must also reveal the categories, conscious or unconscious, into which events are grouped and classified, ranked and ordered, so as to make them meaningful. These frameworks of value and meaning are 'inferential normative structures' of social life. They are widely shared, though not by everyone, and are not understood in the same way by groups who have different life-situation and projects, and who may be the objects rather than the subjects or authors of such 'accounts'. These maps of meaning give plausibility, order and coherence to discrete events, by placing them within a common world of meanings. Culture is knitted together by these overlapping, partially closed, incomplete mappings of problematic social reality. Such 'structures' tend to d$fine and limit the range of possible new meanings which can be constructed to explain new and unfamiliar events. In part, such normative

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structures are historical constructs, already objectivated and available as the informal social knowledge - 'what everybody knows' about a social situation. They have been routinized and sedimented over time, and are available for the construction of new definitions and labels only in truncated form. They also exhibit varying degrees of 'closure' and of 'openness', of coherence or contradictoriness. They are 'moving structures' in that they must be continuously revised and emended to 'cover' new events. They are never stable. The process of emending and revising known definitions, or of constructing new ones, is a societal process, and like all processes in society, is 'structured in dominance'. Nor are they fixed. They contain or make use of their own 'logic-in-use', which serves as a set of loose generative rules which governs the way the 'explanation' can be used. Such normative definitions contain strong predispositions to 'see' events in certain ways: they tend to 'rule in' and 'rule out' certain kinds of additional inferences. In problematic situations, old normative structures are often 'mapped' on to new situations, or new situations are 'mapped' in terms of older meanings. While not limited to 'social interest' in a narrow sense, such structures arise in and are maintained by the reciprocity of social life: they therefore have embedded in them the lifesituations, outlooks, interests, and informal models of the social world of those who actively project them. They are structured by power and domination: inevitably, the normative ad hoc explanations of dominant groups tend to exert more power, to 'cover' a wider range of topics, to provide more inclusive and comprehensive formulations, than those of subordinate groups. The conflicts between social groups are thus always and inevitably mediated by conflicts between contrasting normative definitions - indeed, the conflicts are understood only in so far as such outlooks exist. These structures thus 'betray themselves' at different levels of social life, with respect to wider or narrower areas, with greater or lesser degrees of structuralism. At the level of everyday comprehension, the common sense world is 'classified out' in stereotypical ways which simplify and crystallize complex social processes in distinctive ways. At this level, then, they surface in the form of informal 'models', ad hoc explanations, proverbs, maxims, routines, recipes, truncated social myths, images, and scenarios. At the level of social life as a whole they 'surface' as fullblown ideologies, symbolic universes, secular versions of the sacred canopy.

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Notes 1 Empirical work relating to this project is currently being undertaken in the News/media project, Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. 2 Deviance always represented a 'deviant' area within the overall American structural-functionalist paradigm. Cf. Matza (1969) and Taylor, Walton, and Young (1973). 3 Elsewhere I tried to identify the alternating rhythm in American 'new left' politics, between the 'political' and 'experiential' pole. Cf. 'The Hippies: An American Moment' (Hall 1969). 4 Despite massive documentation, there is still no adequate typology of the tactics and forms of struggle of the oppositional movements of the 19605. The American movement probably represents the widest range of tactics, though it omits some: see inter alia Teodori (1969). Part 2 of Politics of the New Left (Stolz 1971) contains extracts on 'forms of action'. Horowitz (1970) offers a list of anti-war activities arranged by tactics, in the Appendix to The Struggle is the Message. Oppenheimer (1970) deals exclusively with urban insurgency. See also Jacobs (1970). 5 No adequate theoretical account of these emergent movements is yet available. Habermas (1971), though abstract and moderate in perspective, is suggestive. Two modest but important attempts are Mitchell (1971) and Nairn (1968). Any adequate account would have to deal with what Gransci called 'organic' and 'conjunctual' features. 6 Though contemporary critiques retain both the notion of 'dominant ideology' and of 'consensus', there is little detailed work which analyses the mediations between them. 7 For a brief characterization of 'consensus polities', see Williams (1968). 8 For the original notion of a 'deviancy amplification spiral', see Wilkins (1967). For its application to the role of the media, see Young (1971). 9 On 'problematic situations'. Cf. Douglas (i97oa and I97ob). 10 The perspective employed here is, of course, 'ethnomethodologicaP. Cf. especially, Garfinkel (1967). 11 Althusser's formulations on the specificity of practices and contradictions within 'the ever-pre-givenness of a structured complex unity' seem to us crucial and definitive. See, especially, 'Contradiction and Over-Determination' and 'On the Marxist Dialectic' in For Marx (Althusser 1969). 12 Work is only just beginning on the specificity of 'signification' as a form of praxis. Apart from the work of Marxist structuralists, such as

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the Tel Quel group, see some suggestive remarks on poiesis as a praxis in Lefebvre (1968). On degrees of 'typification', see Berger and Luckmann (1967). The media both serve as primary agents of signification, generating descriptions and explanations of their own account, and as secondary agents, relaying and amplifying accounts given by other agencies. Where its secondary function is concerned, the link must be made via the notion of the media's 'accredited witnesses' - its sensitivity to other power signifying agencies in society set against the problems of access by alternative minority groups. It is by way of some structure composed of accredited witnesses/limited access/notions of news values that the media reproduces the structure of dominance and subordination within the public discourse. I am indebted here, especially, to Jock Young and Stan Cohen for the opportunity to discuss work in the area of the media and 'deviance', much of it as yet unpublished, which considerably advanced this argument. See, inter alia, Jock Young's paper in this volume, and Stan Cohen (1972). For the concepts of 'unwitting bias' and 'inferential structure*, cf. Lang and Lang (1953 and 1965). For a recent application of these concepts, see Halloran, Elliot & Murdock (1970). On the signification of protest, cf. inter alia, Lang and Lang (forthcoming), Edelman (1967), Turner (1969) and Grimshaw (1968). The semiological analysis of ideological discourse now developing in France appears as yet to have made little or no impact on traditional content analysis or mass communications 'effects' studies which use content analysis as a base. For a very similar model, cf. Jock Young's paper in this volume. See, for example, McCann (1971) and Foot (1972). For the notion of 'mapping', see Laing (1971).

References ALTHUSSER, L. 1969. For Marx. London: Allen Lane. 1970. Reading Capital. London: New Left Books. 1971. Ideology in the State. In Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays. London: New Left Books. BARTHES, R. 1971. Rhetoric of the Image. Working Papers in Cultural Studies I (Spring): 37-50. BECKER, H. s. 1967. Whose Side Are We On ? Social Problems 14 (Winter): 239-47BERGER, P. & LUCKMANN, T. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Anchor.

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BURGELIN, o. 1968. Structural Analysis and Mass Communication. In Studies of Broadcasting 6: 143-168. COHEN, s. 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: MacGibbon & Kee. CO MPT ON, E. Report of the Enquiry into Allegations against the Security Forces of Physical Brutality in Northern Ireland arising out of Events on p August 1971. Cmnd 4823. London: HMSCX DOUGLAS, j. 19703. Deviance and Respectability. In J. Douglas (ed.) Deviance and Respectability. New York: Basic Books. I97ob. Deviance and Order in a Pluralistic Society. In J. C. McKinney & E. A. Tiryakian (eds.) Theoretical Sociology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. DREITZEL, H. p. I97O. Patterns of Communicative Behaviour. In H. P. Dreitzel (ed.) Recent Sociology Vol. 2. New York: Crowell Collier Macmillan. EDELMAN, M. 1967. Myths, Metaphors, and Political Conformity. Psychiatry 30 (3): 217-228. FOOT, M. 1972. Ulster Coverage or Cover Up. Ink (7 January 1972). GARFINKEL, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. GEERTZ, c. 1964. Ideology as a Cultural System. In D. Apter (ed.) Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press. GRAMSCI, A. 1971. The Intellectuals, Notes on Italian History, and The Modern Prince. In Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith (eds.) Selections from Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart. GRIMSHAW, A. 1968. Three Views of Urban Violence. American Behavioral Scientist (March/April). HABERMAS, j. 1971. Toward a Rational Society. London: Heinemann. 1967. The Condition of England Question. People and Politics (Easter). • 1969. The Hippies: an American Moment. In J. Nagel (ed.) Student Power. London: Merlin Press. HALLORAN, j. 1970. The Social Effects of Television. In J. Halloran (ed.) Effects of Television. London: Panther. HALLORAN, j., ELLIOTT, & MURDOCH. 1970. Demonstrations and Communication. Harmondsworth: Penguin. HARRIS, N. 1969. Beliefs in Society. London: Watts. HOROWITZ, i. L. & LIEBOWITZ, M. 1968. Social Deviance and Political Marginality. Social Problems 15: 280-296. HOROWITZ, I. L. 1970. The Struggle is the Message. Berkeley: Glendessary Press. LANG, K. & LANG, L. 1953. The Unique Perspective of Television and Its Effect. American Sociological Review 18 (i).

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LANG, K. & LANG, L. 1965. The Inferential Structure of Political Communications. Public Opinion Quarterly 19 (Summer). JACOBS, H. (ed.) 1970. Weatherman. San Francisco: Ramparts Press. LAING, R. D. 1971. The Politics of the Family. London: Tavistock Publications. LEFEBVRE, H. 1968. The Sociology of Marx. New York: Random House. LEMERT, E. T. 1967. Alcohol, Values and Social Control. In Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. MCCANN, E. 1971. The British Press and Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Socialist Research Council. MARX, K. & ENGELS, F. 1965. The German Ideology (trans. C. Dutt). London: Lawrence & Wishart. MATZA, D. 1969. Becoming Deviant. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. MITCHELL, j. 1971. Woman's Estate. Harmondsworth: Penguin. NAIRN, T. 1968. Why It Happened. In A. Quattrocchi & T. Nairn (eds.) The Beginning of the End. London: Panther. OPPENHEIMER, M. 1970. Urban Guerilla. Harmondsworth: Penguin. PARKIN, F. 1971. Class Inequality and Political Order. London: MacGibbon & Kee. PARTRIDGE, p. 1971. Consent and Consensus. London: Macmillan. POULANTZAS, N. 1966. Vers une theorie marxiste. Les temps modernes 240 (May). 1968. Pouvoir politique et classes sociales. Paris: Maspero. SHIBUTANI, T. 1955. Reference Groups as Perspectives. American Journal of Sociology 60 (May). STEADMAN-JONES, G. 1972. The Marxism of the Early Lukacs. New Left Review 70. STOLZ, M. 1971. The Politics of the New Left. New York: Free Press. TAYLOR, I., WALTON, P., & YOUNG, j. 1973. The New Criminology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, TEODORI, M. 1969. The New Left: a Documentary History. New York: Bobbs Merrill. TURNER, R. 1969. The Public Perception of Protest. American Sociological Review 34 (6). WILLIAMS, R. (ed.) 1968. May Day Manifesto. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1971. Who Speaks For Wales ? Guardian (3 June). WILKINS, L. 1967. Social Policy) Action, and Research. London: Tavistock Publications.

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WOLFF, R. P. 1965. Beyond Tolerance. In R. P. Wolfe, B. Moore & H. Marcuse. Critique of Pure Tolerance. Boston: Beacon. YOUNG, J. 1971. The Role of the Police as Amplifiers of Deviancy. In S. Cohen (ed.) Images of Deviance. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Subject Index abduction, as conventional determinant of going missing, 179-80 access facility, in pilferage, 221-2, 226-7 action, and mind, intentionality of, 127-8 actor meanings of, attempts to describe, 135-8 phenomenological view of mind of, 127 Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders, 18 and Cambridge Institute of Criminology, 31 Africa folk system in, 109-10 homicide and suicide in, 108 urban, deviance in, 101 alter ego, Shultz's general thesis of, 133-4 ambiguity, and deviance, 145-6,148 America, criminology in, 9 and British criminology, 14, 15 amnesia, as conventional determinant of going missing, 179-80 amphetamine use, social reactions to, 237 analytical system, and folk system, 109 anarchism, and sociology of deviance, 25 Anarchy, 25 anomie, clarification of concept of, 153 astrology, 235 authorities, levels within, and deviance research, 60-1

basic rules, in sociology, 140-1 Birmingham University, incident at, 281, 282-5 black power, 270 breathalyser legislation, 86n Britain, sociology of law in, 68 British Journal of Criminology, (BJC), 8, n, 12, 13, 17, 31 analysis of contents of, 13 British Society of Criminology, (BSC), 8, n, 12, 13, 31 analysis of meetings of, 14, 17 British Sociological Association, 24 interests of members of, 24-5 Cambridge Institute of Criminology, 7, 8, 12, 15, 17, 18, 27 and Home Office, 31 Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development, first report of, 19-20 capitalism and consensus politics, 272 and extra-parliamentary opposition, 273 Case Con, 28-9 Centre for Mass Communication Research, 21 'changeling' theme, 179-80 Chicago school, 23 closed societies, 244 common sense, 49-50 and creation of sociological interpretations, 152-3 and criminal justice, 155 and deviance, 147 comparative analysis, 91, 93-6 of deviance, 91-3, 95-117 deficiencies of, 97-100, 100-2

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comparative analysis—contd and Matza, 91-2 and relationship between deviants and controllers, 112-7 and societal response, 102-12 and equivalents, 94-6 and explanation, 95 logic of, 95-6 methodology of, 93-6 of political-party systems, 96 and uniqueness of folk systems, 109-10 Compton Report, 287 conflict, and rules, 147 'congruency of relevance', 133 consciousness, phenomenological view of, 126-7 'consensualese', 238, 240, 250 consensus, 233-6 consensus of, 254 and control, 238 and criminal law, 78-81, 82 deviants' perception of, 254-7 and ethos of productivity, 237-8 and media industry, 240-52, 252-4 and contradictions, 244-52 and perceived measure of agreement, 253 politics, 272, 273-4 pressure towards, 239-40 conspiracy theories, and student unrest, 281-5 constitutive imperative, 126,128 contradictions in consensual role of media first level, 245-7 second level, 247-52 control by accusations of deviance, 60 agencies of, and student protest, 283 and closed societies, 244 and consensus, 238 in Gramsci's theory of social hegemony, 295 lack of definition of, 144 and the media, 244

and political deviance, 261-2 controllers, and deviants in comparative analysis, 112-17 gap between, 114-17 in pre-industrial societies, 114 conventional morality, and interactionist theory of deviance, 54-5 co-orientation, 253 and mass-media, 253-4 correction, 4-5 and mainstream criminology, 6, 15-18, 23 correctional perspective, discarding of, 142 'corruption of innocent', media model of deviancy, 249-52 'normal' motives for, 250 crime comparative analysis of, 91-3, 95-117 controller/deviant relationship in, 112-17 Durkheim's view of normality of, 93 societal response to, 102-12 statistical approach to, 98-9 ambiguities generated by, 100 criminal justice, and common sense, 155 criminal law and changes in overt behaviour, 79 and consensus, 78-81, 82 and criminology, 9 inimical to powerful interests, 72-5 and factory legislation, 74-5 irrelevant to power, 75-7 and legality, 84 and morality, 76-7 and consensus, 77 and power, 69-72, 81-4 and property, 75-6 self-defeating as coercion, 83 sociology of, 68 criminology clash of interests in, 17-18

309 consensus of definitions of, 233-

Subject Index mainstream, 6-21 British, see separate entry and comparative analysis, 97100 exceptions from, 21 institutional position of, 31, 35 inter-disciplinary nature of, 10-15 pragmatic nature of, 6, 8-10 and sociology of deviance, 3, 5-6, 31-6 and penal reform, 16-18, 32-4 relevance of, 34 criminology, British history of, 6-21 and America, 9, 14, 15 analysis of content and preoccupations of, 13-14 and the Continent, 9, 10 and correction, 15-18 inter-disciplinary nature of, 10-15, 2° and positivist trap, 18-21 and pragmatism, 6, 8-10, 20 parochialism of, 15 and sociology, 21-6 cross-cultural studies, 100-2 'culture pattern' technique, 108 Delinquency and Drift, 26 delinquency, prediction of, 13 democracy, models of, 265 democratic pluralism, 266-7 descriptive imperative, 126, 128 determinism, 18-19 deviance accusation of, and control, 60 aetiology of, and the media, 255 ambiguity of term, 144, 145-6 amplification, and mass media, 256-7 as collective action, 44-9 and common sense, 147 comparative analysis of, 91-3, 95-H7 deficiencies of, 97-100, 100-2 and deviant/controller relationship, 112-17

236

corruption model of, 248-51 cross-cultural studies of, 100-2 'culture pattern' technique for study of, 108 definitions of, 43-4, 46-9, 54, 58-9, 86n, 144, 145-6* 148149 and time, 48-9 disagreement about, 46 going missing as, 165 implosion, 242-3 an interactionist theory of, (labelling theory), 41-63 and levels of authorities, 61 and mass media, 21 media view of, 245-52 as sickness, 246-7 mismanagement model of, 248 and models of the state, 265-7 and moral indignation, 237-9, 242 normality of, 93 perspective and common sense, 147 concepts of, 152 definition of, 142, I59n development of, 143, 149-51 and phenomenological sociology, 145-53 and rules for deviance and control, 145 political, see political deviance political response to, 105-6 and power, 49 public designation of, and designators, 76-7 and 'right to dissent', 264 and rules, 146-7 and social control, 4 social and political, 261-8 societal response to, 102-12 in societies without the concept, 113 and sociology, 41 sociology of, xi and anarchism, 25

3io

Subject Index

deviance—contd identification of, 3-6 and phenomenology, 125-57 and sociology, 3-4, 26 and sociology of law, 69 and soft-drug culture, 264 statistical approach to, 98-9 study of, 24 political implications of, 5-6 deviant culture and leisure industries, 252, 255-6 politicizing of, 264 views, and consensual ones, 237 deviant-amplifying system, 116-17 deviants and controllers, in comparative analysis, 112-17 gap between, 114-17 effects of mass media on, 254-7 politicizing of, 263-4 in pre-industrial societies, 114 self-consciousness of, 117 Division of Labour, 22 drug use judgement of, 57-8 and the media, 255 methodology of a study of, 155-6 newspaper attention to, 243 and political deviance, 264 press reporting of, 251-2 social reaction to, 237, 239-40 economic pressures, as explanation for going missing, 172,178179 empiricism, and phenomenology, 126, 127 Enfield Mass Media Project, 257n enforcement agencies, and public perceptions of deviance, 80 equivalents and comparative analysis, 94-6 and deviance, 96-7 and statistics, 98-9 estabHshmentarian view of interactionist theories, 55-61

ethical positions and drug use, 57-8 and interactionist theory* 57-9 and selection of problems, 59 ethnocentrism, 136-7, 138 ethnomethodologists, 138 ethnomethodology, 125 and conventional sociology, 140141, 141-2 and language, 134 existential realism, 129-31, 132 and Husserl's concepts, 130, 131 extra-parliamentary opposition, 268-9 Fabian approach, 9, 10 and criminology, 23 factory legislation history of, in the UK, 74-5, 82 and self-interest of manufacturers, 74-5 field observation, and interactionist theory of deviance, 52-3 folk system, 109-11 and analytical system, 109 debate of Gluckman and Bohannan on, 109-12 of Tiv, 109-11 foodstuffs, pilferage of, at St Johns, 219-20 foreman, at St Johns, and occupational theft, 210-11, 222 formal work values, 233-6 and modern industry, 233-4 gap,

between controller and deviant, 114-17 definition of, 115-16 historical development of, 114H5 going missing definition of, 164, 167-70 as deviant behaviour, 165 explanations of abduction as, 179-80 amnesia as, 180 legal and administrative reasons as, 178-9

Subject Index shame and guilt as, 181-2 'working the folks' as, 182 incompleteness of studies of, 166-7 methodology of study of, 166-7 mystery of, 165-6 neglect of, by sociologists, 164 and Salvation Army, 164 as a social disengagement, 168 types of, 169-70 hedonism, 233 and productivity, 235 Hewitt and Jenkins hypothesis, 12 hippy movement, 184, 235 Home Office, 8, 9, 17, 18 Research Unit, 8, 12, 14 and Cambridge Institute of Criminology, 31

311

and field observation, 52-3 and imputations of deviance, 46, 47,62 misconceptions of, 42 moral problems posed by, 53-61 and records, 52 'interchangeability of standpoints', 133 interpersonal relationships, as explanation for going missing, 172-3, 180-1 intersubjectivity, 133 Irish Republican Army, 286 and minority/majority paradigm, 286-8

Jesness Inventory, 12 journalists consensual views of, 240, 241, 244 and consequent contradictions, ideological consciousness, levels of, 244-52 289-94 influences upon, 239 'Ideological State Apparatus', 295Justice and Judgement^ in ideologies, 289-96 'labelling process', 150 adaptation of, 291-2 labelling theory, 3, 4, 41-63 dominant, 290-1 criticisms of, 42 and ISAs, 296 and political deviance, 262 ideology, study of, 278-9 laissez-faire model of mass media ill-health, and going missing, 174 and public opinion, 229-30 implications, political, of study of language, and ethnomethodology, deviance, 5-6 individual psychology, and devi134. 155 Law in Economy and Society y 67 ance, 45 Industrial Relations Bill, action law and sociology, 67-9 against, 288-9 sociology of, 21 Institute for Study and Treatment of Delinquency, (ISTD), 8, 'Lebenswelt', concept of, 132, 134 Left n, 12, 13, 17, 31 definition of, 63n clinical nature of approach at, 12 and political deviance, 268 and National Health Service, 12 intentional object, 127 view of, of interactionist theories, 55-61 interactionist theory of deviance, Legal Advice Research Unit, 21 (labelling theory), 41-63 Legal Research Unit, Bedford and conventional morality, 53-5 College, 21 criticisms of, 42 establishmentarian view of, 55- legality, concept of, 84 61 legitimation, 276

296

312

Subject Index

leisure, 234, 235-6 industry, and subterranean groups, 252, 255-6 London School of Economics, incident at, 281-2 longshoremen, pilferage among, 209-27 LSD changing press reaction to, 251-2 myths about, and users, 255 mainstream criminology, 6-21 interdisciplinary nature of, 10-15 pragmatic nature of, 6, 8-10 and sociology of deviance, 3, 5-6 mass culture, studies of, and deviance, 21 mass-manipulative model of mass media and public opinion, 229-30 mass media accentuation of illicit pleasure by, 245 and attitudes held by population, 231-3 attitudes presented in, 230-1 bittiness of information purveyed by, 243, 252 and consumption, 245-6 corruptor image of, of deviance, 249-52 'creation* of social problems by, 243 and deviance amplification, 256257 and dominant ideology, 298 effects of, on the consensus, 252254 effects of, on deviants, 254-7 need of, for the atypical, 245 and 'nemesis effect', 251 and political reality, 277-8 provision of models by, 231-3 and reinforcement of consensus, 238-40, 240-52 contradictions involved in, 244-52 and social segregation, 240-1

and student protest, 281-5 studies of, and deviance, 21 and Ulster, 286-8 Maudsley Hospital, n members accounts of, and sociologists', 154 and anomie, 153 typifications of deviance by, 148, 151, 152 men's suits, pilferage of, at St Johns, 215-17 metaperceptions, and consensus, 253 Middle Ages, controller/deviant gap in, 115 'Middle Underground', 28 mind, and action, intentionality of, 127-8 minorities, political, see political minorities minority/majority structure, 280-9 examples of, 281-8 in Ulster, 286-8 mismanagement model, of media, 248 missing persons, 163-204 and see going missing age of, 173-4 circumstances of disappearance, of, 175-7 definition of, 164, 167-70 as deviant behaviour, 165 incompleteness of studies of. 166-7 meaning of act of going missing for, 165 methodology of study of, 166-7 mystery of, 165-6 neglect of subject of, 164 public awareness of, 168 recognition of, 171 and Salvation Army, 164 search for, 170-2 reasons for, 170-1 sex of, 173-4 mode of life, as explanation for going missing, 173

Subject Index moral indignation, 236-9 and drug taking, 239-40, 241 and journalism, 239 moral problems, posed by interactionist theories, 53-61 mundane sociology, 135 My Lai, 61 mystification, in law, 80-1 narcotics legislation, in US, 77 motives of doctors pressing for, 82 National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 9 National Deviancy Conference, 25 backgrounds of original members of, 27 evolution of, 26-30 future of, 30 National Health Service, and ISTD, 12 National Union of Seamen, and minority/majority paradigm, 288 'nemesis effect', in mass media, 251 news, and mass media, attitudes presented in, 230-1 Nordic countries, penal values in, 104 Norwegian price-control legislation, 73 Nuffield Foundation, 21 objectivism, and comparative analysis, 94 occupational theft, 209-27 open societies, 244 Outsiders^ 26 overt behaviour, and criminal law, 79 Passing On, I59n penal reform, and criminology, 16-18, 32-4 penal values, changes in, 103-4 in Nordic countries, 104 personification, 249n

313

'phenomenon', concept of, 126 phenomenological philosophy, and phenomenological sociology, 131-5 phenomenological sociology and 'labelling process5, 150 and language of sub-cultures, 155 and limitations of deviance perspective, 149-50 and members' accounts, 154-5 and phenomenological philosophy, 131-5 phenomenology basic themes of, 125-9 and British intellectual climate, 126 constitutive, of the natural attitude, 133-5 and conventional sociology, 141142, 156-7 and empiricism, 126 ideas of, development of, 129-31 and phenomenological sociology, 131-8 and rationality, 137 and sociology of deviance, 125157 physical disappearance, see going missing pilferage, occupational, 209-27 at St Johns, 211-27 access facility in, 221-2, 226-7 case studies of, 215-20 convictions for, 223-4 and interrelationships of gang, 223 managerial reactions to, 226-7 morality of, 224-7 regulation of, 224-7 support facility in, 221-2, 226-7 system of, 220-7 upper limits to, 225-6 Pilkington strike, 238-9 police background expectancies of, 152 and missing persons, 175 sociology of, 21

314

Subject Index

political deviance, 261 and consensus politics, 273-4, 278 definitions of, 268-9, 279 emergence of, 267-8, 269-72 labelling of, 262 militant activity as, 299 political communications concerning, 280-1 recruitment to, 270-1 signification of, 280 and social deviance, 261-8 and models of the state, 265-7 and 'right to dissent', 264 and soft-drug culture, 264 study of, 279-80 political minorities and capitalism, 273 emergence of, 267-8, 269-72, 299 marginality of, 270 recruitment to, 270-1 political-party systems, comparative studies of, 96 political reality and mass media, 277-8 new explanations of, 275-6 political response to deviance, 105106 Political Systems and the Distribution of Power, n8n politics, and deviance theory, 262 positivist trap, in mainstream criminology, 6, 18-21 Goring caught in, 7 'potentially deviant' acts, and definition of deviance, 54 definition of, 44 power -conflict model, of law, 69-75, 81-4 and consensus, 78-81, 82 and criminal law, 69-75 and mystification, in legal decision making, 80-1 powerful interests, criminal laws inimical to, 72-5

pragmatism in mainstream criminology, 6, 810 and sociology of deviance, 20 productivity, ethos of, as consensual value, 237-8 and media view of deviance, 247, 248 public information, structuring of, 242-5 public opinion, and mass media and attitudes of public, 231-3 models of, 229-30 punishment and minority/majority structure, 284 severity of, and deviance, 103 race

relations research, and criminology, 17 Radical Alternatives to Prison, (RAP), 29 'radical', definition of, 63n rationalism, and phenomenology, 127 rationality and phenomenological sociology, 137-8 phenomenologist's use of term, 135-6 unclarified normative conceptions of, 136 'reciprocity of perspectives', 133 Reformation, controller/deviant gap in, 115 reformative position, and mainstream criminology, 6, 1518,23 religion, sociological analysis of, 96 religious beliefs, submerged, 234235 Report of the Commission on Obscenity) 36n 'right to dissent', and deviance, 264 Roman Law, and criminology, 10 rules and deviance, 146-7 Rules, 22

Subject Index St Johns, Newfoundland hiring of port labour in, 209-10 method of unloading at, 210-15 pilferage at, 215-20 system of, 220-7 working situation in, 210-11 Salvation Army, and missing persons, 164 secondary deviance, 27 'secret deviance', 47-9 labelling of, and time, 48-9 Sherman Act, 85n ship's officers, and pilferage at St Johns, 217-18, 218-19, 221, 222 sickness, of deviant, as seen by media, 246-7 Social Aspects of Crime in England between the Wars, II social control and deviance, 4 and sociology, 163 Social Defence group, 105, 106 social deviance, and political deviance, 261-8 and models of the state, 265-7 and 'right to dissent', 264 and soft-drug culture, 264 social disengagement as subjective experience, 182-4 and hippies, 184 and tramps, 183-4 types of, 169-70 social hegemony, Gramsci's notion of, 294-5 Social Problems^ 24 Social Science Research Council policy of, in criminological research, 17-18 survey of sociological research by, 24 social segregation and deviant, and mass media, 254-5 and political domain, 276-7 socialization, by media, 232 societal reaction, 149, 150 societal response to deviance

315

controller/deviant relationship in, 112-17 evolution of, 102-12 societies, classification of, 244-5 society, consensus image of, 233-6 and ethos of productivity, 237-8, 247 Society for the Study of Social Problems, 26 sociological criminology, and criminology in Britain, 1415 sociologists development of functional universal approach among, 9394 and invasion of lives of others,

i63

and 'labelling process', 150 lack of interest of, in criminology, 22 and moral questions, 54-62 novice, difficulties of, 50-1 sociology basic and surface rules in, 140-1 and comparative analysis, 91 concepts, clarification of, 152 conventional, and ethnomethodology, 140-1 of crime, and sociology of law, 67-9 and criminology in Britain, 21-6 of deviance and anarchism, 24 and background expectations, 152 commitment of, 35 growth of, 29 and mainstream criminology, 26, 31-6 and National Deviancy Conference, 26-30 and phenomenology, 125-57 power base of, 31 and pragmatism, 20 relevance of, 34 and social control, 163 and sociology, 3, 4

3i6

Subject Index

sociology—contd and ethnomethodology, 141-2 and law, 67-9 of law, 21, 67-84 development of, 68 and legality, 84 and sociology of crime, 67-9 methodological problems in, 147-8 mundane, 135 phenomenological, the observer in, 138-41 phenomenological criticisms of, 141-2, 156-7 and phenomenological philosophy, 131-8 self-images of, 23 of sociology, 141 and sociology of deviance, 3-4 and the Left, 25 and those studied, 51 State, the, 294, 295 * State Apparatus', 295 statistical approach to deviance, 98-9 'strict liability', offences, 87n student protest, media theories of, 281-5 subterranean values, 233-6 and leisure industry, 252 Suicide, 22 suicide, phenomenological studies of, 156 superordinate groups, and hierarchy, 60 support facility, in pilferage, 221-2, 226-7 surface rules, in sociology, 140-1 Tavistock Institute, n temperance movement, in US, 76-7 'the comparative method', 92 The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, 35 The German Ideology, 289

The Sociology of Deviancy, 85n Tichborne claimant, i88n Tiv, 109-11 trades unions, and political deviance, 271 tramps, 183-4 transcendental idealism, 129-31, 131-2, Ulster, civil rights movements in, 270, 286-8 United States criminology in, and other countries, 100 sociology of law in, 68 statistics of crime in, 99, 100 universals, social and cultural, 93 unofficial strikes, and minority/ majority paradigm, 286 value problem, and sociologists, 20-1

values, formal work, and subterranean, 233 value-systems, 289 dominant, 290 white-collar crime, and sociology of law, 68-9 white slavery, 19 in witchcraft, 48 Wootton Report, 36n work, and leisure, 235-6 working-class consciousness, and pilferage, 226 working-class organizations, and political minorities, 271 'working the folks', 182 'working the value of the boat', 224-6 young, the and going missing, 174 media stereotypes of, 241

Name Index Abel-Smith, B., 21 Ahrenfeldt, K. H., ii8n Akers, R. L., 42 Allsop, K., 178, 19711, 201, 2O2n, Althusser, L., 273, 275, 291, 292, 295, 296, 30111 Alvarez, R., 46, 54 Ancel, M0 105, 1 06, 107, ii9n Anderson, N., 178, 182, 183, 186, I93n, 20in, 2O2n Anderson, P., 10 Angele, E., see under May, R. Arnold, T., 73 Ashworth, Henry, 75 Atkinson, J. M., I95n Aubert, V., 71, 72, 73 Avison, N. H., n8n Bailey, F. G., n8n Baines, E., 74 Banton, M., 21 Barthes, R., 292 Becker, H. S., 3, 4, 17, 22, 36n, 41, 42, 43, 47, 53, 55, 63n, 80, 82, 98, in, 113, 146, 147, 148, 159n, 261 Beckhofer, R., n8n Bell, D., 228n Bendix, R., 83, 95, 96 Berelson, B. R., 230 Berger, P., 2Oon, 234, 244, 275, 276, 277, 292, 293, 302n Berk, R., 63n Berlin, I., 10 Biderman, A. D., 52 Biggs, Ronald, I92n Bingham, J., 2O3n Bittner, E., 52, I93n Blackburn, R.,

Blau, P., I59n Blum, A. F., I59n Blum, R., 239 Blumer, H., 44, 56 Bohannan, P. J., 108,109, no, in Bonger, W., 25, ii9n Booth, C., 2 Bordua, D., 42, 54 Bottomore, T., 35 Braden, W., 251, 255 von Breda, L., I58n Brentano, L. J., 129, I58n Brown, J. A. C., 229 Brown, R. K., 36n Burgelin, O., 280 Burgess, E. W., 49, 229, and see under Park, R. E. Burt, C., 8 Butler, E. W., i89n Callaghan, James, 285 Campbell, A., 96, n8n Canning, Elizabeth, i88n Carr, Robert, 288 Carson, W. G., 8, 14, 36n, 72 Carte, G. E., 5 Carter, M. P., 14, 37n Cavan, J. T., 101, 102, Cavan, R. S., 101, 102, Chambliss, W., 70, 86n Chapman, D., 85 Chomsky, N., 134, 140, 158, 291 Chorley, Lord, 36n Christiansen, K. O., n8n Christie, Agatha, I98n Christie, N., 103, 104 Cicourel, A. V., 47, 52, 98, n8n, 139,140,147,150,152,154,156, I59n Cloete, S., I9in,

3i8

Name Index

Cloward, R., 51 Cohen, A. K., 43, 145, 146, I59n, 236, 237 Cohen, R., n8n Cohen, S., 23, 36n, 80, 257n, 3O2n Cohen, Y., 105, 106, 107, npn Coles, R., 174 Compton, Sir Edmund, 287 Cooke, F., 255 Cooper, D., 170 Coser, L., 78 Cressey, D. R., 15, 1 8 Croft, J., 10 Cudlipp, H., 240 Dalton, M., 45, 61 Darling, Sir W., 2O3n Debro, J., 4 Debuyst, C., ip2n Defleur, L. B., u8n De La Torre, L., i88n Denzin, N. K., I92n, I96n Devlin, Lord, 77 Dicey, A., 69, 82, 83 Douglas, J. D.3 32, 45, 52, 80, 113, H9n, 156, i59n, i6on, i86n, 3Oin Douglas, M., 114, H9n Downes, D., n, 15, 21, 24, n8n Downs, A., 246 Dreitzel, H. P., 298 Driver, E. D., 36n Dror, Y., 83, 86n Dubow, F. L., n8n Durkheim, E., 22, 51, 67, 71, 76, 78, 85n, 86n, 92, 93, 108, H9n, 253, 256, 276 Duster, T., 77, 79, 80, 82 Edel, A., 57, Edelman, M., 3O2n Ellenberger, H. E., see under May, R. Elliot, P., 302n Ellison, M., 180, I9in, I97n, I98n Engels, F., 25, and see under Marx, K. Enzensberger, H., 239

Erikson, K. T., 22,41,45,69, n8n, 145, 146, 147, 148, I59n, 256 Etzioni, A., n8n Eysenck, H. J., 10, 18, 20 Ferracuti, F., H9n Filmer, P., i6on Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 234 Foot, M., 302n Freidson, E., 63n Freud, S., 22 Frey, F. W., 96, 97, Ii8n Galtung, J., 52, 249 Garbo, Greta, 172 Garfinkel, H., 52, 140, 153, I57n, I59n, i6on, 275, 3Oin Gaudet, H., 230 Geer, B., 63n Geertz, C., 278, 279, 280, 291, 292 Geis, G., 69 Gibbens, T. C. N., 12, n8n Gibbs, J., 42, 54 Glaser, B. G., I59n, 19in Glueck, E. and S., 19, 20 Glover, E., 13 Gluckman, M., 107,109, no, 228n Goffman, E., i, 98, 168, i86n, I9on, 19in, I96n, I99n Goldmann, L., 293 Goode, E., 57 Goodenough, W. H., 154, I57n Goring, C., 6, 7, 16, 18, 19, 36n Gouldner, A. W., 17, 27, 35, 36n, 59, 63n, H9n, I59n, i88n Gove, W., 55 Graham, H. D., I2on Gramsci, A., 289, 293, 294, 295, 296, 30in Grayson, Victor, i88n Grieg, F., I98n Grimshaw, A., 3O2n Granhut, M., 10, n Grygier, T. J. H., 36n Gurwitsch, A., I57n Gusfield, J., 47, 76, 77, 86n Gurr, T. R., I2on

Name Index Habenstein, R. W., 53 Habermas, J., 3Oin Hall, J., 86n Hall, S0 21, 20211, 20311, 25711, 264, 272, 30in, 30211 Halloran, J. D., 21, 231, 277, 3O2n Halmos, P., 2O3n Hampshire, S., 134* *57n> *59n Hargreaves, D., 15 Harrington, M., 241 Harris, N., 290, 291, 292, 293 Hart, H. L. A., 77 Hartung, F., 8sn, 86n Haxby, D., 36n Hazard, J., 87n Heidegger, M., 129, 131 Hepworth, M., i88n Hobbes, Thomas, 137 Hobhouse, L. T., 103 Hofstadter, R., 72, 8sn Hollander, P., n8n Holt, R. T., n8n Hood, R., 33 Horowitz, I. L., 2, 25, 36n, 37n, 49, 63n, 261, 262, 263, 264, 268, 30in Horton, R., H9n Hughes, Everett, 49 Hume, David, 126, I57n Humphreys, L., 43, 98, 163 Hunt, M. M., I96n Husserl, E., 129, 130, 131, 132, 133* *3 Jacobs, H., 3Oin Jacobs, J., 156 Jephcott, P., 14 Jones, H., 8, 18, 87n, and see under Grygier, T. J. H. Joos, J., I92n Kaplan, J., 57 Katz, J., 48, Kerouac, J., 2O4n Kerr, M., 14 Kitsuse, J. I., 41, 47) 5^ Klapp, O. E, 184 Klare, H. J., 36n

319

Kobben, A. J. F., 11911 Kockelman, J. J., I58n Kolko, G., 73 Krausz, E., 24 La Fontaine, J. S., H9n Laing, R. D., 27, i89n, 244, 253, 302n Lane, T., 238 Lang, K., 3O2n Lang, L., 3O2n Larrow, C. P., 227n Lawrence, D. H., 185 Lazarsfeld, P. F., 230 Lee, A., 253 Lefebvre, F., I97n, 290, 291, 3Oin Leissner, A., 102 Lemert, E., 3, 4. 27, 41, 42, 72, 78, 79, 850, 98, in, 145* 159^ 20on, 261, 263 Lenski, G., 72, 79, 83 Levi-Strauss, C., 279, 292, 293 Liebowitz, M., 36n, 49, 261, 262, 263, 264, 268 Lindesmith, A. R., 47, 80 Lloyd, R., I96n Lockwood, D., H9n Lofland, J., H9n, 145, 146, 147, 148, I59n Lombroso, C., 6, 7, 22 London, J., 183, 184, 2O2n Lorber, J., 47, 48 Love, E. G., 2Oin Luckmann, T., 2Oon, 275, 276, 277, 292, 293, 302n Luijpen, W. A., is8n Lukacs, G., 293 Lyman, S., 80 Lynd, H. M., 199 McCann, E., 3O2n McCord, J., 19 McCormick, D., i88n Mach, E., I57n McHugh, P., 86n, 152, 153, Maclntyre, A. C., 244 Mack, R. W., 53 McLuhan, M., 242

320

Name Index

Mankoff, M., 55, 58 Mannheim, H., 7, 8, 10, n, 13, 15, 22, 36n, 75 Mars, G., 209, 227n Marsh, R. M., n8n Marx, K., 25, 290 Matza, D., 3, 4, 5, 6, 15, 18, 27, 32, 41, 91, 113, 128, 146, 147, 157, 233, 234, 237, 3