OCR A-Level Sociology H580
Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity
Families and RelationshipsComponent 01
Youth SubculturesComponent 01
MediaComponent 01
Research Methods and Researching Social Inequalities
Understanding Social Inequalities
Globalisation and the Digital Social World
Crime and DevianceComponent 03
EducationComponent 03
Religion, Belief and FaithComponent 03
Youth Subcultures
Labelling, identity, gender, ethnicity and moral panics in youth deviance
- 3 things to know
- Component 01
Overview
Recall questions on left realist objections to neo-Marxism, labelling with Becker and Lemert's primary and secondary deviance, deviant careers and Young's Notting Hill drug users, Thornton's subcultural capital, deviance and identity, Messerschmidt on masculinity, Gilroy and Sewell on ethnicity, and Cohen's moral panics, folk devils and deviance amplification.
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
How can labelling produce a deviant career?
What is Gilroy's explanation of black youth crime, and how do left realists answer it?
Questions from this subtopic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
What do left realists object to in the neo-Marxist account of youth deviance?
Model answer
It romanticises young offenders as political rebels, when most youth crime has no political content and its victims are overwhelmingly other working-class people.
- 2
What is the interactionist starting point on youth deviance?
Model answer
Becker argued that no act is deviant in itself; it becomes deviant only when a rule is applied to it and the label successfully sticks to the person.
- 3
Distinguish primary from secondary deviance.
Model answer
Lemert's primary deviance is rule-breaking that goes unlabelled and has no effect on how a person sees themselves, while secondary deviance is the further offending that follows once the person has been publicly labelled and responds to that reaction.
- 4
How can labelling produce a deviant career?
Model answer
The label becomes a master status that overrides everything else about the young person; others react to it, legitimate opportunities close off, and they take on the deviant identity and seek out others who share it.
- 5
What did Young's study of drug users in Notting Hill show?
Model answer
That heavy police attention pushed marijuana use from a fringe activity to the centre of the group's identity, producing a more organised and secretive deviant subculture, which is a clear case of secondary deviance.
- 6
What are the main weaknesses of the labelling explanation?
Model answer
It is deterministic in assuming labels are always accepted, when some young people reject or resist them, and it says nothing about why the original act was committed.
Other ways to work this
The same content, four other ways.
What is inside Levo
Six ways to work the same material.
Every question in Youth Subcultures, on a schedule.
Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.
Or £46 a year, about £3.83 a month. Cancel anytime.