SOC 1500 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Labeling Theory, Structural Marxism, Upper Class

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1500
• Professor: Michelle Dumas

Document Summary

1960s, labeled students that are gifted and smart, slow, not very smart. Looked at how labeling people can have an affect. Not the act itself but contextual meaning. Not deviant until reacted to as such: eye of beholder. Labeling that friends, family, peers will do. Tend to have less serve consequences (mom example: formal: Done by official agents of social control. Look at who is being defined as deviant vs. the definers and those who get labeled tend to have lower power, definers successfully apply the labels. Power is not necessary wealth, but position (job), social power (have a lot of influence). Greater difference of power b/w both groups, easier deviant label is applied. Status degradation: lowers a persons social status publically and the ceremony is the one that moves a person from one social identity to the next (one status to the next).