SOC 2700 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Five Techniques, Shoplifting, Embezzlement
27 Nov 2012
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Document Summary
Symbolic interactionism argues that human actions are best understood in terms of the meanings that those actions have for actors. People first define the meanings of the situations they find themselves in and then act toward those situations in ways that make sense within the context of those meanings. The meanings themselves are created to some extent by the individual, but mostly they are derived from personal communications and interactions with other people. Symbolic interactionism provides a theoretical framework within which human purposes and meanings can be probed more deeply than within the relatively simply classical framework. Using a general focus on human purposes and meaning as the key to understanding the phenomenon of crime, criminologists and other social scientists have made theoretical arguments in five general areas. This approach looks at the meaning of the label criminal in relation to the criminal"s self image. The meaning of crime to the self: labeling theory.
