f itself from the communicative life. The social self understands itself in relationship to others in the world. It achieves what Cooley (2002) calls a sense of "I" that is based in large measure on the ways in which others look at the self.
The labeling perspective deals with two fundamental problems identified by McCaghy, Capron, and Jamieson (2000): the social production of deviance and the effect of labeling on behavior. The focus is on those who define persons and their behavior and not on violations of commonly accepted norms or the assumption that offenders must be different in ways that cause deviance. Deviance is therefore not a way of behaving, but a name or label that is put on something.
It is possible to distinguish between rule-breaking behavior and deviant behavior. It has been argued that "social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them outsiders" (McCaghy, et al, 2000, p. 86). Deviance is therefore not a property inherent in certain behaviors, but is rather a property that is conferred upon those specific forms of behavior by the audiences which witness them. This presents a relativistic approach to deviance because it assumes that the making and enforcement of rules in society are both inconsistent and problematic (McCaghy, et al, 2000). Labeling theory can be traced back to the concepts of Durkheim who argued that the criminal character of acts was due not to the intrinsic quality of a given act but to the definition which the collective conscience applies to the act (McCaghy, et al, 2000).
Rules in society fluctuate over time and are often applied to widely varying degrees within society (Goode, 2001). For example, at one time possession of marijuana was legal in the United States though this is not the case today and possession of marijuana can lead to the application of crimin...