A Justice Site
A Justice Site
Academic Discourse Issues in Criminology
HOME
Created: October 5, 2000
Latest update: December 24, 2000
jeanne
Information on this concept was taken from pp. 199-203 of Williams and McShane's Criminology Theory, Second Edition, Anderson Publishing, 1998. ISBN: 0-87084-201-3 (pbk).
Return to discussion questions on Lemert's Secondary Deviance.
How does Lemert's conception of secondary deviance fit with Habermasian interdependence?
jeanne's prespective Habermas speaks of finding legitimacy in the system of law that will permit us to live together in peace. Such legitimacy is to be founded on the good faith hearing of all validity claims, meaning that each shall have a voice, and that we shall make every good faith effort to understand the claims and the Other's perspective of those claims.
When Lemert speaks of the miscommunication inherent in labeling someone as "deviant," he recognizes that we have not attempted in good faith to understand what the produced the "deviant" behavior. The "deviant" behavior is an "acting out" of a validity claim. By assuming that we know what lays behing the "acting out," we are substituting our perspective for that of the "Other," and in so doing, silencing the "Other," which renders our "labelling" not legitimate, and contributes to fallacy in our system of law.
How does Lemert's conception of secondary deviance reflect a non-learning auto-poietic system?
jeanne's prespective Our assumption that we "know" what lies behind the "deviant" behavior and that we therefore have no need to consult the "Other" himself (herself), shows an arrogance that Habermas criticizes in system theories. Habermas suggests that although a system theory can provide a means of generating new rules as necessary for the handling of new problems and regeneration of the system, the theory often provides no means for the person governed to register his (her) voice and be heard in good faith by the system, to adjust the system to the actual experience of the citizens so governed. Habermas calls this a "non-learning" system, and he sees it as not giving the legitimacy he tries to provide through public discourse. (This is a very brief summary of Habermas' quarrel with Luhmann's systems theory.)
An example of an auto-poietic non-learning subsystem: the government effort to deal with drugs in the US. The rules of the system say that the use and sale of drugs shall result in imprisonment. The United States today has a larger percentage of its population imprisoned than any other country. The primary system response, when the system has failed to stop the use and sale of drugs, has been to increase the prison term. The system is auto-poietic in the sense that there are self-governing procedures for strengthening the punishment. But the system is non-learning in the sense that there is no good faith recognition of the validity claims being acted out by those who continue to be imprisoned. Consider the similarity here to Said's analysis of culture and imperialism. There would seem to be an unstated assumption operating that the use of drugs is, per se, criminal, and must therefore be suppressed by imprisonment. Such an assumption grants imperial privilege to those making the rules of the system, and relegates the "Other," to a subjugated identity with no privilege of voicing the "Other's" perspective.
How does Lemert's conception of secondary deviance reflect the adversarial paradigm in institutions dealing with deviance?
jeanne's prespective Lemert's conception of secondary deviance recognizes the privileging of the decision-making group's perspective over that of the "Other." Such privileging of the dominant group's subjectivity reflects a failure of the system of law to provide the legitimacy of good faith hearing to all validity claims of those governed by the system. This reflects the adversarial position in which some are privileged at the expense of subjugaed "Others" who are ruled by the system of law even though they have no voice in the rule-making.
For so long as the rule of law is defined by those who privilege their own subjectivity, see no reason to state the underlying assumptions of that subjective perspective, and give no voice to the "Other" who questions those underlying assumptions, we find ourselves in an adversarial position in which some win while others lose. Particularly in the definition of crime and deviance, this matters, for those who lose are oppressed by the rules which do not take them into consideration and give them no voice.