The Saints and the Roughnecks

The Saints and the Roughnecks
As Chambliss pointed out in his study of the “Saints and Roughnecks,” the label of deviance can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. This accords with what Lamert called the issue of primary and secondary deviance, with primary deviance being largely accepted and unpunished while secondary deviance leads more to punishment and the feeling of being an outcast (Liberman, Kirk and Kim). It also aligns with the concept of social strain theory, in which an individual is pushed to deviance by society because of inherent hypocrisy in society that angers the deviant and makes the deviant want to act out more in response (Agnew). Thirdly, it aligns with the idea of social control theory, which states that deviants act because they want to break from social controls and gain some power for themselves (Schreck and Hirschi). All three theories could be used to explain the situation of the Saints and the Roughnecks. The Saints were not punished for their deviance because society viewed them as good boys overall who came from good families and who would go on to do good things. As a result they went on to have successful lives and never felt the need to lash out, as per the theory of Lamert regarding secondary deviance, or strain theory or to gain social control. The Roughnecks on the other hand were punished for their deviance because society deemed that they came from bad families and had nothing to offer society and would most likely lead bad lives in the future unless they were punished now. As a result, only a third of the Roughnecks went on to succeed. The other two-thirds lapsed into the self-fulfilling prophecy aspect of deviance. Their secondary deviance pushed them into a feeling of social strain, wherein they sought to gain social control through deviance.
Thus, from the Symbolic Interactionist perspective one can see that social behavior is a product of everyday interactions. People have an effect on people that goes down deep, alters their psychology and impacts the way they live and think and behave. The evidence of the Saints and Roughnecks study shows that when people are treated like saints and respected as saints, they tend to go on to live better lives. When people are treated like deviants, like Roughnecks, they tend to go on to feel like deviants and to embrace a life of deviancy since that is what society is pushing them towards.
What compels society to push some towards good lives and others toward bad lives? The study on Saints and Roughnecks showed that what did this was society’s sense of environment. Those who were from a lower income background and had a lower socio-economic lifestyle were viewed as morally inferior to those who came from the middle class background. This idea of associating material wealth and socio-economic status is deeply ingrained in America and shows the extent to which bias and prejudice form to create narratives that impact psychology and cultural sociological expectations. Moreover, when groups view other groups as more likely to engage in deviance for life as a result of their socio-economic background, the latter groups tend to take part in the self-fulfilling prophecy and act like deviants since that seems to be what society wants them to be.
However, if society really wants people to succeed, it has to recognize that all people have the power to become like the Saints if only they had the right support. This means that people have to give better supports to the culture they want to develop. A culture that is focused on identifying negativity in certain groups will promote and propagate negativity and continue to perpetuate a culture of hostility, fear and aggression when there should be peace and harmony. When it comes to racism, for instance, the Symbolic Interactionist perspective shows people harbor biases towards one racial minority than towards the racial majority and that that leads to people acting differently and sometimes defiantly because they are being treated differently. In other words, people react to how others react to them and that sets off a domino-like effect of groups going back and forth with each other, each reacting to the other. So racism can become ingrained in a society this way because no group is interested in setting aside these judgments and seeing other people as people just like them who need support and need to be encouraged because they are people too regardless of their socio-economic condition; and so from a strain theory perspective, this idea could be used to stop the individuals from feeling so exasperated and lashing out. From the primary and secondary deviance theory perspective, it would help to reduce the extent to which secondary deviance is even a problem. From the standpoint of social control theory, it would be used to show why there is no need to act out selfishly to try to gain social control for oneself because society would be in a state of equitability.
That is what is needed now in the culture—more equitability of thought. The culture of today is too oriented towards viewing some as Saints and some as Roughnecks and this idea is picked up by many in society who harbor implicit bias and naturally adopt the perspectives of the culture they are in. Instead of identifying ways to help the victims of society and social bias, they perpetuate the systems of bias by engaging in behaviors that reinforce attitudes of prejudice and hate and fear—all of which leads to a renewed cycle of violence that harms people down the road. The end goal has to be to alleviate the cycle of bias by changing the culture. Just like an organization changes its culture, culture overall in the country has to be changed by the culture industry and this can then begin to help in the healing process.
Works Cited
Agnew, R. Strain Theory. In V. Parrillo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of social problems. (pp.
904-906). Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2009.
Lemert, Edwin M. "Primary and secondary deviation." DR Cressey y (1969).
Liberman, Akiva M., David S. Kirk, and Kideuk Kim. "Labeling effects of first juvenile
arrests: Secondary deviance and secondary sanctioning." Criminology 52.3 (2014): 345-370.
Schreck, C. and T. Hirschi. Social Control Theory. 21st Century Criminology: A
Reference Handbook. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2009.