International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 117

International Journal on Criminology
the common law, but solely in relation to the idea of conflict, again presented as
being between deviant norms and majoritarian norms, which in this case reduces
the morphological necessity of the latter to a power relation, a dominant convention
linked to a given conception of “the social order,” rather than as nomological
conditions from a morphological point of view. 17 The authors thus follow on from
the work of Howard S. Becker, who in Outsiders proposes that:
deviance, far from being a quality inherent to the deviant, is a social
construct involving the establishment of a majoritarian norm and
the negative labelling of behaviors specific to a minoritarian subculture
that is labelled as deviant. This dynamic involves the action of
individuals (“moral entrepreneurs”) who have decided, for one reason
or another, to act in this way and to ensure the norm is applied
once it is declared, meaning to exert pressure and sanctions on those
who do not obey it (Bacqué and Sintomer 2001, 234).
And when they discuss the role of these “moral entrepreneurs,” the two authors
explain how the norms are disseminated and embodied. Thus, in the housing
projects studied (Allende and Cochennec):
the formerly dominant group—broadly speaking, the working-class
group—is increasingly unable to symbolically and materially remunerate
and legitimize “normal” behavior. Moreover, while the internal
organization of the dominant group is a key condition for its
domination, the working-class group is too fragmented to impose its
norms. The ineffectiveness of its power is shown by the fact that previously
stigmatized behaviors are widespread and now represent a
model that attracts (or at least does not repulse) a large proportion of
young people (Bacqué and Sintomer 2001, 235).
The authors, in summary, analyze the transmission of norms by subordinating
their acceptance to the pressure of a hegemonic group, 18 in the sense that
17 This evades the objection of François Chazel, who in his article “Retour sur l’'orientation normative
de l’action’: Éléments pour une appréciation tempérée” (2001, 159) states that recognizing “a
role for norms in no way means subscribing to the idea of wholesale determinism. Thus, a norm
is neither a slope denoting a—supposed—underlying necessity, nor an inclination based on the
acceptance of this necessity, but quite simply a rule of action. ( ... ).” It is in no way contradictory to
state that this latter necessitates morphological (and thus ontological) conditions of possibility and
thus involves objective coalescences for this rule to be truly accepted and shared by the agents and
actors considered.
18 The reader is referred to the collection of articles by Boudon et al. (2001) and in particular the article
by Jean Baechler (L’acceptation des normes, 129), who states that the: “form of the norm inscribes
it in a power relation, since there is a conjunction between a stated order and a hope of obedience.
In a power relation, order, although as indispensable as its substance is to the norm, is secondary
to obedience. ( ... ). Following a norm means to obey it, just as disobeying means to violate it. From
there, it appears that the reasons for the acceptance of norms are to be found in the motivation(s)
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