Frank Tannenbaum: alle origini del labeling. Ovvero, come dimenticare un classico

Abstract

A precursor to the studies on deviance known as "labeling theory", "social reaction theory," or the "new deviance theory", Frank Tannenbaum inaugurated approaches with explicit anti-positivist and anti-individualist intents. These approaches shifted focus toward community influences and responses to the issues of deviance and crime. Drawing from direct experiences of incarceration, his socio-criminological works are not only an early example of convict criminology—as the first "convict" criminologist—anticipating later prison studies, but they also highlight the depth and "thick descriptions" associated with proto-autoethnographies of carceral contexts and social control. Finally, as will be shown, his "dramatization of evil" lies at the heart of the reflections of now-canonical authors, who have often failed to acknowledge his paternity or have ungenerously dismissed the insights of their original architect. This volume collects excerpts from publications and articles previously unknown to Italian sociological discourse, drawn from Tannenbaum's broader socio-criminological production and translated into Italian for the first time. This introduction, meanwhile, aims to restore the author’s complexity for an attentive and as wide an audience as possible.