Untimely Acts: Extending the Interactionist Conception of Deviance

Abstract

hteractionists and l a b ing theorists have made actors central to a jointly constructed process of deviance. This article extends their arguments to the deviant act itself and suggests how uses and conceptions of time and temporality distinguish deviant acts from routine or other unconventional acts. It treats time systematically in relation to designations of deviance by, first, correlating timing with temporal structures; second, comparing and contrasting deviant acts with untoward and anomalous acts; third, discussing nine temporal dimensions involved in the construction of deviant acts by illustrating how diagnosticians identify problematic drinking; fourth, elaborating the use of these dimensions to deviance in general and to issues of legal and "universal wrongs" which imply a negotiated moral order in modem society.The issues raised by the interactionist perspective on deviance (particularly, the labelling or societal reaction perspective) have encouraged sociologists to explore the interaction between alleged deviants and their audiences and, thus, to treat deviance as joint action (). Adherents and opponents of the interactionist perspective will likely go on debating the merits of specific conceptualizations (e.g., secondary deviance in Gove 1975), but few deny to interactionists their hard-won understanding of deviance as a socially constructed reality which involves the process of stigmatizing actors and acts (Schur 1975). While the probability of ascribing and stigmatizing some acts and actors as deviant can allow researchers to detect and predict regularities, there is nothing within nature and outside of a negotiated order that makes an act deviant in and of itself (Erikson 1962).Despite a wide appreciation that no act is inherently or intrinsically deviant, the aspects of an act which are likely to evoke specific societal reactions and designations remain incomplete and unsystematic. This article explores how an act is defined as deviant through a shared and consensual use of time and, consequently, how particular acts come to be viewed as untimely and vulnerable to negative ascriptions.One crucial but neglected determination of deviance revolves around the temporal *Direct all wrrespadence to: WiUiam A. Reese, Department of Sociology, P.O. Box 30790, Texas Christian University, Fort Wonh, TX 76129.dimensions of an act. Specifically, interactants use particular temporal coordinates or parameters to demarcate the socially defined boundary between normalcy and deviance and as critical cues of how deviant (severe or bad) an act is considered. Understanding how acts or actors become identified as deviant is bound to an additional understanding of how interactants organize temporal life to construct patterned responses to acts and to negotiate distinctions between a variety of these acts.We suggest that time and temporal dimensions are used by competent members of society (the "wide awake citizenry" of Schutz and Luckmann 1973,) and agents of social control to "document" and "typify" action, as either...

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