Drawing new horizons for the criminal issue

Abstract

The second epistemological break to tackle the criminal question will signify a new line that will draw a new criminology in the face of the crisis of traditional thought. The labeling Approach or labeling theory is the model that will constitute this paradigm shift, it will understand that crime, as an object of social study, cannot be conceived as an action, but as a reaction, Larrauri will maintain “the problem was not the subject (who acted) but the social agents (who controlled) ”(Larrauri, 2009, p. 1). The supports for this reading of criminology will be based on the symbolic interactionism of George Mead and ethnomethodology, the latter built from the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz. In these two supports it will be understood that society does not obey a given category, essentialist or objective, but that this is only possible through the articulation of different interactions that constantly produce meanings to specific situations through language (symbolic interactionism), or understanding that social construction is only possible from a definition process (ethnomethodology). Alessandro Baratta, maintains that, “consequently, according to symbolic interactionism and ethnomedology, studying social reality essentially means studying these processes starting from those that apply to simple behaviors and reaching more complex constructions, such as the construction of social order itself ”(Baratta, 2004, pp. 85-86).