Beyond Social Constructionism? Cicourel and the Search for Ecological Validity
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12255 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 47, NUMBER 4, NOVEMBER 2020
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 535–57
Beyond Social Constructionism? Cicourel and the Search
for Ecological Validity
DAVID NELKEN∗
This article is a contribution to the occasional series dealing with a
major book that has influenced the author.Previous contributors include
Stewart Macaulay, John Griffith, William Twining, Carol Harlow,
Geoffrey Bindman, Harry Arthurs, André-Jean Arnaud, Alan Hunt,
Michael Adler, Lawrence O. Gostin, John P. Heinz, Roger Brownsword,
Roger Cotterrell, Nicola Lacey, Carol J. Greenhouse, David Garland,
and Peter Fitzpatrick.
I. INTRODUCTION
Some books get under your skin and change your way of experiencing the
world. For me, this wasthe case for Aaron Cicourel’s The Social Organization
of Juvenile Justice.1Scholars in the areas of sociology of law and deviance,
the fields where most of my interests lie,2probably know Cicourel’s name
mainly because of the important article that he authored, together with John
Kitsuse. In it, he explained why official statistics of crime were a better
measure of the behaviour of those defining and counting deviance than they
were of offending behaviour as such.3This book, exploring what lay behind
the statistics of juvenile justice in two contrasting cities in California, took
that argument further. I came across the book soon after it was first published,
and it played a large part in shaping my Cambridge Institute of Criminology
∗The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, Strand, London,
WC2R 2LS, England
david.nelken@kcl.ac.uk
1 A. Cicourel, The Social Organization of JuvenileJustice (1968; republished 1995 with
new material).
2 For sociology of law, see ‘David Nelken Interviewed by Håkan Hydén’ (2018)
YouTube,at<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7euG9F0Vnfk>. For criminology,
see ‘David Nelken Interviewed by Stewart Field’ (2017) YouTube,at<https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=2orIl8xImTU>.
3 A. V. Cicourel and J. I. Kitsuse, ‘A Note on the Use of Official Statistics’ (1963) 11
Social Problems 131.
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© 2020 The Author. Journal of Law and Society © 2020 Cardiff UniversityLaw School
doctoral thesis on the making, enforcement, and breaking of laws dealing
with crooked landlords.4Although I have already acknowledged this debt,5I
welcome the chance to say something more here about the less obvious ways
in which the ideas in it have influenced some of the other matters that I have
worked on since then. (Hopefully, this may also help to reveal that there is a
common thread to what I have been doing!)
This book – now seen as a classic – is one of Cicourel’s most cited
works, but it was written relatively early on in his career, which is still
going strong even now that he is in his nineties.6It is therefore only
one example of ‘the incredible range of social phenomena on which he
has focused’.7The full breadth of Cicourel’s writings is rarely noted
by social-legal scholars; according to him, it is not even that familiar
to other sociologists.8The areas to which he has contributed include
‘research methodology (especially interviews and surveys), medicine, legal
institutions (particularly those focused on juveniles), education, and deaf
communication’.9The disciplines whose perspectives he has engaged with
and helped to shape include ‘anthropology, cognitive science, criminology,
discourse analysis, education, linguistics, medicine, sociolinguistics, and,
of course, sociology’,10 and he ‘anticipated a number of epistemological
revolutions in actor–network theory and structuration’.11 All of this makes
Cicourel difficult to pin down. As he himself explains, ‘I am not in only one
box, theoretically and methodologically, and have done research in different
substantive areas: gerontology, education, juvenile justice, cognition, deaf
sign language, methods, sociolinguistics, fertility, law, and medicine’.12 In
addition to what Briggs has called his ‘restless intellect’,13 Cicourel also
sounds like a lot of fun.14 I am sorry never to have met him.
4 Published as D. Nelken, The Limits of the Legal Process: A Study of Landlords, Law
and Crime (1985; republished 2013 with a new preface).
5 D. Nelken, ‘Being There’ in Lessons fromComparative Criminology,edsL.Chaoand
J. Winterdyk (2004) 138.
6 See, for example, his two chapters in C. Abramson and N. Gong (eds), Beyond the
Case: The Logics and Practices of ComparativeEthnography (2019).
7 C. L. Briggs, ‘Introduction: Aaron V. Cicourel and the Emergence of Critical
Perspectives on Social Scientific Inquiry’ (2007) 27 Tex t an d Tal k 585, at 585.
8 ‘Early in my career, I found it almost impossible to publish in American sociology
journals. Hence, I started writing books and was then able to publish extensively in
applied linguistic journals and books. Sociologists, therefore, haveseldom read a large
part of my work.’ D. Muntanyola-Saura, ‘Interview with Aaron Cicourel’ (2015) 73
Revista Internacional de Sociología 1, at 2.
9Id.
10 Id.
11 Id. See also P. Davies and H. Mehan, ‘Aaron Cicourel’s Contributions to Language
Use, Theory, Method,and Measurement’ (2007) 27 Te xt an d Tal k 595.
12 Muntanyola-Saura, op. cit., n. 8, p. 2.
13 Briggs, op. cit., n. 7.
14 In the same interview, Cicourel tells us that he ‘grew up in a neighborhood with
blacks, Latinos, and Asians. I used to go to nightclubs because I lost hair early and
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© 2020 The Author. Journal of Law and Society © 2020 Cardiff UniversityLaw School
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