Deviants were positively identified and labelled: the labelling process served to mobilize moral censure and social sanction against them. This had the consequence of reinforcing the internal solidarity of the moral community. It also served to enforce greater conformity to society’s ‘rules’ by punishing and stigmatizing those who departed from them. Beyond the limit of moral censure were, of course, all those sterner practices of legal processing and enforcement which punished, on behalf of society, deviant infractors…Social order now looked like a rather different proposition. It entailed the enforcement of social, political and legal discipline. It was articulated to that which existed: to the given dispositions of class, power and authority: to the established institutions of society. This recognition radically problematized the whole notion of ‘consensus’.
- Stuart Hall (1932-?)
