The labeling approach may be in the process of concluding a circular movement around the concept of power. It begins as an application of pragmatist antiessentialism to the sociology of deviance, becomes a tool of Ž underdog sociology "in the United States before being transformed into a critical tool for the analysis of power and domination in Germany through an emphasis of structural concepts of power. While symbolic interactionism and the pragmatism from which it stems have often been accused of neglecting power, it is precisely the abandonment of structural conceptions of power that can allow the approach to be disconnected from its ailing critical criminology reception and to take part in the renaissance of pragmatism. Additionally, a labeling approach that returns to a pragmatist formulation can be reconciled with etiological research without being appropriated by it.