Deviance Management examines how individuals and subcultures manage the stigma of being labeled socially deviant. Exploring high-tension religious groups, white power movements, paranormal subcultures, LGBTQ groups, drifters, recreational drug and alcohol users, and more, the authors identify how and when people combat, defy, hide from, or run from being stigmatized as “deviant.” While most texts emphasize the criminological features of deviance, the authors’ coverage here showcases the diversity of social and noncriminal deviance. Deviance Management allows for a more thorough understanding of strategies typically used by normalization movements to destigmatize behaviors and identities while contributing to the study of social movements and intra-movement conflict.

This book is for the student in the introductory course on deviant be havior and in related courses. A wide range of ideas and facts is set forth in a way that should be comprehensible to the student without prior knowledge of this area of study. In Chapter 1, "The Nature of Deviance," various ways of defining deviance are explored and one is settled upon: Deviance is behavior that is unusual, not typical, in a society or group. Chapter 2 is devoted to a preliminary consideration of several main currents of social thought that seek to explain why deviance comes about and is perpetrated. These explanations fall into four broad theo retical categories. First, there are those theories that view the major sources of deviance as having to do with the extent to which individ uals are bound into or dissociated from the group; these are termed social integration theories. Second, there are the cultural support the ories, which specify that there are subcultures of deviance, that is, bod ies of customs and values that advocate a given form of deviance and are socially transmitted from one person to another through the learn ing process. Third, there are social disorganization and conflict theo ries, which focus on the ways in which a lack of group organization and the presence of broad social and cultural conflicts bring about de viance.

A comprehensive set of readings examining the full range of concerns in the field of deviant behaviour. All the selections are relatively recent and have not appeared in other anthologies.

"Criminals. Witches. Rebels. Outsiders. Lunatics. Regardless of label, these groups stand outside the common sense of society and its relations of power. Whether by anguish, accident, or desire, they resist falling in line with that power. The story told within this comprehensive, thought-provoking text is a sociological one. Pfohl employs a social-historical perspective to describe and analyze the theory, methods, and control policies associated with nine major ways of conceiving deviant behavior. He analyzes each of the nine perspectives with three objectives: to describe the basic theoretical imagery, research strategies, and social control policies associated with the perspective; to locate the perspective within a general sociohistorical framework; and to develop a sense of critical evaluative thinking regarding the perspective's strengths and weaknesses. The theoretical perspectives examined span a wide variety of religious, legal, medical, psychological, social, economic, and political concerns. Throughout, attention is drawn to the ways that both images of deviance and strategies of social control are shaped by powerful social forces located at the historical intersections of gender, race, and class. In addition, references to literature, film, music, and painting are integrated to show parallels between images of deviance produced by scientists and those produced by artists." -- Publisher.

Perspectives on Deviance and Social Control provides a sociological examination of deviance and social control in society. Derived from the same author team’s successful text/reader version, this concise and student-friendly resource uses sociological theories to illuminate a variety of issues related to deviant behavior and societal reactions to deviance. The authors briefly explain the development of major sociological theoretical perspectives and use current research and examples to demonstrate how those theories are used to think about and study the causes of deviant behavior and the reactions to it. Focusing on the application—rather than just the understanding—of theory, the Second Edition offers a practical and fascinating exploration of deviance in our society.