Does religion have the power to regulate human behavior? If so, under what conditions can it prevent crime, delinquency, suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse, or joining cults? Despite the fact that ordinary citizens assume religion deters deviant behavior, there has been little systematic scientific research on these crucial questions. This book is the first comprehensive analysis, drawing on a wide range of historical and contemporary data, and written in a style that will appeal to readers from many intellectual backgrounds.

The Handbook of Deviance is a definitive reference for professionals, researchers, and students that provides a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the sociology of deviance. Composed of over 30 essays written by an international array of scholars and meticulously edited by one of the best known authorities on the study of deviance Features chapters on cutting-edge topics, such as terrorism and environmental degradation as forms of deviance Each chapter includes a critical review of what is known about the topic, the current status of the topic, and insights about the future of the topic Covers recent theoretical innovations in the field, including the distinction between positivist and constructionist perspectives on deviance, and the incorporation of physical appearance as a form of deviance

This book draws on nearly one thousand cases and anecdotes about twins bending and breaking rules in order to fulfill or flout tenets of twinhood. Society’s unwillingness to contextualize mores and policies to suit twins may perpetuate controversy and law-breaking. Twins and Deviance shows how twins’ allegedly sacred bond violates conventions beginning at conception. Throughout their lives, they may be victimized, tortured, and neglected specifically because of their bond. Twins have lives that matter – their bond is not static or unconditional, it may be fluent and emotional. The book paints a picture of twin individuals whose lives relate to contemporary readers’ and audiences’ lives because they are weird, eccentric, ritualized, fetishized, pornographized, criminalized, and chastised by society; but what is especially interesting about twins is that society has institutionalized controversial practices and traditions sometimes implicitly or explicitly demanding that twinhood be realized or dishonored so that twins comply with social norms and expectations. Offering a truculent, unpretentious, and straightforward representation of contemporary society, Twins and Deviance does not defend or defy society’s strange, niche, and shaded view of twins. Rather, it artfully and sensitively depicts twins as historically and presently seeming like gods, heroes, renegades, saviors, mutations, terrorists, gangs, and betrayers; and skillfully discusses twins’ bodies to elucidate their individuality, decode their correspondence, and explore analytical tributaries new to sociocultural research. Using vivid examples, Twins and Deviance postulates that twins intrigue and entrance singletons because they deviate from norms, embody principles of duality, fulfill self-reflexive fantasies, and symbolize eternal life and the afterlife. The value of twins and twinhood to singletons is evident in psychoanalysis, reflections, religion and mythology, words, and politics; and yet, this is the only book to bring to light the immense depth of this captivating insight. Twins and Deviance challenges and improves previous research by collecting new topics to retool twins and deviance discussions. As such, it is a must-read for students, professors, and audiences engaging in gender, justice, sexuality, legal, and cultural studies, and all researchers conducting twin studies.

A classic text on deviance is updated and reissued.

This volume is the first to draw together theoretical reflection, empirical research, and critical reflection on practice occurring at the juncture of critical approaches in leisure studies and event studies within diverse explorations of deviance. It includes chapters on games and gaming; performing queerness; events around being kinkster; drugs and sex, LGBTQ+ events and activism, and goth subculture. These are combined with poetry, personal reflection and artwork, much of which has been created by contributors. The compendium draws on inquiry undertaken by contributors from a wide spectrum of academic disciplines, as well as deviant leisure practitioners/event organisers. It seeks to expand the cultural and academic articulation of deviance into other disciplines and to develop new perspectives on deviant leisure and deviant leisure practice. It speaks to students, researchers, and practitioners working or interested in critical leisure and event studies, queer theory, cultural theory, burlesque/circus studies, media studies, and discourse studies.

The Politics and Morality of Deviance develops a theoretical framework and then applies it to four different and specific case studies in an explicit attempt to put the sociology of deviance back into mainstream sociology. It argues that deviance should be analyzed as a relative phenomenon in different and changing cultures, vis-a-vis change and stability in the boundaries of different symbolic/moral universes. It also argues that the legitimization of power should be thought of in terms of a moral order that in turn defines the societal boundaries of different symbolic/moral universes. Mills' concept of motivational accounting systems is utilized throughout the text in order to illustrate how the micro and macro levels of analysis can be integrated.

To conduct this study on criminal and antisocial behavior, the authors devoted years to collecting data from a large community sample of first-generation subjects. Data were garnered throughout their early adolescence, twenties, and thirties as well as from these first-generation subjects’ biological children during their own early adolescence. The results of these studies have profound implications for future research and methodology on deviant behavior.