Deviance

Deviance: Social Constructions and Blurred Boundaries is designed for courses on social deviance that take a strong sociological perspective. The book draws on up-to-date scholarship across a wide spectrum of deviance categories, providing a symbolic interactionist analysis of the deviance process. The book addresses positivistic theories of deviant behavior within a description of the deviance process that encompasses the work of deviance claims-makers, rule-breakers, and social control agents. Students are introduced to the sociology of deviance and learn to analyze several kinds of criminal deviance that involve unwilling victims-such as murder, rape, street-level property crime, and white-collar crime. Students also learn to examine several categories of "e;lifestyle"e; and "e;status"e; deviance and develop skills for critical analysis of criminal justice and social policies. Overall, students gain an understanding of the sociology of deviance through cross-cultural comparisons, historical overview of deviance in the U.S., and up-close analysis of the lived experience of those who are labeled deviant as well as responses to them in the U.S. today