Deviant Behavior

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, "e;The Nature of Deviance,"e; 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.