The Politics of Deviance

Until the 1960s, sociologists had asserted that a willingness to identify deviance, or what constitutes appropriate behavior, was indispensable to the process of generating and sustaining cultural values, clarifying moral boundaries, and promoting social solidarity. Yet today, after three decades of lacerating debate, shifts in values and social relations, and questioning social authority, the subject has virtually disappeared from sociology's radar screen. Deviance, in the famous phrase of...