Description
Deviant Behavior offers an engaging and wide-ranging discussion of deviant behavior, beliefs, and conditions. It examines how the society defines, labels, and reacts to whatever, and whoever, falls under this stigmatizing processthereby providing a distinctly sociological approach to the phenomenon. The central focus in defining what and who is deviant is the audiencemembers of the influential social collectivities that determine the outcome of this process. The discussion in this volume encompasses both the explanatory (or positivist) approach and the constructionist (or labeling) perspectives, thereby lending a broad and inclusive vista on deviance. The central chapters in the book explore specific instances or forms of deviance, including crime, substance abuse, and mental disorder, all of which share the quality that they and their actors, believers, or bearers may be judged by these influential parties in a negative or derogatory fashion. And through
