The sociology of deviance : an obituary

Author(s)

• Sumner, Colin

Bibliographic Information

The sociology of deviance : an obituary

Colin Sumner

Open University Press, 1994

• : pbk

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [316]-331) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Colin Summer charts the rise and fall of a field of enquiry. He argues that the lack of recent "warfare over the terrain over the sociology of deviance is actually due to the fact that the combatants over the years, in their enthusiasm for the fight, have completely demolished the terrain...the terrain now resembles the Somme in 1918. It is barran, fruitless, full of empty trenches and craters, littered with unexploded mines and eerily silent. No one fights for hegemony over a dangerous graveyard. it is now time to drop arms and show respect for the dead". The first part of this extended obituary documents the formation of the field of sociology of deviance from its conception in the womb of Durkheim's social theory to its coming of age in late 1930s sociology. The second part examines the heyday of the field as a popular science and as a critique of social control in the 1960s. The final part analyzes its death at the hands of the post-1968 critics. Throughout, Colin Summer explores the theoretical matrix that held the sociology of deviance together and sets it in the context of culture, politics and social change.

Table of Contents

Part 1 A new deal for degenerates? the sociology of social deviation 1895-1940 Durkheim, modernity and doubt the birth - immigration and the urban jungle social realism and the Godfather - degeneration, cultural diversity and the New Deal - the potent union of psychiatry and sociology - the coming of age of the sociology of deviation persistent class and cultural conflict - deviance, degeneration and social democracy Part 2 Regulating deviance - fantasies of social control 1941-1967 beyond the frontier and into fantasyland deviance, social control and the end of ideology - McCarthyism and secondary deviance regulation as measurement and balance - the labelling perspective and the flowering of social deviance Part 3 Crime and power - the repoliticization of moral judgment 1968-1975 resistance and resentment morality, politics and subjectivity - deviance as ideology the final collapse

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BA24183248
• ISBN:
  • 0335097812
  • 0335097804
• Country Code: uk
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Buckingham
• Pages/Volumes: xii, 340 p.
• Size: 23 cm
• Classification:
  • DC20 : 302.542
  • NDLC : EC225