Deviant Behavior: A Text-Reader in the Sociology of Deviance

A preface: all of my reviews of textbooks are written from my perspective as an instructor and written for other instructors. Why? These are the people for whom the review will be useful. I can not imagine that many people will buy textbooks when not required to and if you are a student, you buy the book your instructor ordered; the review doesn't matter. So: as someone who teaches sociology of deviance and social control four or so sections per year, I am disappointed with this book. It's a good collection of classic and contemporary articles in deviance theory and research. The student in the first review says that it focuses on "deviant lifestyles," but fortunately, that is not the case. Instead, the authors take a sociological approach to deviance as a socially constructed, variable social process. Most major theories are represented except differential association and identification, and the social constructionist approach is used but not explained. However, it is not a "text-reader." I would love to use one if it existed, but this does not live up to its title. My students hate to read but need both textbook-style explanation and reader-style research to understand the topic. A true text-reader would be an answer to prayers. The "text" part of this book consists of very brief introductory essays prefacing each chapter. These are similar to the chapter introductions in every other deviance reader, no better or worse and no more substantive than in other books. The format is a problem, too. It is smaller in height and width than most deviance readers, but it contains about the same number of pages, making it thicker and thus bulkier to carry. It's about the size of a large-format paperback novel; it doesn't stay open readily, so it is less convenient to read than the standard course book format. My final gripe about it is that the sources cited for each article are not located with the article but in a separate section in the back of the book. I find that it's hard enough to get students to understand the importance of acknowledging sources even when they have good models to follow; this is not a good model. Good deviance readers are easy to find, and while this one is not bad, I have not reordered it.

This book has helped me as a young college student, to explore different life cases of people in deviant lifestyles. I usethis book as required text in a "deviant behavior" class. I found a lot of stories. There are a lot of interesting topics, it is a good discussion starter.