Deviance: Social Constructions and Blurred Boundaries draws on up-to-date scholarship across a wide spectrum of deviance categories, providing a symbolic interactionist analysis of the deviance process. The book addresses positivistic theories of deviant behavior within a more encompassing description of the deviance process including the work of deviance claims-makers, rule-breakers, and social control agents. Students: * are introduced to the sociology of deviance* learn to analyze several kinds of criminal deviance that involve unwilling victims: murder, rape, street-level property crime, and white-collar crime* learn to examine several categories of "lifestyle" and "status" deviance* develop skills in critical analysis of criminal justice and social policiesOverall, students gain an understanding of the sociology of deviance through cross-cultural comparisons, historical description of deviance in the U.S., and up-close analysis of the lived experience of those who are labeled deviant and responses to them in the U.S. today.
