Sociology od Deviance and Crime #1005686

The book offers a sociological introduction to the study of deviance and crime, examining the ways in which societies define, interpret, regulate, and respond to behaviour that departs from established norms. Rather than treating deviance and crime as intrinsic properties of particular acts or individuals, the book approaches them as historically and socially situated phenomena, shaped by cultural values, social norms, institutional arrangements, power relations, and systems of social control.
The book introduces the principal theoretical traditions that have shaped the field, from Classical and Positivist approaches to Structural and Social Process theories, highlighting the different ways in which individual action, social structure, learning, labelling, and social reaction have been used to explain illegal behaviour. It then establishes the conceptual foundations of the sociology of deviance and crime, distinguishing between social and legal norms and between deviant and criminal behaviour. The subsequent chapters apply these perspectives to a range of concrete phenomena, including suicide, prostitution, substance dependency, predatory crime, economic crime, and violent crime. Each phenomenon is examined not simply as a form of individual conduct, but as a social process embedded in particular historical, cultural, economic, institutional, and relational contexts. Particular attention is given to the changing boundaries between normality, deviance, and crime, as well as to the ways in which behaviours become defined, regulated, criminalised, tolerated, or normalised over time.
Across these different cases, the book develops a central sociological argument: understanding deviance and crime requires moving beyond the search for individual causes and examining the social conditions under which particular forms of behaviour become possible, meaningful, visible, or punishable. The study of deviance and crime therefore provides a broader perspective on the organisation of society itself, revealing the relationship between individual agency, social structure, cultural expectations, institutional power, and processes of social control.
Designed as an accessible university-level introduction, the book combines classical sociological perspectives with contemporary examples and empirical discussion, offering students a framework for understanding one of sociology’s enduring questions: how societies define the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, and what happens when those boundaries are crossed.