Understanding Deviance: A Guide to the Sociology of Crime and Rule-Breaking

by David Downes, Paul Rock

This book is a straightforward guide to the major European and American sociological theories of crime, delinquency, social deviance, and social control. The authors present chronological descriptions of functionalism, anomie, subculture theory, symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, control
theories, and radical criminology, with discussion of variant theories and the relation of theories of crime to social policy. Extensively revised and updated, this new edition includes an additional chapter on feminist criminology.

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published November 10, 1988

Reviews

[Radcliff Gregory · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book may help you if you need to critique the socio-criminology of "deviance", but only to a very limited extent. The book does not properly ground the assorted theories the authors address, and it offers still less in terms of "understanding deviance" .

Downes and Rock do point out that even defining deviance is problematic because of the subjectivity of the subject in general, and the lack of consensus in academic theorisation. However, given that this book was published in the 21st century, some of the behaviours and identities the authors lump under deviance really raised my eyebrows. The book is rampantly homophobic, repeatedly listing homosexuality in the same breath as paedophilia and bestiality, and elsewhere alongside rape and incest, though they do occasionally concede that gay relationships could be considered a "victimless" form of "deviance" . Some of the judgements do feel well over half a century old, given the women giving birth or who have a baby while not in a (heterosexual) relationship are classed as deviants more than once, the first time 'pointing out ' that she will inevitably keep repeating this scenario over and over again. Apparently disabled people are deviants, too...

To be fair, Rock and Downes do make some relevant observations about the various socio-criminological theories of deviance and raise some interesting points. They include a chapter on feminist theories with reasonably modern engagement, but it doesn't stop them, in a different chapter, citing the "'Gay Lib'" and " 'Women's Lib'" (their single quotation marks) as movements arising out of "deviant" subcultures.

One of the better things about this book is coverage of criticism of theories and a huge wealth of ideas for pursuing research, with excellent signposting to relevant further reading, along with an interesting account of the history of sociological and criminological deviance research and theory.