Crime and Deviance

An inventory of the topics and issues most important to social theory reveals that crime is acritical social experience that has been instrumental to the development of the disciplines’theories and methodologies. Deviance and transgression are at the heart of theories aimed atexplaining human behavior, and the twinned issues of conformity and deviance are central to therich sociological theorizing over the last two centuries. This entry considers the scholarship ofdeviance—necessarily, in abridged form—and critically examines the arguments about the deathknell of deviance as they relate to the contemporary landscapes of crime, deviance and crimecontrol, and questions its relevance to scholarship and practice