Deviant Behavior

This book is for the student in the introductory course on deviant be­ havior and in related courses. A wide range of ideas and facts is set forth in a way that should be comprehensible to the student without prior knowledge of this area of study. In Chapter 1, "The Nature of Deviance," various ways of defining deviance are explored and one is settled upon: Deviance is behavior that is unusual, not typical, in a society or group. Chapter 2 is devoted to a preliminary consideration of several main currents of social thought that seek to explain why deviance comes about and is perpetrated. These explanations fall into four broad theo­ retical categories. First, there are those theories that view the major sources of deviance as having to do with the extent to which individ­ uals are bound into or dissociated from the group; these are termed social integration theories. Second, there are the cultural support the­ ories, which specify that there are subcultures of deviance, that is, bod­ ies of customs and values that advocate a given form of deviance and are socially transmitted from one person to another through the learn­ ing process. Third, there are social disorganization and conflict theo­ ries, which focus on the ways in which a lack of group organization and the presence of broad social and cultural conflicts bring about de­ viance.