Publisher's Synopsis
This is the new edition of the popular textbook, Understanding Deviance, which guides the new student through the major sociological theories of crime, deviance and control. Examining the significant frameworks of the sub-discipline, it opens with a discussion of the earliest schematic criminology in the work of the University of Chicago in the 1920s, progressing through the theories of functionalism, anomie, symbolic interactionism and phenomenology and brings the reader fully up to date with a thorough treatment of the radical theories of Left Realism, a new section on social exclusion and social capital and an analysis of 'third way' policies under New Labour. In this fourth edition David Downes and Paul Rock provide an objective account of the subject area that sympathetically outlines the principal theories of crime and rule-breaking, offering the major criticisms that have been voiced against them and constructing defences to these arguments. As with previous editions, the authors continue to draw upon a wide range of international sources, placing all significant theoretical developments in European and North American contexts. The result is an indispensable guide to criminological theory offering a sound, yet accessible, foundation for both undergraduates and postgraduates of deviance, criminology, and sociology. This textbook is essential reading for all those following courses in the area of crime, deviance and society.
