NCJ Number
161302
Date Published
1994
Length
326 pages
Annotation
Conflict theories differ from other criminological theories by stressing the role of differential power in establishing deviance categories and their application to disadvantaged groups, and conflict theories raise the question of whose interests are served by the existence of deviance levels and suggest that social order rather than deviance needs to be transformed.
Abstract
Some conflict theories are more optimistic than others in assessing prospects for a nonhierarchical social order, one in which a particular group does not serve its own interests at the expense of other groups. By extension, conflict theories as a whole are ambivalent about the possibility of a world without deviance or a world in which deviance is no longer wielded as a weapon of power. The book takes a broad view of the nature of deviance as a constructed reality and as a phenomenon in society with real causes and consequences. Book chapters identify issues in the study of deviance and also focus on understanding and testing deviance theories. Book chapters specifically examine classical theories of deviance and their influence on modern jurisprudence, positivistic approaches to deviance, the social disorganization perspective, functionalist and strain perspectives, subcultural and social learning theories, interaction theories, social control theories, and conflict theories. References, tables, and figures