The Politics and Morality of Deviance

Download or read book The Politics and Morality of Deviance written by Nachman Ben-Yehuda and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics and Morality of Deviance develops a theoretical framework and then applies it to four different and specific case studies in an explicit attempt to put the sociology of deviance back into mainstream sociology. It argues that deviance should be analyzed as a relative phenomenon in different and changing cultures, vis-a-vis change and stability in the boundaries of different symbolic/moral universes. It also argues that the legitimization of power should be thought of in terms of a moral order that in turn defines the societal boundaries of different symbolic/moral universes. Mills' concept of motivational accounting systems is utilized throughout the text in order to illustrate how the micro and macro levels of analysis can be integrated.