David F. Luckenbill

Careers in Deviance and Respectability: The Analogy's Limitations

By examining the analogy between deviant and respectable careers, this paper refines the concept of deviant career. Compared to respectable careers, especially occupational careers in formal organizations, deviant careers develop within an ambiguous and unstable structural context. Deviant careers do not move through established sequences of well-defined positions; career pathways do not always lead upward; career progress does not always bring increased rewards and security; and careers involve multiple, short-term involvements. The differences between deviant and respectable careers are consequential for deviants. Mobility is of uncertain direction; deviant careers feature individualized career shifts, rather than standard sequences of positions. Since deviant careers lack institutional supports, career progress requires special tactics to foster security and regularize rewards. This analysis demonstrates that deviance and respectability differ in important respects and the concept of deviant career must be used so as not to ignore these differences.

Dynamics of the deviant sale

This paper examines the dynamics of male prostitution for purposes of identifying some of the principal characteristics of the deviant sale. The deviant sexual sale consists of seven stages, each involving an important task which the prostitute and customer accomplish together: the partners make contact, assess one anothers suitability, agree to a sale, come to terms on the conditions of the sale, move to a protected setting, make the exchange, and terminate the affair. The sexual sale is compared with an ideal‐typical model of the respectable sale in order to identify the generic features of the deviant sale. The deviant sale is relatively tenuous; the partners must attend to and deal with a wide range of matters that often are glossed over or taken for granted in respectable sales. The sale also is relatively dangerous; deviants face official sanctions and exploitation by their associates. To manage these risks, the partners rely on themselves, operating discreetly and taking special precautions. Some ...

The social organization of deviance

The social organization of deviance refers to the structure of the deviant transaction, the pattern of relations among its roles. Deviant transactions can be arrayed along a dimension of complexity. Three forms are distinguished: individual deviance can be carried out by a single actor; deviant exchange requires two deviant actors in reciprocal roles; and deviant exploitation needs an offender and a target Organizational complexity has consequences for deviants and social control agents. As complexity increases, deviants are more likely to be seen as responsible for their actions, those actions are more likely to be defined as serious, the response to deviance is more likely to be punitive, the risks of the deviants identification and capture become greater, the range of tactics used by deviants expands, and the tactics of social control agents become reactive. The complexity of transactions’ organization has implications for the study of deviant and respectable action.

Book Reviews : Norms, Deviance, and Social Control: Conceptual Matters, Jack P. Gibbs. Pp. 190. New York, Elsevier, 1981.

that is blatantly arbitrary or hopelessly vague. For this reason, Jack Gibbs’s Norms, Deviance, and Social Control is most welcome. It is a thoughtful, carefully woven essay that critically appraises conventional definitions of these concepts and provides alternatives that are theoretically useful and empirically applicable. The volume is packed with ideas, only the broad contours of which I can specify here. As its title indicates, the book is organized around three conceptual matters. Chapter 1 examines norms. Gibbs indicates that although social scientists often agree in their definitions of a norm-basically, that it is &dquo;a belief shared to some extent by members of a social unit as to what conduct ought to be in particular situations or circumstances&dquo;-conventional definitions have not been empirically applicable. This is so, he argues, because they fail to manage five problems. First, they do not grapple with the issue of consensus: What proportion of all members of a social unit must