The sociology of deviance was in its heyday when Prentice-Hall published this book in 1969. John Lofland traces the field from pre-World War II to the late sixties and pioneers the application of "grounded theory" to the study of deviant behavior. In his new prologue, Joel Best writes, "More than thirty years after the book first appeared, we have no better synthesis of the labeling approach."



John Lofland, University of California, Davis, Davis, California Joel Best, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware [new prologue]



Prologue to the Percheron Press Edition Joel Best Chapter 1. Introduction: Ideological Matters Chapter 2. Introduction: Logical Matters I. The Deviant Act Chapter 3. The Defensive Deviant Act: Threat and Encapsulation Chapter 4. The Defensive Deviant Act: Closure Chapter 5. The Adventurous Deviant Act II. The Assumption of Deviant Identity Chapter 6. Social Identification as Pivotally Deviant Chapter 7. Escalation to Deviant Identity: Others and Places Chapter 8. Escalation to Deviant Identity: Hardware and Actor III. The Assumption of Normal Identity Chapter 9. Social Identification as Pivotally Normal Chapter 10. Escalation to Normal Identity: Others and Places Chapter 11. Escalation to Normal Identity: Hardware and Actor Chapter 12. Concluding Remarks Bibliographic Index