Creating Deviance: An Interactionist Approach

Creating Deviance is a basic text introductory text for deviance studies. Dotter identifies the convergences between social deviance, the interactionist tradition, and the construction of cultural meaning. He provides an in-depth analysis of the significant theoretical contribution of interactionism to the study of deviant behavior and crime, examining the works of George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer, Howard S. Becker, Edwin Shur, and Norman Denzin, among others. Dotter applies this framework to a number of specific scenarios, such as the persistence of gender inequality, the formation of youth subcultures, the contemporary politicization of race in the criminal justice system, and media generated, public representations of stigmatization. His text will be a valuable resource in any introductory course to the study of deviance and crime, the sociology of deviance and social control, and introductory criminology courses.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Social Deviance, the Interactionist Tradition, and Cultural Studies Chapter 2 The Scenario as Interpretive Strategy: An Interactionist/Cultural Studies Articulation Chapter 3 Reading Interactionism: Pragmatism and the Problem of Meaning Chapter 4 The Creation of Deviance: Social Definition and the Process of Interaction Chapter 5 Toward a Postmodern Cultural Studies: Meaning Creation in Media Culture Chapter 6 Rock In a Hard Place: Historical Stigmatization of Adolescent Subcultures In Popular Music Chapter 7 Murder In the Media: Cultural Criminology, Constructions of Violence, and a Crime of the Early Century Chapter 8 Theorizing Deviance in the Postmodern: The Turn Continues

About the Author :
Daniel Dotter is Professor of Criminal Justice at Grambling State University, Louisiana. He received his Ph.D. from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and does research in social deviance, youth subculture, and mass media and crime.

Review :
[A] stunning accomplishment. Bold, innovative; [Dotter] defines a new trajectory for interactionist theory and research . . . well-crafted, clearly written, quite accessible for teaching and instruction purposes. The book is well organized, and moves through the traditional litany of pragmatism, symbolic interactionism and deviance quite smoothly. . . . This makes it a well-informed text with unusual theoretical strengths. Dotter's book is a novel approach to this subject. There are now numerous books on postmodernism, symbolic interactionism, and deviance (most likely in the thousands), but I am not aware of any book that specifically describes the construction of deviance by tracing the symbolic interactionist roots of postmodern treatments. Since the treatment of the postmodern scenario belongs to Dotter, and this is the central analytical concept of the text, this book offers a contribution to our way of thinking about deviance.