The Deviance Bubble

Abstract

Debating the death of deviance is not especially useful. The concept’s defenders argue that deviance can’t be dead. After all, undergraduates continue to fill classrooms for courses in deviance, textbooks for those courses continue to sell and journalists use the term. Like status symbol or charisma, deviance is a sociological concept that has found its way into the popular vocabulary. Therefore, the argument goes, deviance can’t be dead.