Customer Reviews

Images of Deviance and Social Control: A Sociological History

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The book is excellent: comprehensive, thought-provoking, fair, and interesting. Reading it requires an investment in time and effort, not because it is difficult to read but because it focuses on ideas rather than the "nuts and sluts" mode of learning about deviance. It worked well when I used it to teach sociology of deviance and social control to typical-college-age Ivy League students. And it worked well with evenings-and-weekends urban adult students who did not have high SAT scores and did have full-time jobs, families, etc. the rest of the week. It has not worked well with typical-age college undergraduates at the minimally selective, medium-sized, small-town Midwestern university where I currently teach. When I've used this book here, about a third of the students don't read it or "skim" it, in their words, and so are lost. It is not a textbook and can not be read (or unread) successfully that way. (Testing them on the material did not encourage actual reading of the book.) Of those who try to read it, many are unwilling to read closely and slowly. They are frustrated by the focus on ideas and are intimidated or upset when Pfohl uses a word or idea they don't know. A few students read it and understand it--many of these are excited by the ideas in it--but I must choose course texts that the average, not the exceptional, student can use. I've accepted that the book is too challenging for most of my current students, not because they aren't smart enough to understand it but because, mostly, they aren't motivated to try. It's just not a good match. However, if you are a professor with ready-to-learn students who like to be intellectually challenged, or you want a deeper, more analytic perspective on the dominant theories of deviance for your own knowledge, I highly recommend it.