ABSTRACT
A major focus of sociological theories about crime in the past forty years has been to explore a wide range of human behaviour which can be defined within the broad rubric of a non-conformity to social expectations. As such, a ‘grey’ area of deviancy lying in the space between criminality and conformity was identified which seemed to defy the easy positivist explanations of previous criminology. The concept, however, can suffer from an extreme cultural relativism. Responses from the public to the question ‘Who’s deviant?’ predictably included prostitutes, drug-addicts, radicals and criminals, but also career women, Christians, pacifists, divorcees, know-it-all professors, perverts and the President of the United States (Simmons, 1969, p.3).
