ABSTRACT

The insulation of criminology from sociology in general—symbolized institutionally in America in Robert Merton’s insistence on placing the study of crime in the Department of Social Administration at Columbia—is rapidly being broken down. The ‘social reaction theorists’ in drawing attention to the activities of the rule-creators and enforcers (cf. Emerson, 1969; Lemert, 1970), and David Matza, in emphasizing the role of Leviathan in the signification of behaviours in terms of the demands of State, have redirected criminological attention to the grand questions of social structure and the overweening social arrangements within which the criminal process is played out. We are confronted once again with the central question of man’s relationship to structures of power, domination and authority—and the ability of men to confront these structures in acts of crime, deviance and dissent—we are back in the realm of social theory itself.