ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with certain aspects of the relationship between sociology and social work practice. Social workers should endorse any program that would take them away from the seductive powers of the treatment model. They would also be well advised to support non-interventionist tactics particularly in those areas where the legal system has extended too far and, conversely, where the legal model has been eroded by moralistic busybodies under the banner of welfare. Social workers themselves were correct in suspecting that uncomfortably mixed up with the liberalism of deviancy theory was a degree of romanticism. They saw the deviant co-opted as hero in a series of revolutionary struggles as deviancy theorists rushed around to find in the actions and – with greater difficulty – the words of football hooligans, vandals, rapists, bank robbers, and kidnappers signs of militancy and class consciousness.
