ABSTRACT
The study of social deviance within American sociology has traditionally been based on a model that consigns delinquent behavior to the instruments of social welfare. The area of Negro struggles is a particularly fertile source for reevaluating the relationship between deviance and politics. The largest Negro gang in Chicago, the Blackstone Rangers, numbering several thousand members, is a clear example of the breakdown in the distinction between crime and marginal politics, as well as the course which the politics of marginality is likely to follow. The rapidly rising crime rates indicate a further ambiguity in the traditional formulation of social deviance. Connections between deviance and politics take place most often when a society does not satisfactorily manage its affairs. The chapter represents an effort to restructure the fields of sociology and political science by presenting both the theoretical and empirical foci for considering deviance and marginality as gradually merging phenomena.
