ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to support the view that irony is intimately bound up with a great deal of sociological -thought and that ironic perspectives stimulate such thought profoundly. It would be quite absurd to go so far as to claim that thinking in ironic terms is the alpha and omega of the whole sociological enterprise. There is further suggestiveness in the juxtaposition of iatrogenesis and labeling perspective in that in both medicine and sociology it is quickly apparent that something like a distinction between primary and secondary "difficulty" is indispensable. The element of the unintended or unexpected that irony happens to feature has caught the attention and challenged the reflection of numerous sociologists, including Robert K. Merton. The matter of different audiences or diversely socially located observers is bound to interest the sociologist. Some of the materials with which labeling theorists present us are hard to judge.
