ABSTRACT
Within the expanding field of the sociology of deviance, every enterprise bears its own quota of impertinence. The most successful evaders of accusations of banality, or sensationalism, or (worse) sociological irrelevance, have been those sociologists of deviance who have effectively related their investigations into a specific substantive area to the larger compelling issues of power and social control. One of the important contributions of symbolic interactionist theory to sociology has been to focus our attention upon the possibilities of action informed by conscious choice and self-awareness within contexts of structural constraint mediated through a myriad of contingencies. Concepts such as ‘Wanderlust, instability, inadequacy, defective personality, indiscipline, and the like are all very well for an understanding of processes of social control as interpreted by potential controllers. Outside the legendary Foreign Legion, missing persons do not constitute an identifiable social group to which a single unifying definition can be attached.
