ABSTRACT
Appreciation is especially difficult when the subject of inquiry consists of enterprises that violate cherished and widely shared standards of conduct and morality. Almost by definition, such phenomena are commonly unappreciated; indeed, they are condemned. A basic difficulty with a correctional perspective is that it systematically interferes with the capacity to empathize and thus comprehend the subject of inquiry. Only through appreciation can the texture of social patterns and the nuances of human engagement with those patterns be understood and analyzed. The purpose of ridding ourselves of the phenomenon manifests itself most clearly in an overwhelming contemporary concern with questions of causation, or "etiology". Differences between the spirit animating the Russell Sage studies and that guiding the Chicago school can be easily exaggerated. Appreciating a phenomenon is a fateful decision, for it eventually entails a commitment to render it with fidelity and without violating its integrity.
