ABSTRACT
The idea of affinity has been the key element in the staple explanation of becoming deviant. It has been the ascendant conception at least since the rise of positivism; so much so that it is echoed and sometimes mocked in the common sense. Certain circumstances may be regarded as promoting a latent tendency, an attraction, to deviant phenomena that may be activated when the subject is naturally reduced. Many circumstances have been stressed, but despite variation considerable continuity and agreement has existed among sociologists. In various guises and for variable reasons, a similar circumstance was favored by sociologists in their search for a milieu in which deviation flourishes. The Chicago school maintained the general relation despite its fundamentally different style of formulation and despite its apparent antagonism to earlier students of "the social problem" who explicitly pointed to the coincidence of poverty and pathology.
