ABSTRACT
A casual perusal of the many publications of Albert J. Reiss suggests a scholar of catholic interest and taste. His role in clarifying organizational actors in the Sociology of Deviance and Social Control must be seen as work consistent with a fundamental focus on social organization that originated during his graduate education. Reiss’s graduate interest in social organization strengthened over time and solidified. His major intellectual investment was—and is—in the social control of organizational deviance. Reiss was thinking about organizational deviance and control as early as 1966 and although a mere twelve pages in length, the Presidential Address was conceptually rich, identifying a number of topics that he would be engaged with in the future. The Reiss- Albert Biderman report is permeated with conceptual insights that show Reiss’s social organization perspective. Reiss refined the conceptual interests by exploring three topics: organizations as violators, organizations as victims, and the regulation of organizational deviance.
