Drift

The concept of drift denotes a social situation characterized by dislocation and disorientation, or a social process whose trajectory is radically uncertain. One foundational perspective on drift emerged roughly a century ago in the work of sociologists Georg Simmel and Robert Park. Parallel orientation to the perspective on drift proposed by Simmel and Park developed from the work of Emile Durkheim and from Robert Merton's adaptation of Durkheim's analysis. Within the history of criminological theory, the most fully developed model of normative uncertainty, drift and crime has come from Gresham Sykes and David Matza. Taken together with Park and Simmel's approach, then, the work of Merton, Sykes and Matza produces a useful sociology and criminology of drift. Arriving from outside the social order or emerging from inside it, the drifter is both the consequence and the carrier of cultural liminality.