ABSTRACT
Nearly one hundred years ago, Durkheim wrote that suicide is ‘merely the exaggerated form of common practices’ and that it ‘appears quite another matter once its unbroken connection is recognised with acts, on the one hand, of courage and devotion, on the other of imprudence and clear neglect’ (Durkheim 1898/1951). This relatively simple, but radical idea-that there is considerable overlap between deviance and convention, rather than the former being distinctly different and opposite to the latter-not only inspired later generations of sociologists (Matza 1969:68-9) but it has run like a backbone through previous chapters in this book. Thus, I have argued that good business practice merges imperceptibly into sharp business practice, effective policing merges imperceptibly into defective policing, and prison discipline merges imperceptibly into prison brutality; in each case, the latter has an unbroken connection with the former. In this chapter, a similar lesson can be obtained from considering how ‘normal’ sexual encounters merge imperceptibly into sexual assaults of which rape is the most serious, and how the former provides just the ingredients out of which the latter can emerge.
