ABSTRACT
Within the last decade American sociologists have become increasingly reflective in their approach to deviance and social problems. They have come to recognize that interpretations of deviance are often ideological in their assumptions and implications, and that sociologists are frequently guilty of "providing the facts which make oppression more efficient and the theory which makes it legitimate to a larger constituency" (Becker and Horowitz, 1972 :48). To combat this tendency students of deviance have invested more and more energy in the search for a critical theory. This search has focused on three major problems: ( 1) the definition of deviance, ( 2) the etiology of deviance, and ( 3) the etiology of control.
