Descriptions of Deviance

Descriptions of Deviances critically engages with the two hitherto dominant perspectives in the sociology of deviance and criminology, and thereby clarifies the key differences between these theoretical points of view and the ethnomethodological approach to deviance. Hester offers an original and exemplary contribution to ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that not only illuminates the production of descriptions of deviance in the context of referral consultations, but also explores the relations between different ‘layers’ of organization – sequential, categorical and factual – that are operative and discoverable within talk-in-interaction. By connecting the analysis of these materials to previous ethnomethodological work on crime and deviance, Descriptions of Deviance articulates and publicizes, what is now, a very substantial submerged corpus of ethnomethodological studies that are directly relevant to the sociology of deviance and criminology, but which have hardly received any attention from mainstream sociologists and criminologists.