Abstract
There is great diversity of deviant behavior ranging from crime, mental illness, and suicide to minor rule breaking in school or at home, to excessive behaviors such as overeating and overdrinking, to such positive forms as invention. Deviance implies nonconformity, doing things differently from the everyday routines. This makes the study of deviance intrinsically interesting to most people. But deviance is also a highly useful field of study. It helps us to better understand the nature of conformity and of human social life in general, since all human behavior is, after all, in varying degrees, either conforming or deyiant. Further, the analysis of deviance helps us to understand the nature of social change. Without deviance there would be little change, and without change societies atrophy and die out.
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References
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© 1990 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Palmer, S., Humphrey, J.A. (1990). The Nature of Deviance. In: Deviant Behavior. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0583-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0583-3_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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