Phenomenalism and Essentialism in the Sociology of Deviancy

Abstract

The sociology of deviancy is emerging as a distinctive perspective on problems of rule-breaking and social control. Among its integral features is an antipathy towards the systematisation of its ideas. This antipathy has allowed the developing perspective to maintain contradictory positions on important issues. In particular, there is a contradiction between the sociology's phenomenalism, which stresses the need to faithfully reproduce the social world as it is known by its inhabitants, and its essentialism which searches for the underlying properties of social order. A limited solution to this discrepancy is offered in the form of the suggestion that sociologists of deviancy should focus their attention on the ideas of social structure which are held by the people whose behaviour they describe. Sociological maps of these ideas would permit the perspective to manage some of the issues that currently cause confusion.