Reviews
"[T]he book serves as valuable demonstration of how to build a theoretical framework from general observation, and then test it using a variety of empirical evidence. . . . [and] it provides a valuable direction for scholars looking to examine how people negotiate the intersections of deviant and conforming identities."—Anthropology Book Forum
"Deviance Management provides a valuable and positive learning experience and opens new vistas to innovative understandings of, and thinking about, deviance, conformity, and social control. In the main, it is an eye-opener that helps us understand some of the sociological patterns that characterize the activities of social movements in their attempts to move stigmatized groups into becoming normalized and mainstreamed."—American Journal of Sociology
"Bader and Baker have produced an outstanding book in
Deviance Management. Drawing on insights from sociology and social psychology, they developed a dynamic model that explains the evolution of deviant subcultures and the strategies that people employ to manage stigmatized social identities. Revealing the advantages of a relational perspective, their theory advances the state of the art in the study of culture and social change. Their theory is applied to deeply compelling case studies, which make the book accessible to a wide variety of readers."—Steven Pfaff, Professor of Sociology, University of Washington
"Baker and Bader offer a new identity-management framework for categorizing deviance. This is one of the most theoretically innovative works in half a century, and it may prove to be a way to breathe new life into what should be one of sociology’s most vibrant fields."—Joel Best, Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware
"Today, deviant behavior is not merely departure from standard norms, but estrangement of a vast diversity of subcultures and identities that are incompatible with each other, but often overlap in membership, requiring deviance management strategies that this book clearly delineates, benefiting all readers who seek to understand the human condition."—William Sims Bainbridge, author of Dynamic Secularization and The Social Structure of Online Communities
"The sociology of deviance has struggled to carve a place of relevance for itself that is distinct from criminology. Baker and Bader’s Deviance Management may just be the book that accomplishes that goal. They explain six principles of deviance and identity management, and illustrate them with rich material from their own and others’ timely research on such diverse phenomena as the Westboro Baptist Church, white power hate groups, and Bigfoot enthusiasts, as well as social movements that fight against deviant labels. I will use this book, and I strongly recommend it to all my colleagues who teach deviance courses."—Jeffrey T. Ulmer, Professor of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University
"Presents a theoretical perspective grounded in empirical evidence that challenges scholars to reconsider how deviance is normalized, the inherent conflicts within social movements, and the intricacies of adaptation strategies."—Xavier Perez, Professor of Criminology, DePaul University
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