Beyond Mead: The Societal Reaction to Deviance

I should say parenthetically that reading the essay left me spelled by the beauty of its words and niceties of expression, as well as overwhelmed by its sense of prophecy. It recalled me to an old auctorial ideal espoused by James Branch Cabell, namely that we should write beautifully of things as they are. But having had time to cast off Manning's spell, I conclude that sociologists sometimes write beautifully of things as they are not and that in striving for rhetorical symmetry their conclusions may go beyond what facts will support. In this case I must object that the allegations of its sadness and senility ignore the theoretical potential of deviance sociology, its continuing research output, its influence on the diversion movement in criminal justice, and its striking impact on younger, highly articulate sociologists in Britain. Granting the slow stain and constant erosion of all ideas, it seems to me that even with age deviance sociology still is majestic in decay. But without further pause on the decadence issue, I would like to deal with what may cause some of the faithful to cry sacrilege, namely the deficiencies of G. H. Mead's conception of symbolic interaction and their implications for the study of deviance. My purpose is not to add to the theoretical confusion but to clear some of it away, and hopefully free up sociological energies to exploit in the measure it deserves its least worked area, namely the societal reaction. In order to maxi-