DEVIANCE THEORIESperiods and in these geographic areas are per-
ceived as threats to white hegemony, and there-
fore become legitimate targets for social control.
In addition to studying the connections be-
tween community social structure and the differ-
ential processing of racial and ethnic minorities,
researchers have also begun to examine how court
officials’ perceptions of offenders can influence
disparities in punishments. Bridges and Steen
(1998), for example, show how court officials’
perceptions of white and minority youths differ,
and how these different perceptions contribute to
different recommendations for sentencing. Pro-
bation officers often attribute the offenses of mi-
nority youths to internal characteristics of the
youths (i.e., aspects of their personality), while
attributing the offenses of white youths to external
characteristics (i.e., aspects of their environments).
As a result of these differential attributions, mi-
nority youths are perceived as more threatening,
more at risk for re-offending than whites and more
likely to receive severe recommendations for
sentences.
Thus, macro-level reaction theories view devi-
ance as a by-product of inequality in modern
society, a social status imposed by powerful groups
on those who are less powerful. Unlike micro-level
reaction theories, these theories focus on the forms
of inequality in society and how entire groups
within the society are managed and controlled as
deviants by apparatuses of the state. Like those
theories, however, macro-level reaction theories
make little or no attempt to explain the origins of
deviant acts, claiming instead that the status of
‘‘deviant’’ is, in large part, a social construction
designed primarily to protect the interests of the
most powerful social groups. The primary concern
of these theories is explicating the linkages be-
tween inequality in society and inequality in the
labeling and processing of deviants.
Since macro-level reaction theories view devi-
ance as a status imposed by powerful groups on
those with less power, the most immediate policy
implication of these theories is that imbalances in
power and inequality must be reduced in order to
reduce levels of deviance and levels of inequality in
the sanctioning of deviance. More effective moni-
toring of government agencies that are used to
control problem populations, such as the criminal
justice system, can also help to reduce the dispro-
portionate processing of less powerful groups,
such as racial minorities, as deviant.NEW THEORETICAL DIRECTIONSA recurring issue in the study of deviance is the
contradictory nature of many deviance theories.
The theories often begin with significantly differ-
ent assumptions about the nature of human be-
havior and end with significantly different conclu-
sions about the causes of deviant acts. Some scholars
maintain that the oppositional nature of these
theories—the theories are developed and based
on systematic rejection of other theories (Hirschi
1989)—tends toward clarity and internal consis-
tency in reasoning about the causes of deviance.
However, other scholars argue that this oppositional
nature is intellectually divisive—acceptance of one
theory precludes acceptance of another—and ‘‘has
made the field seem fragmented, if not in disar-
ray’’ (Liska, Krohn, and Messner 1989, p. 1).
A related and equally troublesome problem is
the contradictory nature of much of the scientific
evidence supporting deviance theories. For each
theory, there exists a literature of studies that
supports and a literature that refutes major argu-
ments of the theory. And although nearly every
theory of deviance may receive empirical confir-
mation at some level, virtually no theory of devi-
ance is sufficiently comprehensive to withstand
empirical falsification at some other level. The
difficult task for sociologists is discerning whether
and under what circumstances negative findings
should be treated as negating a particular theory
(Walker and Cohen 1985).
In recent years, these two problems have re-
newed sociologists’ interest in deviance theory
and, at the same time, suggested new directions
for the development of theory. The oppositonal
nature of theories has spawned interest in theo-
retical integration. Many scholars are dissatisfied
with classical theories, arguing that their predic-
tive power is exceedingly low (see Elliott 1985;
Liska, Krohn, and Messner 1989). Limited to a few
key explanatory variables, any one theory can
explain only a limited range and amount of devi-
ant behavior. And because most scholars reason
that the causes of deviance are multiple and quite
complex, most also contend that it may be ‘‘neces-
sary to combine different theories to capture the