Deviance and Medicalization

A classic text on deviance is updated and reissued

Focusing on the nature of deviance, this book investigates the origins and contemporary consequences of the medicalization of deviance. It examines specific cases of madness, alcoholism, opiate addiction, homosexuality, delinquency, and child abuse and draws out their theoretical and policy implications.This classic text on the nature of deviance, originally published in 1980, is now reissued with a new Afterword by the authors. In this new edition of their award-winning book, Conrad and Schneider investigate the origins and contemporary consequences of the medicalization of deviance. They examine specific cases—madness, alcoholism, opiate addiction, homosexuality, delinquency, and child abuse—and draw out their theoretical and policy implications. In a new chapter, the authors address developments in the last decade—including AIDS, domestic violence, co-dependency, hyperactivity in children, and learning disabilities—and they discuss the fate of medicalization in the 1990s with the changes in medicine and continued restrictions on social services.