The Trouble with Evil: Social Control at the Edge of Morality

Product Description


A broadly based analysis of good and evil grounded in examination of the conceptual, philosophical, and theoretical bases of the study of evil within the social sciences.




Review


"Lemert's method provides two significant conclusions: evil is a special kind of anti-social act that is not subject to ordinary social controls; and sorcery has not been demonstrated to be a form of 'social control' at all, no matter how common that argument may be in the literature―certainly it is not remotely similar to law, as it is known in modern urban societies." ― William G. Davis, Professor Emeritus, University of California-Davis

"The book is an interesting addition to our understanding of a concept―evil―that has received relatively little attention from students of deviance. Conceptualizing evil as a product of social interaction and emergent definitional processes moves our understanding of the (highly value laden) concept of evil away from comparatively fruitless efforts to derive a more concrete operational definition." ― Malcolm D. Holmes, University of Wyoming


About the Author


Edwin M. Lemert is former Professor of Sociology at the University of California-Davis. He is the author of Instead of Court: Diversion in Juvenile Justice; Social Action and Legal Change; Social Pathology: A Systematic Approach to the Theory of Sociopathic Behavior; Human Deviance, Social Problems, and Social Control; and co-author of Offenders in the Community. He is the 1996 recipient of the Western Society of Criminology Paul Tappan Award.