Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book begins with a critical look at psychology's traditional reaction to deviance, which has been to attribute it to flaws or deficits in the individual's psychological make-up. The authors go on to examine the major theoretical perspectives on delinquency in both psychology and sociology, relating them to their common roots in the 'mass society' thesis of the nineteenth century.

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CHOICE Review

Juvenile delinquency is an enduring and disturbing social phenomenon. The authors of this work are British psychologists who are dissatisfied with traditional and contemporary theoretical accounts of delinquency. Emler and Reicher first attempt to situate delinquency research in the context of theories about mass society. They then critically evaluate some of the efforts to measure and explain juvenile delinquency. In response to the perceived limitations of these efforts the authors advance several theses of their own. First, they argue that an understanding of delinquency must begin with attention to how children come to join the institutional order. Second, delinquency can be viewed as a way of embracing an oppositional identity. Finally, the role of groups in the construction of delinquent (and nondelinquent) reputations must be appreciated. Altogether, Emler and Reicher offer a well-informed, thorough, and reasonably persuasive critique of existing explanations of delinquency. Their own account, while not entirely original, provides a somewhat different perspective on this phenomenon, and one that interrelates psychological and sociological dimensions. References. Upper-division undergraduates and above. D. O. Friedrichs University of Scranton