Trends and Topics in "Social Problems" 1953-1975: A Content Analysis and a Critique

Symposium on Deviance, Crime and Legal Process

“…Indeed, the recent review of material submitted to Social Problems reveals such a shift. In comparison with the 1964-67 period, the proportion of articles published between 1972 and 1975 on the classical areas of labelling theorypsychiatric sociology, and the processing of juvenile delinquents --dropped by one half; at the same time, the proportion of articles dealing with the economic order, the legal order and with theoretical overviews more than doubled ( Henslin and Roesti, 1976 considerations'. These include 'the wider origins of the deviant act' and of the 'deviant reaction', which 'could only be understood in terms of the rapidly changing economic and political contingencies of advanced industrial society'.…”