Comparative Deviance: Perception and Law in Six Cultures

Comparative Deviance represents a systematic attempt to survey public perceptions of deviant behavior cross-culturally: in India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Yugoslavia, and the United States. There is extensive diversity in both law and perception concerning such deviances as taking drugs, homosexuality, and abortion, yet there is evidence for a basically invariant structure in perception of deviance across all cultures. Within the countries studied in this volume, Graeme Newman discovers that the strength of religious belief and urban rural background accounted for major differences in the perception of deviance-when differences were identified.

Graeme Newman is Distinguished Teaching Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York-Albany Marvin E. Wolfgang, until his recent death, was professor of criminology and law at the University of Pennsylvania