Beschrijving

Ranging from pool hustling to pornography, this book analyzes deviant branches of American life, dispels misconceptions about them, and throws new light on sociological theory and method

Ranging from pool hustling to pornography, this book analyzes deviant branches of American life, dispels misconceptions about them, and throws new light on sociological theory and method. Each chapter radically dissents from one or more mainstream opinions about deviance.

The first chapter examines the alleged causes for the decline of American poolrooms and finds them wanting, traces the rise and fall of poolrooms to historical changes in America’s social structure, and cogently dissects the recent poolroom revival. The second chapter, reports a field study of a deviant occupation, pool hustling, describing the hustler’s work situation and career from recruitment to retirement. In revealing how pool hustlers, although dedicated wholly to a vocation that merely breaks unenforced gambling laws, frequently supplement their income by means of outright felonies, the author develops a new theory of \