Edwin Sutherland is the acknowledged father of American
criminology. This is the first full-length analysis of his work and
his person. Unlike the European schools of criminology, which
sought to locate deviant behavior within the deep structures of the
economy, Sutherland eschewed such explanations in favor of
proximate and observable causes. He located the sources of crime in
the association and interaction of specific groups of people. For
Sutherland, crime as a way of life results from an individual's
attachment to criminals for whom criminal acts are a measure of
success no less than a way of life.
In a series of publications, Sutherland expanded the horizons of
the classic "Chicago School" of interactionists, and in the process
founded criminology as a separate area of research while locating
it firmly within sociology. As the authors show, Sutherland's work
was inspired by strong moral concerns and a sense of the needs of
society for social order without falling prey to either blaming the
victim or pandering to sentiment about the joys of criminal life.
In this sense, he is a model of the sociological tradition long
deserving of the biography acknowledging his role as a master and
pioneer.
Yet Gaylord and Galliher have written more than an intellectual
biography. They take seriously the need to fit Sutherland and his
"theory of differential association" into a social and historical
context. They are also aware and critically straightforward about
the limitations of Sutherland's work in criminology, but place both
his achievements and their limitations in a fully developed
analytical context.
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