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The contributions in this volume highlight the value of sociological theorizing in various strands of criminological research. The chapters present concrete analyses and discussions of how sociological theory has been useful to the respective authors’ efforts in criminological research. Collectively they aim to show that some of the very best criminological work is informed in useful and varied ways by sociological theory. Revealing the global reach and nationally distinct variations in the practice of sociological theory and criminology, this volume is explicitly trans-Atlantic in terms of its contributors and the topics and theories they discuss. 

This book offers ten informative chapters as well as two commentaries, written by some of the leading practitioners of criminological theory and research today. Among the theoretical traditions discussed in this book are a range of perspectives, including macro and micro models as well as theories of criminal behavior and perspectives of social control. The empirical aspects of crime and criminal justice to which these theories are applied are likewise varied and, importantly, drawn from concrete socio-historical settings in multiple nations. The chapters reveal the breadth and depth of criminological sociology in its explicit and informed reliance on insights from sociological theory. 

This volume appears as Volume 7 in the series, "Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance."

Reviewed in Law & Politics Book Review (2007).

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Introduction: The Bearing of Sociological Theory on Criminological Research [online copy] 
     Mathieu Deflem
 

PART I: FROM MACRO TO MICRO MODELS IN CRIME AND DELINQUENCY ANALYSIS

Work and Crime: Can the Missing Link Be Understood Through Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic?
     Karl F. Schumann

Truants and the Family: An Empirical Study of Deviant Behavior in Early Adolescence
     Imke Dunkake

Revisiting Merton: Continuities in the Theory of Anomie-and-Opportunity-Structures [online copy] 
     Sanjay Marwah & Mathieu Deflem 

Criminological Implications of the Thought of George Herbert Mead
     Ross L. Matsueda

Opening the Black Box: The Social Psychology of Gender and Delinquency
     Karen Heimer, Stacy De Coster, & Halime Ünal

Commentary to Part I: Theory and Research in the Sociology and Social Psychology of Crime and Deviance
     Ronald L. Akers
 

PART II: CRIME AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN SOCIO-HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

Identity and Intellectual Work: Biography, Theory and Research on Law Enforcement
     Nigel G. Fielding

Sociological Theory in the Study of Sentencing: Lighthouse for a Traveler Between Continents
     Joachim J. Savelsberg

“They Bring You Up To Do Like Your Daddy Done”: Stratification Theory, Employment, and Crime
     Robert D. Crutchfield

Emotions, Crime, and Justice: Exploring Durkheimian Themes 
     Susanne Karstedt

In Search of Criminology’s Epistemological Threshold
     René Van Swaaningen

Commentary to Part II: The Fields of Sociology and Criminology
     Fritz Sack
 

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