Abstract
IN REVIEWING what sociologists have to say about normality and abnormality, in their recent book Offer and Sabshin<sup>1</sup>remark that sociologists prefer to talk about deviance rather than about abnormality—and indeed, about deviant<i>acts</i>(and how they become defined as deviant) rather than about either deviance as such, or deviant persons. In that tradition we wrote recently<sup>2</sup>: The careers of patients within the hospital may be studied in terms of deviance. But we add a qualifying note: The usual sociological conception of deviance is too simple. It assumes a relatively homogeneous institution, with deviant acts in terms of a relatively firm core of norms and standards—and therefore with control mechanisms to handle deviants and deviant acts. We suspect that few large organizations have such homogeneous standards; certainly the hospitals we studied do not. No single set of values dominates either the whole institution
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