Vocabularies of Victimization: Toward Explaining the Deviant Victim

Abstract

What can the sociology of deviance contribute to victimology, the sociology of social problems, and social movements scholarship? Drawing on the foundational deviance literature on vocabularies of motive, aligning activities, and accounts, I conceptualize the social construction of victims and victimization as deviant, and how deviant identities are managed in different definitional realms, from micro-level self-processes through the cultural change new social movements seek to foster. I also explore how these “vocabularies of victimization” in different definitional realms may inform one another. To illustrate, I offer a brief but suggestive exemplar from my previous research on intimate stalking victimization.