criminal law

In the spring of 1998, I enrolled in Prof. Pfohl's Boston College course Deviance and Social Control. During that semester, my mind's doors were blown wide open. A brilliant man, as well as a talented author, educator, activist, and artist, Pfohl has expertly constructed a work examining the deviance and social control beginning with Christian Demonism and continuing through post-modern critical theory.

The text is well structured, and he supplements his words with the theoretical ideas of many varied thinkers throughout history. In addition to the "heavyweights" of social theory, his references include voices ranging from entertainers Ice-T and Sting to legal theorist Patricia J. Williams, to authors as old as the biblical apostles and as fresh as Toni Morrison. Pfohl recognizes that sociology is an interdisciplinary study, and accordingly, his text is fortified with stirring images -- the chilling parellel of an embalmed Jeremy Bentham with the everpresent eye of the panoptic prison, the psuchosurgeon's invasive scalpel with the works of Sade. In addition, every section or chapter is headed with a collage image representing the themes of the chapter. Ultimately, Pfohl's work revelas itself to be a collection of the ideas and work of others, interwoven with autobiography, and adroitly structured so that this collection of ideas becomes a theory of its own. The text then becomes a parallel to the collage work included within -- a most post-modern concept indeed. The text takes existing concepts of deviance and social control, and like a collage artist, arranges them into a new structure, thereby redefining the meaning of the original ideas.

Pfohl's text demonstrates the ability we have to (re)define our social reality. He even provides practical examples of subverting established heirarchy. Just as systems of social order can be erected and maintained, so can they (with some difficulty) be changed or eliminated. The text asserts that there is nothing inheirantly deviant in any given act. An act is deviant only because some people have been succesful in labeling it so. What is universal, however, is the process by which "deviance" is determined.

Through this book, I was born into a greater awareness of the frightening invisibility, pervasiveness, and strength of social institutions. Yet, as well, Pfohl also instilled a strong sense of responsiblility to society and a need for substantive structural and symbolic change.