Marginal Conventions: Popular Culture, Mass Media, and Social Deviance

Marginal Conventions contains twelve essays by social scientists centering around the general connections between popular culture and deviant behavior. In addition to speaking to the commonsensical view that exposure to representations of misbehavior makes people misbehave, this collection focuses on media presentations of crime, violence, and villainy; the utility of deviance theme for societal elites; and the "taste publics" centered around disreputable products and rituals.