Good Trouble: How Deviants, Criminals, Heretics, and Outsiders Have Changed the World for the Better [Hardcover]

This book is written in praise of the criminal; a unique kind of criminal, who is motivated not by personal gain, but ethical altruism. Deviant heroes are those individuals who violate unjust norms and laws, facing the repercussions of social control, effecting positive social change in the process. Using a method that examines how the biographies of individual deviants intersected with history, it probes how criminals and deviants have been on the leading edge of important, positive social changes and the creation of a more just, fair, and humane society. Brian Wolf concludes with an examination of the problem of conformity and how deviant heroism in everyday life may be a remedy for injustice in micro-level social contexts.Brian Wolf is associate professor of criminology and sociology at the University of Idaho.

In Good Trouble, Wolf (criminology, sociology, Univ. of Idaho) argues that there are times when deviant behavior results in positive social change. The initial chapters delve into this topic with a discussion of heroic deviance, in which norm breaches result in veneration of the deviant, as in the examples given of iconic individuals involved in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. . . The strength of this volumeis two-fold pedagogically. It forces readers to think differently about the definition of deviance, especially positive deviance, which might yield positive norm change. It also offers ways of teaching deviance in a new light, with suggested class assignments.



Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and faculty. Choice Reviews

Good Trouble expands the field of deviance to recognize the power and often heroic nature of ethical altruism, disciplined nonconformity, and those who resist norms and break laws in the name of truth, justice, and equality. The book, using case studies, provides a social accounting of history that recognizes the great debt owed to our deviant heroes, those willing to break the rules, risls©