Student Protesters and Gang Delinquents: Toward a Theory of Collective Deviance

The era of widespread student protest in the United States seems to have ended. While social scientists produced enormous amounts of material on student protest, many empirical findings remain to be codified. The theoretical significance of much of this work also remains to be explored. This study attempts some theoretical integration by viewing student protest as an instance of a more general class of social phenomena-collective deviance. In doing so it locates the theoretical significance of the topic. Four theories of gang delinquency, another well-studied form of collective deviance, are extended and applied to student protest. An assessment of the applicability of each of these approaches to student protest reveals the specific questions which must be addressed by any general theory of collective deviance.