Book Review: L. H. Kuhn Social Control and Human Nature: What is it We are Controlling? El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly, 2009. ix, 192 pp. $62.00. ISBN 978-1-59332-3783

• Author: Jonathan M. Wender
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016810385292
• Published date: 01 June 2011
• Date: 01 June 2011
• Subject Matter: Articles

use aids in correcting the misconception described by the media and by those in authority. The

researcher’s communicated in this chapter how important the music, dancing, and the drugs are

to the participants.

Part II section of the text consisted of Chapters 35. Chapter 3 explores the origin of the electric

dance club scene in Spain, England, Australia, and the United States. Chapter 4 focuses on the

national developments that occurred to target the dance club scene and youthful drug use. Chapter

5 looks locally at San Francisco and the dance club scene. This section added to the depth of the

literature concerning the context in which young participants evolved into this type of lifestyle and

its historical context and legislative implications. Actually, this section shed light as to how these

youth learn from each other at clubs and raves. At the same time, they develop close ties to strangers

who are like themselves. These young people see themselves as tied together by two social elements.

Part III of the text discussed the elements of the participants’ specific drug use. This book

highlights that the pleasure component is often underanalyzed and rarely mentioned. Chapter 7

explains the risk involved in the participants drug use. The participants explain their perception

of risk. In Chapter 8, the combination of substances is the focus. Participants shared their views and

experiences of poly drug use. This section serves its purpose, giving a voice to the silent population.

Chapter 7 highlights the connectionbetween public policy and socialscience. Contrary to the authors’

assertion of risk, with all of the public health initiatives and concerns expressed in substance abuse

literature and research the book explores risk as it relates to pleasure and the experience and not how

these six drugs are administered. Furthermore, the authors’ focus and aim was to enhance awareness

about the depth of knowledge that the participants have about their personal drug use experiences.

The last section of the text elaborated on the differences and issues of gender, sexuality, and

ethnicity and the dance scene. Chapter 9 discusses gender, identity, femininity, and masculinity and

its role or expectations in the dance club scene. Gender accountability was constructed from the par-

ticipant interviews in Chapter 9. Chapter 10 examines gender and sexuality. This chapter adds the

component of alcohol, which is not identified as one of the six club drugs in the text and thus pre-

viously examined. The authors took a different approach by exploring another substance, alcohol

that promoted empowerment of the male youth participants. Chapter 11 focuses on Asian American

youth and their participation in the rave club scene. This text looks only at one group comprising

many ethnicities and nationalities making a compelling argument of diversity among subgroups.

The various components presented in the text, married young people to the danceclub scene by

presenting the following: the social context in which they consume drugs and noting the impor-

tance of pleasure and understanding risk. Prior research limitations and heavy reliance on survey

methodology allowed the authors to step outside the boundaries and interview youth.

L. H. Kuhn

Social Control and Human Nature: What is it We are Controlling?

El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly, 2009. ix, 192 pp. $62.00. ISBN 978-1-59332-3783

Reviewed by: Jonathan M. Wender, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016810385292

To its continuing detriment, and not least of all as it affects the struggle for intellectual legitimacy

and relevance, mainstream criminology largely disavows the grandeur of theory, which has

traditionally stood elsewhere in the social sciences as the eternal wellspring of the formal self-

investigations of humanity. For most criminologists, however, this grandeur is reduced to a prosaic

matter of experimental hypothesis—a mere subsidiary element of methodology that is to be

226 Criminal Justice Review 36(2)