Economic Interests and the Vindication of Deviance: Tobacco in Seventeenth Century Europe

Abstract

Sociologists have tended to neglect vindication, the process by which deviant behavior becomes redefined as respectable or legitimate. The few studies emphasize the importance of moral persuasion in bringing about vindication. Tobacco's early history suggests that economic interests can also play an important role. In the early seventeenth century, Europeans viewed tobacco as a deviant drug; but in spite of continued moral opposition, it was vindicated by the end of the century because powerful persons and agencies discovered that supporting the trans-Atlantic tobacco trade was in their economic interest.