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This article suggests an interactional approach for analyzing victimization-that is, the social processes through which person come to be known and understood as victims. The authors conceptualize victimization in terms of interactional and descriptive practices through which victim status is assigned to persons and/or groups. Using data from the public media and fieldwork in everyday settings, the authors illustrate some techniques, objectives, and outcomes of victimization. The authors conclude by recommending several issues and directions for study that would be appropriate for victimological research that construes victims as interactionally constituted.The emerging discipline of victimology-the scientific study of victims (Drapkin and Viano 1974)-has attempted to distinguish itself from criminology and other studies of harm-doing by conceiving of crimes and other instances of "victimization" as dynamic social relations (Viano 1976). Victimization has been cast as an interactional phenomenon contingent upon features of both victimizer and victim, thus leading victimological research to focus on the social contexts, correlates, and consequences of victimization (Dadrian 1976). In doing so, victimology has cultivated a new appreciation for a variety of social problems attendant to being a victim.The attempt to formulate victimization as an interactional phenomenon is particularly significant because it offers alternative, even innovative, possibilities for studying the social processes through which persons become "victims. " Yet, despite this intriguing promise, victimology has remained committed to a rather static, incomplete vision of *Direct all correspondence to:

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