Alternative Status Hierarchy Flashcards
What are the subculture’s values to those outside it?
Spite, malice, hostility and contempt.
What does the delinquent subculture do the values of mainstream society?
They invert them. What society condemns, the subculture praises and vice versa. E.g. society upholds regular attendance and respect for property, whereas in the subculture, the boys gain status from vandalising property and truanting.
What is the subculture’s function?
It offers the boy’s an alternative status hierarchy in which they can achieve.
Having failed the legitimate opportunity structure, what does to boys do?
Create their own illegitimate opportunity structure in which they can win status from their peers through their delinquent actions.
What is a strength of Cohen’s theory?
It offers an explanation of non-utilitarian deviance. Unlike Merton, whose concepts of innovation can only account for crime with a profit motive, Cohen’s ideas of status frustration, value inversion and alternative status hierarchy help to explain non-economic delinquency such as vandalism and truancy.
What is a weakness of Cohen’s theory?
Like Merton, he assumes that working-class boys start off sharing middle-class success goals, only to reject these when they fail. He ignores the possibility that they didn’t share these goals in the first place and so don’t see themselves as failures.
