Chapter 6 - Social Structure Theories Flashcards
Strain Theory
Strain Theory
- A body of theories that focus on explaining why some individuals and groups within a society are more likely to engage in crime than others (For example: students who plagarize in university will have to be addressed by a professor more than once)
- Strain the result of - the ability to achieve culturally-perscribes goals through culturally-perscribed means
Culturall prescribed goals (what car you drive, a family trip to disney)
Merton argues that there are goals who all strives achieve
Metonian Strain Theory
- Goal Blockage (ex. The housing market prices are unattainable)
- Strain
- Crime
The Conformist
The conformist (average person): they buy into the goals
* They want to achieve the cultural goals
* They have access to the institutionalized means
* They aren’t someone who would necessarily commit crimes
The innovator
- Doesn’t have access to legitimate means
- Cultural goals
- Institutionalized means
The Ritualist
- Cultural goals
- Doesn’t buy into the institutionalized means but they have access
Example: individuals who aren’t satisfied where they live/who they live with (going through the motions, working a 9-5)
The Retreatist
- Don’t care about cultural goals (-)
- Anti-Capitalist
- Don’t have access to insitutionalized means (-)
Example: drug subcultures, Slakers, Hippies (people who don’t apply themselves
The Rebel
- People who are in protests (Anti-Capitalist)
- They think our current sustem contributes to inequality (poverty, homelessness)
- They don’t buy into the system
- The system is the problem
- Cultural Goals (+/-)
- Institutionalized Means (+/-)
- The things they do could be considered illegal, but they are anarchists
Opportunity Theory
Opportunity Structure
- Opportunity is shaped by the way a society, or an institution is organized or structured
Example: Schools (Education)
Illegitimate Opportunity Structures
An illegitimate Opportunity Structure
- Differential Opportunity
- Criminal opportunities are similarly not structured equally
- Barriers to illegal success
The Criminal Subculture
- Legitimate and illegitimate opportunities
- Pro-social and criminal values
- Integration of offenders at various age levels
The Conflict Subculture
- Lack of legitimate opportunities
- Lllegitimate opportunity structure
- Absence of criminal organizations
Example: Street Gangs - The Code of the Street: Elijah Anderson interviewing and hanging out in neighbourhoods in poverty, structural changes to employment opportunities dried up very fast (Chicago), sex work, drug dealing, violence, control over day-to-day life was limited
The concept of juice
* Maintaining respect
* A street term that loosely refers to respect, being treated right, or being granted deference
* Since young people couldn’t control most aspects of their life, they highly value respect. If you disrespected them, they took contol
Cultural Deviance Theory
A subculture
- A group of people who share a distinctive set of cultural beliefs and behaviours that differs in some significant way from that of the larger society
- Goths, Bikers (lifestyle), straight edge (no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no foreign substance in your body
Criminal Subcultures
Albert Cohen and Delinquent Boys (in the 50’s)
- The Middle-Class Measuring Rod: a set of standards for guiding day-today conduct, life aspirations, and measures of success
- He found that boys who came from middle-class families could adapt to these rules, boys from lower-class families were larger and waiting your turn wasn’t a good idea (lack of attention) and had no parents who could help or read them bedtime stories
For example: raising your hand
Lower-Class and Status Frustration
- Status Frustration and Reaction Formation: a reduction of anxiety over unacceptable feelings or behaviours
- Status Frustration and Mutual Conversion: a collective reversal of values and adoption of alternate value system (behagn to hate authority, formed their own subculture)
