Cloward and Ohlin: 3 Subcultures Flashcards
What does Cloward and Ohlin do that is similar to Cohen?
Take on Merton’s ideas that working-class youths are denied legitimate opportunities to achieve ‘money success’ and their deviance stems from the way they respond in this situation.
How do they differ from Merton?
They note that not everyone in this situation adapts to it by turning to ‘innovation’ utilitarian crimes such as theft.
How do different subcultures respond to the lack of legitimate opportunities?
In different ways. E.g. the subculture described by Cohen resorts to violence and vandalism, not economic crime or illegal drug use.
Why do these different subcultural responses occur?
There is unequal access to legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structure.
What do criminal subculture provide youths with?
An apprenticeship for a career in utilitarian crime.
What neighbourhoods do criminal subcultures arise in?
Neighbourhoods with a longstanding and stable criminal culture with an established hierarchy of professional adult crime.
Conflict subculture
These arise in areas of high population turnover. Violence provides a release for young men’s frustration at their blocked opportunities, as well as alternative source of status that they can earn by winning ‘turf’ from rival gangs. This is closest to the subculture described by Cohen.
Retreatist subculture
Arise in any neighbourhood. Members are double failures, having failed in the legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structure.
What does Cloward and Ohlin ignore?
Crimes of the wealthy, as like Merton and Cohen, they agree that most crime is working-class crime.
What does their theory over-predict?
The amount of working-class crime.
What structure do they ignore?
Like Merton and Cohen, they ignore the wider power structure, including those who make enforces the law.
