Functionalist, Strain and Subcultural Theories

Question 1

Define value consensus.

Answer 1

An agreement among society’s members about what values are important: a shared culture.

Question 2

Define culture.

Answer 2

All those things that are learnt and shared by a society or group and transmitted from generation to generation through socialisation.

Question 3

Summarise the two key mechanisms that society uses to achieve solidarity.

Answer 3

• Socialisation instils the shared culture into its members. Ensures that individuals internalise same norms and values and that they feel it right to act the way that society requires.
• Social control mechanisms include positive sanctions for conformity and negative sanctions for deviance. Ensures individuals behave in the way that society expects.

Question 4

Briefly explain two reasons why crime is found in all societies.

Answer 4

• Not everyone is equally effectively socialised into the same norms and values.
• Diversity of lifestyles and values. Different groups develop their own subcultures with distinctive norms and values, and what the members of the subculture may see as normal, mainstream culture may see as deviant.

Question 5

According to Durkheim, why are modern societies likely to experience crime?

Answer 5

Modern societies have a complex, specialised division of labour, which leads to individuals becoming increasingly different from one another. This weakens the shared culture or collective conscience and results in a higher level of deviance.

Question 6

Briefly explain Durkheim’s two important positive functions of crime.

Answer 6

Boundary maintenance:

• Crime produces reaction from society, uniting members in condemnation of wrongdoer + reinforcing commitment to shared norms + values.
• Durkheim: function of punishment. Purpose of punishment is to reaffirm society’s shared rules and reinforce social solidarity.
• May be done in court to publicly shame and stigmatise the offender.
• Similarly: S. Cohen ‘dramatisation of evil’ and ‘folk devils’.

Adaption and change:
Durkheim: Change starts with act of deviance.
- Individuals mustn’t be completely stifled by weight of social control.
- Must be some scope to be challenged and change existing norms and values (appears deviant).
- Neither a very high or low level of crime is desirable.
- Too much crime threatens to tear the bonds of society apart.
- Too little means that society is repressing and controlling its members too much, stifling individual freedom and preventing damage.

Question 7

Briefly outline the functions of crime according to Davis.

Answer 7

• Prostitution: ‘safety valve’.

- Releases men’s sexual frustrations without threatening monogamous nuclear family.

Question 8

Briefly outline the functions of crime according to Polsky.

Answer 8

• Pornography safely ‘channels’ a variety of sexual desires away from alternatives such as adultery, which would pose a greater threat to the family.

Question 9

Briefly outline the functions of crime according to A.K. Cohen.

Answer 9

• A warning that an institution isn’t functioning properly.

For example: high rates of truancy may tell us there’s problems with the education system + that policy makers need to make appropriate changes to it.

Question 10

Briefly outline the functions of crime according to Erikson.

Answer 10

• Argues: if deviance performs positive social functions, then perhaps society is actually organised to promote deviance.
• Suggests: true function of agencies of social control e.g police may be to sustain a certain level of crime rather than rid society of it.
• Idea of agencies as social control produce rather than prevent crime = developed further by labelling theory.

Question 11

Why is functionalism useful for understanding crime and deviance?

Answer 11

• Provides an important and interesting analysis that directs attention to the ways in which deviance can have hidden or latent functions for society
• i.e not everything that is bad, is bad for society.

Question 12

Briefly outline three criticisms of the functionalist theory of crime and deviance.

Answer 12

• Explains existence of crime in terms of supposed function but this doesn’t mean society creates crime in advance with the intention of increasing solidarity.
• Looks at what functions crime serves for society as a whole, ignores how it might affect different groups or individuals within. Functionalism fails to ask ‘functional for whom?’
• Crime doesn’t always promote solidarity. May have opposite effect, leading people to become more isolated e.g forcing women to stay indoors for fear of attack. Conversely, some crimes reinforce collective sentiments e.g uniting a community in condemnation of a brutal attack.

Question 13

According to strain theories, why do people engage in deviant behaviour?

Answer 13

People engage in deviant behaviour when they’re unable to achieve socially approved goals by legitimate means.

Question 14

Briefly outline the two elements that Merton’s explanation combines.

Answer 14

• Structural factors: Society’s unequal opportunity structure.
• Cultural factors: The strong emphasis on success goals and the weaker emphasis on using legitimate means to achieve them.

Question 15

According to Merton, what two factors cause strain for individuals?

Answer 15

• The goals that a culture encourages individuals to achieve.
• What the institutional structure of society allows them to achieve legitimately.

Question 16

How are Americans meant to pursue their goals?

Answer 16

Legitimate means: self-discipline, study, educational qualifications and hard work in a career.

Question 17

What might prevent some groups from achieving their goals?

Answer 17

• Many disadvantaged groups are denied opportunities to achieve legitimately.
• For example, poverty, inadequate schools and discrimination in the job market for many ethnic minorities and the lower classes.

Question 18

Briefly explain the strain to anomie.

Answer 18

• Strain between cultural goal of money + lack of legitimate opportunities to achieve.
• Produces frustration and creates pressure to resort to illegitimate means such as crime and deviance.
• Merton calls this pressure to deviate ‘strain to anomie’

Question 19

Why is there pressure to deviate in American culture?

Answer 19

• American culture put more emphasis on achieving success at any price than upon doing so by legitimate means.
• Winning the game becomes more important that playing by the rules.

Question 20

Briefly outline Merton’s five adaptations to strain.

Answer 20

Conformity:

• Individuals accept the culturally approved goals and strive to achieve them legitimately.
• Mostly m/c w/ good opportunities to achieve.
• Merton: typically response of most Americans.

Innovation:

• Individuals accept the goal of money success but use ‘new’ illegitimate means such as theft or fraud to achieve it.
• Lower end of class structure.

Ritualism:

• Individuals give up on trying to achieve the goals, but have internalised the legitimate means and so they follow the rules for their own sake.
• Lower m/c office workers

Retreatism:

• Individuals reject both the goals and the legitimate means and become drop outs.
• Merton includes: ‘psychotics, outcasts, vagrants, tramps, chronic drunkards and drug addicts’ as examples

Rebellion:

• Individuals reject the existing society’s goals and means, but they replace them with new ones in a desire to bring about revolutionary change and create a new kind of society.
• Rebels include political radicals and counter-cultures such as hippies.

Question 21

Briefly outline two patterns of crime Merton explains.

Answer 21

• Most crime is property crime, because American society values material wealth so highly.
• Lower-class crime rates are higher, because they have least opportunity to obtain wealth legitimately.

Question 22

Briefly outline five criticisms of Merton’s theory.

Answer 22

• Takes official stats at face value. Over-represents w/c crime, so Merton sees crime as mainly w/c. Too deterministic: not all w/c deviate.
• Marxists: Ignores power of r/c to make and enforce laws which criminalise poor but not rich.
• Assumes there’s a value consensus: everyone strives for ‘money success’. Ignores that not everyone may share this goal.
• Accounts for utilitarian crime for monetary gain not violence, vandalism etc. Hard to see how it could account for state crimes e.g genocide + torture.
• Explains how deviance results from individuals adapting to strain to anomie but ignores role of group deviance e.g delinquent subcultures.

Question 23

Define subculture.

Answer 23

A group of people within society who share norms, values, beliefs and attitudes that are in someways different the mainstream culture.

Question 24

What do subcultures offer their members? In what sense are subcultures functional for their members?

Answer 24

An alternative opportunity structure for those who are denied the chance to achieve by legitimate means - mainly w/c.

Subcultures are a solution to a problem and therefore functional for their members, even if not for wider society.

Question 25

According to Cohen, why is crime a lower-class phenomenon?

Answer 25

It results from the inability of those in the lower classes to achieve mainstream success goals by legitimate means such as educational achievement.

Question 26

What two criticisms does Cohen make of Merton?

Answer 26

• Merton sees deviance as an individual response to strain, ignoring the fact that much deviance is committed in or by groups, especially among the young.
• Merton focuses on utilitarian crime committed for material gain, such as theft or fraud. He largely ignores crimes such as assault and vandalism, which may have no economic motive.

Question 27

According to Cohen, why do working-class boys face anomie?

Answer 27

They suffer from cultural deprivation and lack skills to achieve. Their inability to success in this m/c world leaves them at the bottom of the official status hierarchy.

Question 28

What are the values of the subcultures that Cohen describes and how do they compare with society’s values?

Answer 28

• The subcultures values are: spite, malice, hostility and contempt for those outside it.
• The delinquent subculture inverts the values of mainstream society - turns them upside down.
• What society condemns the subculture praises and vice versa.

Question 29

How does the subculture offer an alternative status hierarchy?

Answer 29

Having failed in the legitimate opportunity structure, they can create their own illegitimate opportunity structure in which they can win one status from their peers through their delinquent actions.

Question 30

Give one criticism of Cohen’s view.

Answer 30

• Cohen assumes that w/c boys start off sharing m/c 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 never saw themselves as failures.

Question 31

What do Cloward and Ohlin attempt to explain?

Answer 31

• Why different subcultures occur.
• In their view, the key reason is not only unequal access to the legitimate opportunity structure, as Merton and S. Cohen recognise but unequal access to illegitimate opportunity structure.

Question 32

Briefly outline Cloward and Ohlin’s three types of deviant subculture.

Answer 32

Criminal subcultures:

• Provide youths with an apprenticeship for a career in utilitarian crime.
• Neighbourhoods w/ longstanding + stable criminal culture w. an established hierarchy of professional adult crime.
• Allows interactions between young and adult criminals who select those w/ right aptitudes + abilities, train them + guarantee career.

Conflict subcultures:

• Arise in areas of high population turnover.
• Results in high levels of social disorganisation
• Prevents stable professional criminal network developing.
• Absense means only illegitimate opportunities available are loosely organised gangs.
• Violence within gangs release young mens frustration at blocked opportunities.

Retreatist subcultures:

• In any neighbourhood, not everyone who aspires to be a professional criminal or a gang leader succeeds.
• Just like in the legitimate opportunity structure where not everyone gets a well paid job.
• ‘Double failures’. According to Cloward and Ohlin, many turn to a retreatist subculture based on illegal drug use.

Question 33

Briefly outline the work of the Chicago school.

Answer 33

Cultural transmission theory (Shaw and McKray):

• Some neighbourhoods develop a criminal tradition or culture that is transmitted from generation to generation
• While other neighbourhoods remain relatively crime-free over the same period.

Differential association theory (Sutherland):

• Processes by which people become deviant.
• Argued deviance was behaviour learned through social interaction w/ others who are deviant.
• This includes learning both criminal values and criminal skills.

Social disorganisation theory (Park and Burgess):

• Argued deviance is the product of social disorganisation.
• Changes such as rapid population turnover and migration create instability, disrupting family and community structures.
• These become unable to exercise social control over individuals, resulting in deviance.

Question 34

What types of crime are not covered by Cloward and Ohlin’s theory?

Answer 34

Crimes committed by wealthy people.

Question 35

Along with Merton and Cohen, what do Cloward and Ohlin fail to consider?

Answer 35

They ignore the wider power structure, including who makes and enforces the law.

Question 36

What problems does South identify with Cloward and Ohlin’s types of subculture?

Answer 36

In Cloward and Ohlin’s theory, it wouldn’t be possible to belong to more than one subculture.

Question 37

Why are strain theoires criticised for being reactive?

Answer 37

For assuming that everyone starts off sharing the same mainstream success goal.

Question 38

Briefly outline what Miller means by independent subcultures.

Answer 38

• This subculture doesn’t value success in the first place, so its members aren’t frustrated by failure.
• Although Miller agrees deviance is widespread in the l/c, he argues it arises out of an attempt to achieve their own goals, not mainstream ones.

Question 39

According to Matza, how do members of subcultures behave?

Answer 39

Matza claims that most delinquents are not strongly committed to their subculture, as strain theories suggest, but merely drift in and out of delinquency.

Question 40

What other goals might young people pursue?

Answer 40

• Recent strain theorists:

Popularity w/ peers, autonomy with adults, or the desire to be treated like ‘real men’.

Question 41

Why might middle-class youths be delinquent?

Answer 41

M/c juveniles too may have problems achieving such goals.

Question 42

Briefly explain Messner and Rosenfeld’s institutional anomie theory. In what way is it similar to Merton’s theory?

Answer 42

• Focuses on American Dream.
• Obsession w/ money success and it’s ‘winner-takes-all’ mentality, exert pressure towards crime by encourage an anomic cultural environment.
• Encouraged to adopt ‘anything goes’ mentality for wealth.
• America: economic goals valued about all.
• E.g schools become geared to preparing pupils for labour market.
• Societies based on free-market capitalism and lacking adequate welfare provision high crime rates are inevitable.

Question 43

What evidence do Downes and Hansen offer in support of Messner and Rosenfeld?

Answer 43

• Survey of crime rates and welfare spending in 18 countries.
• Societies w/ more spent on welfare = lower rates of imprisonment.

Question 44

According to Savelsberg, why was there a rise in crime in post-communist societies in Eastern Europe?

Answer 44

• Applies strain theory.

- Communism’s collective values being replaced by new Western capitalist goals of individual ‘money success’.