Lecture 3 - Anomie/Strain Theory Flashcards
Anomie - Emile Durkheim (France)
Anomie: A state of normlessness where society fails to effectively regulate the expectations or behaviors of its members.
Anomie occurs when aspirations are allowed to develop beyond the possibility
of fulfillment.
* In better-functioning societies, ambitions are restrained, and human
needs and desires are regulated by the collective order.
Social Return on Investment
The belief that if you hypothetically invest a dollar today (to anything, i.e. healthy food, transportation) then we will save a dollar in the future
Ex. healthy food and diet can reduce hospital bills in the future
Merton’s Adaptations to Anomie
Merton argued that anomie results not simply from unregulated goals but,
rather, from a false relationship between social goals and the legitimate means to access them.
Ex. For those in the lower classes who share the cultural goals for success but have limited means to attain them, lack of education and job opportunities create a strain toward anomie, which may translate into deviance.
Adaptations:
- Conformity (most common)- Accept social goals and means to achieve them
- Only non-deviant adaptation
Ex. College students, Employees, etc - Innovation - Accept social goals but reject means to achieve them
Ex. Robbers, drug-dealers - Ritualism - Reject social goals but accept the means to achieve them
Ex. Hard workers who will never advance to management - Retreatism - Reject social goals and the means to achieve them
Ex. Homeless, Drug addicts - Rebellion - Create new goals and new means to obtain them
- Will use whatever means necessary to reach their chosen goal
Ex. Terrorists
Just as not everyone has equal access to the legitimate means of attaining wealth, we cannot assume that everyone has access to illegitimate means either.
* Just because you might wish to gain wealth and success via illegitimate means does not mean that you will have the skills and connections to do so.
Cloward & Ohlin - Differential Opportunity Theory
Explains why individuals engage in different types of crime based on their access to illegitimate opportunities.
* Not everyone has equal access to illegal means – Just like legal success, crime also requires opportunity.
- Different illegitimate opportunities available in poor, urban neighborhoods lead to 3 types of criminal subcultures:
- Criminal subcultures- Organized crime
- Conflict subcultures- Street fights
- Retreatist subcultures - “Double failures” (people who fail in both legal and illegal paths)
Albert Cohen - Status Frustration Theory
Does strain lead to “creative” solutions?
- Ex. Delinquent subcultures - Breaking Bad: Chemistry teacher was not able to support his family financially, resorted to cooking meth
- In the U.S., there is an idea of wealthy vs. poor schools. Some parents use their cousin’s address to get into a better school
Robert Agnew - General Strain Theory
Focuses on what circumstances lead individuals and groups within a society to engage in deviant behavior.
- Agnew suggests they are “pressured into crime”
- Strain increases the likelihood of anger/frustration, leading to correction action, and crime is one response to it
Along with failure to achieve valued goals, negative relationships may lead to strain
1. Prevent the achievement of positively valued goals
Ex. preventing job success
- Remove positive stimuli
Ex. death of family member - Present negative stimuli
Ex. Failing grades, physical assault
Messner & Rosenfeld - American Dream (Institutional Anomie Theory)
American Dream: Says if they work hard, anyone can live “the American Dream”.
* This assumes that everyone has the same opportunities, in reality effort does not always equal achievement.
Says that achievement is connected to personal worth
Messner and Rosenfeld suggest that the American Dream leads to crime and deviance because of its exaggerated emphasis on monetary success and its resistance to restraint or limits on individual pursuit of success.
Values of “American Dream”
* Achievement
* Individualism
* Universalism
* Materialiasm
Ex. To be successful in hockey (play on better teams, move up rankings), it requires a lot of financial investment. It is much harder to become a pro hockey player if you come from a poor family
Application of anomie/strain
Today, classic strain theory is used to examine group differences in crime rates, inequality, and relative deprivation.
Relative deprivation: A perspective that suggests socioeconomic inequality has a direct affect on community crime rates.
Ex. Incarcerated young men:
A criminal record makes it much harder to acquire a job, get a loan, etc.
* A pardon was created to clean your record, you must show you will not reoffend
* The problem/flaw is that the pardon fee was very high, so many people couldn’t afford it especially considering thje situation they were in
Ted talk: Merit
- It is believed that if everyone has an equal chance, the winners deserve there victory
- In reality, not everyone has an equal chance to arise. This leads to successful people looking down on the others
- There is implicit insult in the statement “learn and go to college to earn a good job and be successful” - It says that if you dont go to college and aren’t successful, it is your own fault
- Martin Luther King said even janitors are as important as physicians because without their help, diseases can spread rampant - goes to show we all do our part for the common good of the country
Strain Theories
Generally macro-level theories, and share several core assumptions:
- the idea that social order is the product of a generally cohesive set of
norms - that those norms are widely shared by community members
- that deviance and community reactions to deviance are essential to maintaining order.
Emile Durkheim: Social Integration and Suicide
Durkheim effec-
tively argued that characteristics of communities influence suicide rates, independent of the particular individuals living in those communities.
* He found that some coun-
tries had consistently high rates of suicide over several decades, while other countries
had consistently low rates.
Why?
* Durkheim argued that suicide was related to the amount of regulation in
a society and the degree of group unity. For Durkheim, social integration and social
change are key factors in deviant behavior. As a society undergoes rapid change,
norms will be unclear, and a state of anomie will result.
In a stable society, individuals are generally content with their positions or, as later scholars interpreted, they “aspire to achieve only what is realistically possible for them to achieve”.
Critiques of Anomie and Strain Theories
- Macro-level components of Merton’s theory have rarely been tested as it is difficult to measure how whole societies focus on particular goals and means
- Merton assumes that monetary success is held above all goals - we cannot assume those values are universal
- Do not account for deviance among privileged classes
- Merton never precisely defines anomie
Equity vs. Equality
Equity: Giving people what they need to succeed based on their individual circumstances.
* Focus on fairness and justice
Equality: Giving everyone the same resources or treatment, regardless of need.
* Treats everyone the same, despite personal circumstance
Varsity Blues Scandal
The Varsity Blues Scandal was a college admissions bribery scheme in which wealthy parents paid large sums to fraudulently secure their children’s admission into elite U.S. universities.
Methods:
* Bribing coaches to falsley recruit their sons/daughters
* Fake SAT/ACT scores
* Falsified applications
