Merton’s Strain Theory

Question 1

What is ‘money-success’?

Answer 1

The individual material wealth and the high status that comes with money.

Question 2

What is ‘strain to anomie’?

Answer 2

A pressure to deviate from societal norms and potentially commit crimes due to the lack of legitimate opportunities to achieve the cultural goal of money-success.

Question 3

What is conformity?

Answer 3

An adaption to strain.
People who still try to achieve the main cultural goals through legitimate means.
Usually the MC who have access to achieve highly.

Question 4

What is innovation?

Answer 4

An adaption to strain.
People who fail at the standard route to success innovate to find alternative and deviant means of reaching success and wealth.
E.g crime.

Question 5

What is ritualism?

Answer 5

An adaption to strain.
People who cannot achieve society’s goals and have stopped trying, may still act legitimately because they’re used to ritual.
E.g lower-mc workers in dead-end jobs.

Question 6

What is retreatism?

Answer 6

An adaption of strain.
People who reject the main cultural goals and means pd achieving them and may retreat from society.
E.g dropping out of school.

Question 7

What is rebellion?

Answer 7

An adaption to strain.
People who reject the goals of society and the means to achieve them. They may rebel against society and engage in protests and revolution to try and change it.

Question 8

What are reactive theories?

Answer 8

Theories that explain subcultures as forming in reaction to failure to achieve mainstream goals.

Question 9

What is utilitarian crime?

Answer 9

Practical or useful crime e.g stealing

Question 10

What do strain theories argue?

Answer 10

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

Question 11

How did Merton adapt Durkheim’s concept of anomie to explain deviance?

Answer 11

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 12

What’s does American culture value?

Answer 12

‘Money success’; individual material wealth and the high status that goes with it.

Question 13

How are Americans expected to pursue this goal?

Answer 13

By legitimate means.
Self-discipline, study, educational qualifications and hard work.

Question 14

What does the ideology of the ‘American Dream’ suggest?

Answer 14

Society is meritocratic.
Anyone who makes the effort can get ahead; there are opportunities for all.

Question 15

What is the reality of this ideology?

Answer 15

Many disadvantaged groups are denied opportunities to achieve legitimately due to poverty, inadequate schools and discrimination.

Question 16

What is the consequence of this?

Answer 16

Frustration, which creates pressure to resort to illegitimately means. Merton calls this ‘strain to anomie’.

Question 17

How is the pressure to deviate further increased?

Answer 17

American culture puts more emphasis on achieving success at any price, than doing so by legitimate means.
The norms are not strong enough to prevent people from wanting to deviate.

Question 18

Strengths of Merton’s Strain Theory:

Answer 18

• Both normal and deviant behaviour behaviour can arise from the same mainstream goals.
• Most crime is property crimes, bc American society, values material wealth so highly. WC crime is higher due to a lack of opportunities to obtain wealth legitimately.

Question 19

Weaknesses of MST:

Answer 19

• It takes official crime statistics at face value which over-represent WC crime so he sees crime as a WC phenomenon.
• It is too deterministic: the WC experience the most strain, yet they do not all deviate.
• It ignores the power of the RC to make and enforce law.
• It assumes there is a value consensus, that everyone wants to achieve ‘money success’ and ignores that not everyone wants this.