Subcultural strain theories

Question 1

Cohen - status frustration

Answer 1

Working-class boys face anomie in the middle-class school system, suffering from cultural deprivation and lack the skills to achieve success. Their inability to succeed in a middle-class world leaves them at the bottom of the hierarchy, resulting in status frustration due to being unable to adapt to the new low status they have been given. They resolve their frustration by rejecting mainstream middle-class values and turn to other boys in the same situation, forming a delinquent subculture.

Question 2

Function of the delinquent subculture

Answer 2

To offer the working class boys an alternative status hierarchy in which they can achieve. Having failed in the legitimate, they create their own illegitimate structure in which they can win status through delinquent actions

Question 3

A strength and criticism of Cohens status frustration theory

Answer 3

Offers an explanation for non-utilitarian deviance such as vandalism and truancy

However, assumes that all working-class boys start off sharing middle-class goals of success and then reject when they fail, but it is possible they never shared these goals and therefore do not see themselves as failures

Question 4

Why do different subcultural responses to strain occur?

Answer 4

Cloward and Ohlin

There is unequal access to illegitimate opportunity structures. Different neighbourhoods provide different illegitimate opportunities for young people to learn criminal skills

Question 5

Criminal subculture

Answer 5

Provide youths with an ‘apprenticeship’ for a career in utilitarian crime. Come from neighbourhoods with a long history of crime and an established hierarchy of adult criminals, which allows children to associate with adult criminals who then select those with the correct aptitudes and train them.

Question 6

Conflict subculture

Answer 6

Areas of high population turnover result in high levels of social disorganization, therefore, preventing an established hierarchy of adult criminals from forming. The absence of this means that the only illegitimate opportunities available to residents are in loosely organized gangs, where violence allows young men to release frustration at their blocked opportunities and status that can be won by winning territory from rival gangs

Question 7

Retreatist subculture

Answer 7

Those who fail at legitimate success as well as illegitimate success turn to a retreatist subculture based on illegal drug use

Question 8

Evaluation of Cloward and Ohlin

Answer 8

They draw boundaries between subcultures too sharply - the drug trade is headed by both criminal and conflict subcultures. In C+Os theory, it is not possible to belong to more than one subculture

Miller argues that the working class has its own independent subculture with its own values, to does not value success, to begin with so members are not frustrated by the failure