SUBCULTURAL STRAIN THEORIES

Question 1

Cohen (1955) - status frustration

Answer 1

• Agrees with Merton that deviance is largely a lower-class phenomenon resulting from the inability of those in the lower classes to achieve mainstream success goals.
• Focuses on deviance among WC boys, arguing that they face anomie in the MC dominated school system. They suffer from cultural deprivation and lack the skills to achieve. Their inability to succeed in this MC world leaves them at the bottom of the official status hierarchy.
• As they are unable to achieve status by legitimate means (education), the boys suffer status frustration. Their frustration is resolved by turning to other boys in the same situation and forming or joining a delinquent subculture.
• The subculture’s values are spite, malice, hostility and contempt for those outside it. The delinquent subculture inverts the values of mainstream society. For example, society upholds regular school attendance and respect for property, whereas in the subcultures, boys gain status from vandalism and truanting.
• Purpose of subculture: offers an alternative status hierarchy in which they can achieve

Question 1

Subculture Strain Theories

Answer 1

See deviance as a product of delinquent subculture with different values from those of mainstream society.

Question 2

Cohen (1955) - status frustration
EV.

Answer 2

+ Cohen offers an explanation for non-utilitarian device, unlike Merton, and his ideas of status frustration, value inversion and alternative status hierarchy also help to explain non-economic delinquency.
- Like Merton, Cohen assumes that WC boys goals originally are the same as MC goals and are only rejected 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 3

Cloward and Ohlin (1960)

Answer 3

• Agree with Merton and Cohen that WC youths are denied legitimate opportunities to achieve economic success, and that their deviance stems from the way they respond to this situation.
• However, they go further to note that not everyone adapts by turning to ‘innovation’: different subcultures may respond in different ways.
• In their view, the key reason to differential subculture responses is not only unequal access to the legitimate opportunity structure, as Merton and Cohen recognise, but unequal access to the illegitimate opportunity structures.
• For example, not everyone who fails by legitimate means then have an equal chance to practise it.
• Drawing on the ideas of the Chicago school, they argue that different neighbourhoods provide different illegitimate opportunities for young people to learn criminal skills and develop criminal careers.
• They identify three types of deviant subcultures that result.

Question 4

Cloward and Ohlin (1960) - three subcultures

Answer 4

1. Criminal subcultures - These groups centralise around organised crime (e.g. the mafia) where criminals socialise youths into their own criminal career in utilitarian crime that might result in material success.
2. Conflict subcultures - gangs organised by young people themselves, often based on claiming territory from other gangs in so-called “turf wars”. They arise in high population turnover.
3. Retreatist subcultures - those who are unable to access either legitimate or illegitimate opportunity structures may drop out altogether, but they might do so as a group rather than individually. Not everyone who aspires to be a professional criminal, or a gang leader actually succeeds. These groups might abuse drugs, for example.

Question 5

Cloward and Ohlin (1960) - three subcultures
EV.

Answer 5

• Most criminal gangs would have elements of two or more of the subcultures. For example, drug use is characteristics of a criminal subculture but it also often involves “turf wars” carried out by conflict subcultures. Therefore, these subcultures are not very distinct and perhaps oversimplistic.
• These subcultures only consider working-class crime, predominantly about males. Broader and inter-related factors such as class and gender are not considered. For instance, they do not question or attempt to explain why, in a supposedly meritocratic society, working-class youths are often denied access to legitimate opportunity structures or why girls who are also denied this access do not have the same reaction.