Subcultural strain theories

Question 1

How do subcultural strain theorists see deviance?

Answer 1

They see deviance as the product of a delinquent subculture with different values from those of mainstream society

Question 2

Cohen: status frustration

Answer 2

• Focuses on deviance among working-class boys
• Suffer from cultural deprivation and anomie
• Resolve their frustration by rejecting mainstream meiddle-class values and turn to other boys in the same situation

Question 3

Alternative Status Hierarchy

Answer 3

• The values of the subculture are spite, malice and hostility for those outside of it
• Inversion of society’s values
• Offers the boys an alternative status hierarchy in which they can achieve
• Offers an explanation of non-utilitarian deviance, unlike Merton
• Like Merton, his theory assumes that w/c boys start off with sharing middle class success goals

Question 4

Cloward and Ohlin: 3 subcultures

Answer 4

• Different subcultures respond in different ways to the lack of legitimate opportunities
• Key reason isn’t only unequal access to the legitimate opportunity structure, but unequal access to the illegitimate one
  1. Criminal subcultures:
• an apprenticeship for a career in utilitarian crime
• established hierarchy
  2. Conflict subcultures:
• arise in areas of high population turnover
• results in high levels of social disorganisation
• loosely organised gangs
  3. Retreatist subcultures:
• ‘double failures’

Question 5

Evaluation of Cloward and Ohlin:

Answer 5

• Ignore the wider power structure, including who makes and enforces the law
• South (2014): drug trade is a mixture of both ‘disorganised’ crime (conflict subcultures) and professional crime (criminal subcultures)
• As it is a reactive theory, they assume everyone starts off with the same goals
• Miller (1962): lower class has its own independent subculture, separate from mainstream culture- therefore there is no frustration
• Matza (1964): most delinquents merely drift in and out of delinquency

Question 6

Institutional anomie theory:

Answer 6

• Focuses on the American dream
• Argue that an ‘anything goes’ mentality is promoted in pursuit of wealth
• Messner and Rosenfeld: in societies based on free-market capitalism and lacking adequate welfare provision, high crime rates are inevitable
• Downes and Hansen (2006): societies that spent more on welfare had lower rates of imprisonment
• Savelsberg (1995): post-communist societies in Eastern Europe had a massive increase in crime as communism’s collective values were replaced with capitalist goals of individual ‘money success’