Merton argues that an individual’s position in the social structure affects the way they adapt or respond to the strain to anomie, and there are five different types of adaptation depending on the individual’s response to situations. Conformity is the first: this is where the individual accepts the culturally approved goals and strives to achieve them legitimately. Argued by Merton to be the typical response by most Americans, it is most likely to be typical among middle-class, non-deviant, non-criminal citizens who have good opportunities to succeed. The next is known as the Innovation mode of adaptation which is where the goals of money success are accepted but illegitimate means of achieving them e.g. theft or fraud are used instead. This mode of adaptation typically occurs at the lower end of the class structure where factors like poor education qualifications and unemployment mean that legitimate means of achieving goals cannot be achieved. Ritualism is the third type of adaptation and is where individuals give up on trying to achieve the goals but accept the legitimate means and so follow the rules for their own sake. They no longer realise the positive opportunity structures that are available to them and may engage in deviant behaviour. Retreatism is the fourth type: where individuals in society reject both the goals and the legitimate means within society and turn to deviant and criminal behaviour because they see no access to opportunity structures and give up instead e.g. drug addicts, tramps, outcasts. The final adaptation to deviant behaviour is one called Rebellion: individuals reject the existing society’s goals and replace them with new ones in a desire to bring about revolutionary change and create a new kind of society e.g. political radicals, members of religious sects.
Merton’s theory shows how both normal and deviant behaviour can arise from the same mainstream goals and would argue that the access to opportunity structures plays a fundamental part in causing crime and deviance. However, Merton’s strain theory can be criticised because it doesn’t account for social patterns of crime affecting whole groups of people, linked to social class, age, gender and ethnicity where not everyone is subjected to the same opportunity structures.
Subcultural theorists, for example Cohen, proposed a Subcultural theory known as status frustration. This focused on the position of groups and their opportunity structures rather than simply on individuals. He argued that deviance was largely a lower-class phenomenon and that deviance was a result of the inability of those in the lower classes too achieve mainstream goals by legitimate means. Because they feel they are denied status within society, they experience status frustration and react to the situation by developing a delinquent subculture. In this subculture individuals have access to illegitimate opportunity structures to gain the goals of mainstream society by committing illegitimate means, crime and deviance. According to Cohen, the subculture’s values are characterised by spite, malice, hostility and contempt for those outside it but by committing crime, it gives the working-class youth the opportunity to achieve some status within their subculture, which is what they feel they are denied by mainstream society.
Cloward and Ohlin agreed that working-class youths are denied legitimate opportunities to achieve ‘money success’ and that their deviance stems from the way they respond to the situation, but argue that Cohen’s theory doesn’t allow for the diversity of responses found among working-class youths who find the approved means for achieving societies goals to be blocked. They identified three types of deviant subcultures that result from the varied social circumstances in which working-class youth live.
1. Criminal subcultures develop in more stable working-class areas where there is an established pattern of adult crime. This provides youths with an apprenticeship for a career in utilitarian crime and an alternative to the legitimate job market as a means of achieving financial rewards. Adult criminals can provide training and social control over the youth to stop them carrying out non-utilitarian delinquent acts e.g. vandalism, which might attract the attention of the police.
2. Conflict subcultures emerge in socially disorganised areas with high a population turnover. Conflict subcultures are characterised by violence, gang warfare, ‘mugging’ and other street crime. Approved and illegal means of achieving mainstream goals are blocked or limited and young people express their frustration at the situation through violence or street crime, and gain status through success in Subcultural values (Cohen’s status frustration theory recognises this).
3. Retreatist subcultures more likely among lower-class youths who are ‘double failures’. This means they have failed to succeed both through the mainstream legitimate opportunity structures and in the crime and gang illegitimate opportunity structures. The result is drug addiction and alcoholism which is paid for by petty theft, shoplifting and prostitution.
Both theories fail to explain why some people who are exposed to illegitimate opportunity structures do not take advantage of them and turn towards crime and deviant behaviour, or why people who have access to positive opportunity structures who appear to be conforming in society can actually be ‘innovators’ in illegal activities, such as white-collar and corporate crime. Both theories also suggest that deviance occurs when people cannot achieve societies goals by legitimate means, where the Subcultural theories see deviance as a collective rather than an individual response and Merton’s strain theory takes a more generalised approach to explaining crime and deviance through access to opportunity structures.
