This evidence suggests that members of society who are lower down in the social structure are unable to attain their goals through legitimate means. This is because their status in society prevents/restricts them from having an equal opportunity to achieving them in a legitimate way. For example, some lower class people may have little educational qualifications and therefore this restricts their goals of achieving a good job and earning money.
Merton outlines 5 possible ways in which members of society can react to achieving their goals: Conformity, Innovation, Ritualism, Retreatism and Rebellion. Conformity is the most common way to achieve goals. This is when members of society both conform to success goals and the legitimate ways of achieving them. They strive for success by means of accepted channels. Another response is innovation. Innovation is when a person turns to deviance to achieve their goals. Merton argues that members of the lower strata are more likely to choose this road to success. The third possible response is ritualism. This is when members of society have given up on achieving their goals in a legitimate way, but do not turn to deviance. This is because they have been strongly socialized to conform to social norms. The least common response is retreatism. It applies mainly to “outcasts, vagrants, tramps and drug addicts”. They have strongly internalized both the cultural goals and accepted means of achieving, however, they are still unable to achieve success. They abandon their goals and drop out of society – defeated and resigned to their fate. Finally, rebellion forms the fifth and final response. This is when members of society reject both goals and means and replace them with their own. Merton argues “ it is typically members of a rising class rather than the most depressed strata who organize the resentful and rebellious into a revolutionary group”.
However, Merton’s theory has been criticized by a number of sociologists. Some critics argue that Merton “over predicts and exaggerates working class crime, and under-predicts and underestimates middle class and white-collar crime”. Similarly, Merton has also been criticized by Valier (2001) for his stress on common goals in society. Valier argues that there are in fact, a variety of goals that people strive to attain at any one time.
This evidence suggests that the overemphasis upon attaining cultural goals by legitimate means creates a tendency towards anomie. This tendency exerts pressure for deviance, a pressure that varies depending on a person’s position in the social structure. For example, there is more pressure for deviance for someone lower down in the social structure because they have little means of achieving their goals.
This essay is now going to look at Albert Cohen “The delinquent boys” (1955) in which Cohen developed Merton’s work.
Cohen argued that lower working class boys hold the success goals of the mainstream culture, but due, largely to education failure, they had little opportunity to reach these goals. However, even though they were denied legitimate means of achieving status, young working class males still desired it. This led to “Status frustration”, in that they were frustrated and unhappy about their low status in society. Unlike Merton’s suggestion that they would now turn to criminal paths to success, they instead created an alternative set of norms and values in which they can achieve success and status. Cohen argued that the delinquent subculture not only rejects mainstream culture, but also reverses it. For example, a high value is placed on deviant activities such as vandalism and stealing, which is condemned in normal society. In carrying out these activities, members of the delinquent subculture were able to gain recognition and status from their peers. In doing this they are not achieving success through mainstream goals, but are achieving success and status within their own subculture. Cohen argues that this way the boys were able to solve the problem of status frustration. He argues that those most likely to be involved in a delinquent subculture where those who were: from a low social class, educational “failures”, socially deprived and those “unlikely to succeed” in the job market.
This evidence suggests that members of society who are stuck at the bottom of the stratification system can become frustrated at their position in society, as they are unable to attain their goals. Instead, they create their own subculture, with its own norms and values. In doing this they are rejecting mainstream values, which offer them little chance of success, and substitute deviant values in which they can be successful.
Cohen’s work has been criticized for a number of reasons. One reason is that he fails to make any references to women and sub-cultural development. This is because that since the primary role for women is that of a mother; she will find status within the home. On the other hand, career women will find status within their work, therefore subverting the need to create alternative forms of status. He has also been criticized by David Matza (1964), who questions the view that most delinquents are strongly opposed to mainstream values and strongly committed to delinquent gangs. In his research in the USA, Matza found that the majority of youths who were seen as delinquent accepted society’s mainstream values, and only occasionally committed offences.
This essay is now going to look at Cloward and Ohlin – Delinquency and opportunity (1961).
Cloward and Ohlin (1961) combine both Merton and Cohen’s in their theory of illegitimate opportunity structures. However, they have criticized Merton’s theory by arguing that he failed to explain the different forms that deviance takes. For example, why do some delinquents concentrate on vandalism whereas others on theft?
They begin their argument from the same view point of Merton, in that believe there is more pressure on members of the working class to deviate as they have less opportunity so succeed by legitimate means. Cloward and Ohlin have distinguished between possible responses to this situation: Criminal subculture, Conflict subcultures and Retreatist subcultures. The ‘criminal subculture’, exists when there is a stable, cohesive working class community with contacts in both the legal and illegal community, where there are successful role models (people who have done well through crime). Young offenders can “work their way up the ladder” in the criminal hierarchy.
The second subculture put forward by Cloward and Ohlin is the ‘conflict subculture’. These subcultures tend to develop where adolescents have little opportunity to access illegitimate opportunity structures. This means that access to both legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures is blocked, usually resulting in gang violence, in which individuals gain prestige within their subculture. The final level of the opportunity structure is the ‘retreatist subculture’ this is made of double failures who have no success through crime or violence so in turn take drugs or alcohol, to feed these addictions they commit petty crimes.
This evidence suggests that working class deviance can take many different forms. Just as the opportunity to be successful by legitimate means varies, so does the opportunity for success by illegitimate means. Cloward and Ohlin have produced the most sophisticated version of structural and subcultural theory, by combining the work of both Merton and Cohen. However, this theory has also been criticised.
Like Merton, Cloward and Ohlin have been criticised for failing to acknowledge females in their theory of delinquency and opportunity. Some sociologists also find it hard to accept that such a neat distinction between the 3 categories actually occurs in real life.
Similarly, Taylor, Walton and Young (1973) have argued that Cloward and Ohlin failed to account for all types of deviant subculture. They argue that “ It would be amusing, for instance, to conjecture what Cloward and Ohlin would have made of the Black Panthers or the hippies”.
This essay is now going to look at Walter Miller, “Lower class culture as a generating milieu of gang delinquency” (1962).
Miller sees crime as a product of lower-class culture. Miller did not believe that a deviant subculture arose from the inability of the members of lower social strata to achieve success. Instead he explained crime in terms of the existence of a distinctive lower-class subculture, claiming that their values and way of life actively encourage working class men to break the law. Miller suggested that working-class males have 6 “focal concerns” that are likely to lead to delinquency: Smartness, trouble, excitement, toughness, autonomy and fate. For example, toughness involves a concern for masculinity and finds expression in courage in the face of a physical threat, along with a rejection of timidity and weakness. In practice, this leads to assault and battery as a response to maintaining toughness. Excitement requires the search for thrills for emotional stimulus. In practice, it is sought in gambling, sexual adventures, and alcohol. All of these focal concerns, in practice, can lead to a number of deviant acts that are generally disapproved of in the larger culture.
This evidence suggests that young lower class males are pushed towards crime by the implicit values of their subculture. Miller suggests that the lower class culture has certain values that do not exist within middle class culture, and that these values or “focal concerns” can lead to committing deviant acts.
Miller has been criticized for providing little evidence to show that these are particularly lower class values. Box (1981), points out that they could equally apply to males right across the class structure. However, The following quotation from Moore and Hendrey (1982) shows how Howard Parker (1974) successfully applied Miller’s focal concerns in his study of working class lads, “ a view from the boys”.
“ Parker’s study of the Liverpool gang provides a good illustration. The “Boys” as they call themselves, go for a night out. They aren’t looking for any “trouble” (fights), but should anyone hint that they aren’t tough, or can’t take their drink “like men”, and then a fight ensues. On these nights out, the Boys’ ability to pick up girls often depends on their wit and repartee (smarness) and they are always on the lookout for fun (excitement). They work hard to maintain some freedom in their daily lives (autonomy), beyond the control of teachers or foremen. Finally, they are fatalistic about their lives in general and especially the economic and political influences on them (fate), over which they believe they can have no control.”
On the other hand, studies by David Downes (1966) of young working class males in London could find no evidence of these distinctive values. Downes found no evidence of Cohen’s “Status frustration”. Instead, he found that young working class males did not appear to show any resentment because of their low social status. Similarly, there was no evidence on Cloward and Ohlin’s contention that such people were resentful of their lack of legitimate employment prospects. This suggests that evidence of these distinctive subcultures is difficult to obtain.
This essay is now going to look at a counter argument by David Matza (1964)
American sociologist David Matza (1964) produced his own distinctive explanation of delinquency. He first of all suggests two ways that many sociological theories of delinquency are mislead. Firstly, they make deviants appear more distinctive than they really are. And secondly, they present an over-deterministic view of the origins of deviance.
Compared to subculture theories, Matza argues that, to a considerable extent, male delinquents are committed to the same norms and values as other members of society rather than opposing it. He believes that, far from being committed to crime, delinquents are only occasional, part-time law-breakers; they are ‘casually, intermittently, and transiently immersed in a pattern of illegal activity’. In certain circumstances they are able to convince themselves that the law does not apply to them on this particular occasion by using ‘techniques of neutralization’. This includes several techniques, such as ‘denial of responsibility’. For example, “I did it because I was drunk”. Delinquency can become possible once potential delinquents have freed themselves from the normal constraints society exercises over them. They are in a state of drift in that they are not yet and adult, but no longer a child, and may or may not break the law. Matza stresses that delinquents do not hold different values to other members of society; they simply express subterranean values at the wrong place and time. In order for some adolescents overcome the feeling of powerless, they need to take some action that will ‘restore their mood of humanism’, and committing a delinquent act assures them of at least some response, even if it is a negative one.
This evidence suggests that delinquents are similar to everyone else in their values and voice similar feelings of outrage about crime in general as the majority of society. However, unlike other explanations, Matza argues that individuals “drift” in and out of crime but do not commit to it. He argues that when they do commit deviant acts, delinquents often express “regret” and “remorse” at what they have done.
There are critiques to Matza’s attack on subculturalist theory however. Stephen Box (1981) questioned the evidence that Matza used; he argues that delinquents may not be sincere when they say that they regret their actions. Jones (1998) adds that Matza’s theory cannot adequately explain persistent delinquency and violent acts. Despite these drawbacks, Matza’s work has raised some important questions about deviance.
In conclusion, functionalist sub cultural theories have been very useful in explaining the relationship between deviance and society. For Merton, crime and deviance were evidence of a poor fit between the socially accepted goals of society and the socially approved means of obtaining these desired goals. This poor fit (or strain) led to deviance. However, other functionalists have argued that all societies will contain certain groups who develop their own distinctive subcultures, with its own norms and values that are different from mainstream society. Within these subcultures, individuals can obtain their goals through crime and deviance. On the other hand, David Matza would counter argue this, claiming that individuals are committed to the same values and norms as other members of society and that delinquents will often express regret and remorse at committing a deviant act.
Jessica Pemberton