This essay will evaluate the claim that deviant behavior is the result of dysfunctional socialization and will be looking at views from Albert K. Cohen, Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin, and Emile Durkheim.

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Evaluate the claim that deviant behavior is the result of dysfunctional socialization.

        This essay will evaluate the claim that deviant behavior is the result of dysfunctional socialization and will be looking at views from Albert K. Cohen, Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin, and Emile Durkheim.

        Cohen agrees with the statement that the dysfunctional socialization causes deviant behavior. Cohen argues that lower-working-class boys hold the success goals of the mainstream culture, but, due largely to educational failure and the dead-end jobs that result from they have little opportunity to attain those goals. Stuck at the bottom of the stratification system, with avenues to success blocked, many lower-working-class boys suffer from status frustration. They replace success goals with an alternative set of norms and values in terms of which they can achieve success and gain prestige. The result is a delinquent subculture. The delinquent subculture takes its norm from the larger culture but turns them upside down. A high value is placed on activities such as stealing, vandalism and truancy. Therefore, we can say that because there is unequal access of opportunity, there is greater pressure on certain groups within the social structure to deviate. However, Cohen’s views cannot be totally accepted as Steven Box believed Cohen’s theory was only plausible for a small minority of delinquents.  He questioned Cohen’s view that most delinquent youths originally accepted the mainstream standards of success. Rather than experiencing shame and guilt at their own failure, Box argued, they feel resentment at being regarded as failures by teachers and middle-class youths whose values they do not share and cannot accept. They turn against those who look down on them, they will not tolerate the way they are insulted. Therefore, we can conclude that there is unnecessarily the dysfunctional socialization that causes deviance but it also the feeling of the delinquents themselves make them to act as such.

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        Cloward and Ohlin also agree with the statement where there is greater pressure on members of working class to deviate because they have less opportunity to succeed by legitimate means. They distinguished possible responses to this situation. The first one is criminal subcultures tend to emerge in areas where there is an established pattern of organized adult crime. In such areas a ‘learning environment is provided for the young which they are exposed to criminal skills and deviant values. They have access to illegitimate opportunity structure. Other than that, there is also conflict subcultures which develop in areas where adolescents ...

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