Critically Examine the Subcultural Approach to Crime and Deviance.

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Mr. Petty                Holly Dale

Critically Examine the Subcultural Approach to Crime and Deviance.

Subcultural theories share the common belief that people who commit crime usually share different values from the mass of law-abiding members of society.  However, crime committing people do not live in complete opposition to mainstream values; rather they have ‘amended’ certain values so that this justifies criminal behaviour.

   As a way of structuring this particular discussion of sub-cultural theories, it is useful to distinguish between two main types of sub-culture; Reactive and Independent.  A "reactive sub-culture" is one in which the members of a particular sub-cultural group develop norms and values that are both a response to and opposition against the prevailing norms and values that exist in a predominantly middle-class or conventional culture. In this respect, this form of sub-culture is sometimes called "oppositional" rather than reactive.

 Durkheim claimed that a state of anomie was occurring in modern society, where norms and values within society were becoming confused thus people do not know what to expect from one another which leads to deviant behaviour.

  Robert Merton adopted Durkheim's basic Functionalist position in relation to law and crime and refined the concept of anomie as a means of attempting to understand the conformity and non-conformity to social rules at the level of individual / group behaviour.

A study made in the context of reactive / oppositional sub-cultures is one in which a link to the work of Merton is made; In this respect, Merton altered the general focus of Durkheim's use of the concept of anomie, changing it from a condition whereby a state of true normlessness existed, to one in which individuals could experience anomie if they were unable to follow the dominant norms in any society. In this sense, Merton is arguing that individuals can experience anomie not because normative guide-lines do not exist, but rather because they are unable (or unwilling) to behave in ways that conform to such norms.

  In his work, Merton explored the idea that, in American society, there existed a lack of fit between the socially-produced goals for people's behaviour and the means through which they could achieve these desirable ends. In effect, what Merton was arguing was: People were encouraged, through the socialisation process, to want certain things out of life. In simple terms, they were socialised into the "American Dream" of health, wealth, personal happiness and so forth. And secondly that American society was so structured as to effectively ensure that the vast majority of people could never realistically attain these goals - the means that American society provided - such as hard work - were simply not sufficient enough to ensure that everyone could obtain the desirable goals they were socialised to want.

  In this respect, whilst American society placed a high social value upon "success" in all its forms, the means to gaining legitimate success were effectively closed to all but a few - the vast majority of people would never achieve such goals by working...

As Merton argued, if people are socialised into both wanting success and needing to be successful by working - yet they are effectively denied that success through such means, strains develop in the normative structure of society.

On the one hand, you have people being socialised into actively desiring success and on the other, you have a large number of potentially very unhappy people when they discover that the supposed means to such success do not deliver the goods.

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In such a situation, anomie occurs because there is a tension between what people have been socialised to desire and what they are able to achieve through legitimate means. Merton argued that the disjunction between wanting "success" and the relative lack of legitimate opportunity for success did not mean that people simply gave-up wanting to be successful. This was not possible because the whole thrust of their socialisation was geared towards the value of success. In a situation whereby people desired success - yet were effectively denied it - he argued that people would find other, probably less legitimate, means ...

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