In the Twentieth Century, for example, Walter Miller talks about the focal values of lower working class culture, 'toughness', 'excitement', 'fate', 'trouble', etc. and relates these to crime. What is distinctive about early sub-cultural theorisation, however, is its purely descriptive nature. It describes values, it argues how these are transmitted in a normal process of socialisation, but it does not explain their origins. It is the combination of explaining both the origins and transmission of deviant sub-cultures, which is the hallmark of what I will term 'mature sub-cultural theory'.
Such an approach commenced with the pioneering work of Albert Cohen and Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin in the late fifties and early sixties. Here the influences of Durkheim and Merton became melded with the work of Edwin Sutherland, whilst learning from the phenomenological perspectives which accrued around labelling theory. And this first wave of American sub-cultural theorisation became reinterpreted within a Marxist rubric in the extraordinary fertile developments in sub-cultural theory centring around work at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Britain in the seventies.
In sub-cultural theory deviant subcultures are viewed not as pathological groupings of maladjusted individuals who lack culture, but rather as meaningful attempts to solve problems faced by the individuals concerned. What it is juvenile vandalism or the latest teenage style, cultural responses are meaningful rather than meaningless. A whole series of terms have evolved which, rather than explaining deviant behaviour, in fact attempt to explain it away. Terms like mob, psychopath, undersocialised, hyperactive, primitive, and animal, mindless (as in ‘mindless’ violence, immature, and mad - all serve one purpose. They take the observer's values as obvious and 'normal' and they castigate other people's values as not meaningful alternatives but a lack of value, meaning and rationality. In contrast sub-cultural theory would argue that human behaviour is fundamentally meaningful and differences in behaviour represent the different problems and solutions to these problems which particular subcultures have evolved.
A riot, for instance, is not a situation where a mob of people have taken leave of their senses, but a response understandable in terms of the subculture concerned. This is not to say that it is necessarily the most effective method of achieving the aims of the individuals, but rather it makes sense given their limitations and their understanding of the situation. It is, in fact, a common method of voicing protest by relatively powerless groups. As the social historian Eric Hobsbawn commented (1964, p.379):
"No other European country has so strong a tradition of rioting as Britain; and one which persisted well past the middle of the nineteenth century. The riot, as a normal part of collective bargaining, was well-established in the eighteenth century."
Or take a different type of behaviour. An outstanding study of classroom misbehaviour by Paul Willis (Learning to Labour) dismisses all pathological interpretations such as 'hyperactivity' but analyses how the lower stream of the class - 'the Lads' - realise that they are destined for low skilled jobs where academic achievement is irrelevant
Merton's three unanswered question, are why some but not others are attracted to deviance, was tackled by Cloward and Ohlin. In an attempt to link Merton's concept of anomie, which argued that people turn to crime if they had few legal opportunities, these writers believed that Merton had ignored the existence of an illegitimate opportunity structure. This opportunity structure had three levels:
Criminal subculture – The criminal subculture provides the opportunity for a career in crime. There needed to be a stable, cohesive w/c community with contacts in both the mainstream and illegal communities, successful role models for the young, and a career structure for aspiring criminals. Conflict subculture - The conflict subculture exists if the criminal subculture is absent. If no criminal career is available to young males they may turn their frustration at failure in both the legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures into violence. (3) The retreatist subculture is the one that takes the double failures, those who don't make it in crime or violence. The failures retreat into drugs and petty theft. The approach has been criticised for making the same assumptions as Merton, that everyone seeks the same goal of financial success. A further problem is that there is no evidence to support the idea of subculture as described by Cloward and Ohlin.
David Downes, in his study of working class delinquency, invokes the definition of culture formulated by CS Ford, namely: 'learned problem solutions'. That is sub-cultural responses are jointly elaborated solutions to collectively experienced problems. Deviant behaviour is viewed as being a meaningful attempt to solve the problems faced by a group or an isolated individual - it is not a meaningless pathology. It is necessary, therefore, to explore and understand the subjective experience of the actor.
Thus Downes writes: 'Whatever factors and circumstances combine to produce a problem derive from wither the individual's frame of reference - the way he looks at the world - or the 'situation' he confronts - the world he lives in and where he is located in the world, (1966,p.6). To achieve this aim it is necessary to delineate how new situations - and with them new problems - are assessed from the point of view of the culture that the individuals already embrace. In short: subcultures emerge from the moral springboard of already existing cultures and are the solutions to problems perceived within the framework of these initial cultures.
For example, one of the most frequent uses of the term sub-culture is used in relation to young people (youth sub-cultures). For example, in Britain we recognise the youth category teenager as a distinctive sub-cultural group. Although teenagers may develop interests and behaviour that are unique to this group. (Their ways of dressing, the kind of music they enjoy, particular forms of language) and which set them apart as a sub-cultural grouping (or rather, as a number of different sub-cultural groupings - skinheads, punks, hippies, ravers and so forth), they nevertheless remain within the general cultural framework of society. Teenagers live in families, they go to schools, they work, hold religious beliefs and so forth.
All human beings create their own sub-cultural forms and although we tend to use the term for the young and the deviant, it is important to note how this is just a matter of focus. Policemen and Army Officers, for example, form their own subcultures which are in their way as developed and exotic as those that exist in the underworld.
The initial conclusion we can reach is that cultural variation is far more common than cultural similarity. Even where people are faced with the same types of problems or issues, there is a general tendency to see these solved in different ways by people of different cultures. Perhaps the most startling cultural variations are found when we compare modern societies (such as Britain) with pre-modern societies (for example, the Burma or Britain 1000 years ago). Modern industrial societies (Britain, America, Germany and so forth) do tend to show less cultural variation and more similarity because of cultural integration - the fact that cultural influences are more easily passed from one modern society to another.
Finally, we need to recognise that the relationship between the dominant culture and sub-cultural groups is not static (that is, unchanging). Social behaviour is always dynamic; people’s behaviour constantly changes to take account of new situations and relationships (you only need to think about the differences between your behaviour now and at sometime in the past to realise the importance of this idea).
Additionally, cultures and sub-cultures, although different, are not self-contained units in society; on the contrary, there is a continuous flow of influences from culture to sub-culture and vice versa. (For example, think about forms of language and music developed by sub-cultural groups and how these forms are frequently adopted by mainstream cultures).
In the following, to help us understand the nature and differences between sub-cultural types we are going to classify sub-cultural groups in terms of two main types. These types should be considered as theoretical ideals, in the sense that sub-cultures do not necessarily belong to one type (they may be a mixture of types). As with most typologies (that is, classification systems) their main use is as a means of helping us (as students) get to grips with social phenomena that are frequently difficult to comprehend. We should bear this idea in mind at all times.
REFERENCES:-
Criminological Theory (1999By Frank P. Williams111 and Marilyn D McShane.
Tierney, J (1996) criminolgy
Maguire, M.. and Morgan, R (1994)The oxford handbook of criminology.
Downes D. Rock P. (1988) Understanding Deviance.
Paul Willis (1977) Learning to labour.
Online references and journal.
Criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/matza.htm
Sociology.org.uk
Diversity in Family
A criminology and diverse history timeline
