Functionalist, strain and subcultural theories 1
- Created by: chicalatina
- Created on: 16-04-14 17:01
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- Functionalist, strain and subcultural theories 1
- Durkheim's functionalist theory of crime
- Criticisms
- Offers no way of knowing how much deviance is the right amount for society to function.
- Explains crime in terms of its function but doesn't explain why it exists in the first place.
- Functionalists see society is a stable system based on a value consensus. To achieve this society has two key mechanisms: socialisation and social control.
- See crime as inevitable and universal, even though it disrupts social stability.
- Sees crime as a normal part of all healthy societies because:
- In every society, some individuals are inadequately socialised and prone to deviate.
- In modern societies, there is a division of labour and a diversity of subcultures. Individuals and groups become different and shared rules of behaviour is unclear. = ANOMIE.
- Crime fulfils two important positive functions: Boundary maintenance and Adaptation and change.
- Boundary maintenance - Crime produces a reaction from society, uniting members against the wrongdoer and reinforcing the value consensus.
- This is the function of punishment: reaffirming shared rules and reinforce solidarity.
- Adaptation and change - For change to occur, individuals with new ideas must challenge existing norms, and will appear deviant.
- If it's suppressed, society will be unable to make necessary adaptive changes and will stagnate.
- Davis argued that prostitution acts to release men's sexual frustrations without threatening the nuclear family.
- A. K. Cohen argues that deviance indicates that an institution is malfunctioning e.g. high truancy = problems in the education system.
- Criticisms
- Merton's strain theory
- People are deviant because they cannot achieve socially approved goals by legitimate means.
- This is due to structural factors - society's unequal opportunity structure, and culture factors - he strong emphasis on sucess goals but weaker on using legitimate means.
- The 'American Dream'.
- Emphasis on 'money success'. Expecte4d to pursue this goal by legitimate means, e.g. education, hard work.
- Claims that American society is meritocratic, when really, poverty and discrimination block opportunities for many to achieve this legitimately.
- Results in a strain between the cultural goal and the lack of legitimate opportunities that produces frustration and pressure to turn to illegitimate means.
- American puts more emphasis on achieving the goals, therefore, 'winning the game is more important than playing by the rules'.
- Argues that an individual's position in the social structure affects how the adapt to the strain to anomie.
- Identifies five adaptations:
- 1. Conformity - individuals accept the culturally approved goals and strive to achieve them legitimately.
- 2. Innovation - accept the money success goal but use illegitimate means e.g. theft.
- 3. Ritualism - giving up on the goal, but have internalised the legitimate means and follow the rules for their own sake.
- 4. Retreatism - reject both goal and legitimate means, and drop out of society.
- 5. Rebellion - replace existing goals and means with new ones with the aim of bringing about social change.
- Shows how both normal and deviant ebhaviour can arise from the same mainstream goals.
- Most crime i sproperty crime, because American scoiety values material wealth so highly.
- W/C crime rates are higher because they have the least opportunity to obtain wealth legitimately.
- It takes official crime statistics at face value. Therefore, it's too deterministic as not all w/c are deviant.
- Ignores the power of the ruling class to make and enforce the laws.
- Subcultural strain theories criticise Merton's theory. they see deviance as the product of delinquent subcultures, which offer l/c members a solution to the problem of how to gain status they can't achieve legitimately.
- Durkheim's functionalist theory of crime
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