Merton's Strain Theory
- Created by: StephanieA
- Created on: 20-12-15 16:37
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- Mertons strain theory
- For Merton, deviance is the result of a strain between the goals that a culture encourages individuals to achieve and what the institutional structure of society allows them to achieve legitimatey
- The resulting strain between the cultural goal of money and the lack of legitimate opportunities to achieve progresses to frustration, and this in turn creates a pressure to resort to illegitimate means such as crime and deviance
- According to Merton social order is based on a consensus around social goals and approved means of achieving them
- Merton identifies 5 modes of adaptation to apply to his strain theory
- These are: Conformity, innovation, retreatists, ritualists and rebellion
- Criticisms
- (negative evaluation) Merton assumes that financial success is the primary cultural goal for society, ignoring other goals people seek to achieve
- (negative evaluation) He focuses on individual responses, and doesn't recognise that there is a social pattern of crime and deviance affecting whole groups of people, linked to social class, age, gender, ethnicity and localty
- (positive evalution) Most crime is property crime, because American society values material wealth so highly
- He doesn't explain why most people who face strain to not turn to crime or other deviance
- He does not recognise that their may be outwardly respectable, apparently conforming successful people who are 'innovators' engaged in illegal activities as in 'white collar' and corporate crimes
- The theory takes crime statistics at face value so Merton sees crime as a mainly working class phenomenon
- Marxists argue that it ignores the power of the ruling class to make and enforce the laws in ways that criminalise
- Merton uses the american dream to illustrate his point
- For Merton, deviance is the result of a strain between the goals that a culture encourages individuals to achieve and what the institutional structure of society allows them to achieve legitimatey
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