Subcultural strain theories
- Created by: zoe_chetty
- Created on: 10-01-19 13:30
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- Subcultural strain theories
- Cohen
- Status frustration
- Cohen focuses on deviance among working class boys because they face anomie in the middle class dominated school system
- They suffer from cultural deprivation and lack of skills to achieve. Bottom of the official status hierarchy
- Being unable to achieve through legitimate means they suffer status frustration. They cannot adjust to the low status they are given by society
- They resolve this frustration by turning to other boys in the same situation to form a delinquent subculture
- Alternative status hierarchy
- The subculture rejects values of mainstream society and adopt an alternative status hierarchy in which they can achieve.
- They can win status from their peers through delinquent actions
- Evaluation
- Offers an explanation of non-utilitarian deviance
- Assumes wc boys share mc goals that they reject only when they fail. Ignores the possibility they didn't share these goals in the first place
- Status frustration
- Cloward and Ohlin
- Three subcultures
- It is not unequal access to legitimate opportunities but also unequal access to illegitimate opportunities
- Different neighbourhoods provide different illegitimate opportunities for young people
- Criminal subcultures
- Provide youths with an apprenticeship for a career in utilitarian crime. Arise only in areas with longstanding and stable criminal culture
- Conflict subcultures
- Areas with social disorganisation. Violence produces a release for men's frustration from blocked opportunities and other sources of gaining status.
- Retreatist subcultures
- Those who become 'double failures' in the legitimate and illegitimate sectors turn to a subculture based on illegal drug use, alcoholism
- Evaluation
- Agree with Merton and Cohen that most crime is wc
- Ignores crime of the wealthy
- Only three subcultures
- Three subcultures
- Cohen
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