Sociological Strain Theories and Anomie

Social pressures, blocked opportunities, or adverse experiences can increase the likelihood of offending under certain conditions.

He argued that rapid change can weaken established norms and social regulation, creating uncertainty about acceptable behavior.

Durkheim emphasized weakened social regulation, while Merton emphasized the disjunction between culturally valued goals and legitimate means of achieving them.

A theory proposing that pressure toward deviance can arise when society strongly emphasizes success goals while legitimate opportunities to achieve them are unequally distributed.

Conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion.

Accepting both culturally approved goals and legitimate institutionalized means.

Accepting culturally valued goals while rejecting or bypassing legitimate means of achieving them.

Abandoning or lowering commitment to culturally emphasized success goals while continuing to follow institutionalized means.

Rejecting both culturally prescribed goals and institutionalized means.

Rejecting and seeking to replace existing cultural goals and institutionalized means with alternative ones.

Innovation.

Ritualism.

Retreatism.

Rebellion.

Most people continue to accept culturally approved goals and pursue them through socially legitimate means.

Cultural goals are socially valued outcomes, while institutionalized means are the socially approved methods for achieving them.

Innovation.

Ritualism.

Conformity.

Retreatism.

Rebellion, as a theoretical classification rather than a determination that the movement is criminal.

A theory linking crime to the dominance of economic goals and the weakening of non-economic social institutions.

Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld.

A cultural emphasis on material success and achievement that may contribute to crime when economic values dominate other institutions.

The tendency to assign less importance to family, education, community, or other institutions when economic achievement becomes dominant.

The tendency for non-economic institutions to adjust their operations to meet economic demands.

The intrusion of economic norms and expectations into traditionally non-economic areas of social life.

Merton emphasizes unequal access to legitimate means, while institutional anomie theory emphasizes the imbalance between economic and non-economic institutions.

Albert K. Cohen.

Frustration experienced when individuals cannot obtain recognition or status according to prevailing social standards.

The standards of behavior and achievement against which working-class youths were argued to be evaluated in schools and other institutions.

The development of values that oppose dominant standards after repeated frustration in attempts to meet them.

Nonutilitarian, malicious, and negativistic behavior.

Misconduct committed without an obvious material benefit, sometimes for recognition or group status.

Behavior expressing opposition to dominant social norms or expectations.

Albert Cohen's status frustration and delinquent subculture theory.

Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin.

A theory proposing that access to illegitimate opportunities, as well as legitimate opportunities, influences the forms of delinquency that develop.

Criminal, conflict, and retreatist subcultures.

A setting where organized illegal opportunities and experienced criminal role models facilitate economically motivated delinquency.

A setting where limited access to stable legitimate and organized illegitimate opportunities may encourage violence and competition for status.

A setting associated with withdrawal from both legitimate and established illegitimate opportunities, historically linked to substance misuse.

The inability to achieve success through either legitimate opportunities or established illegitimate opportunities.

Criminal subculture.

Conflict subculture.

Robert Agnew.

Failure to achieve positively valued goals, removal or threatened removal of positive stimuli, and presentation or threatened presentation of negative stimuli.

Emotions such as anger and frustration may create pressure for corrective action, including possible delinquent coping.

Coping skills, social support, perceived injustice, personal resources, opportunities, and the strength of social controls.

Agnew's general strain theory, involving negative stimuli, anger, and maladaptive coping.