Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Merton's Strain Theory
- Structural & Cultural
Factors
- society has an unequal
opportunity structure
- culture has a strong emphasis on
success goals & less on using
legitimate means to achieve them
- deviance result of a
strain between...
- the goals that a culture
encourages ppl to
achieve
- what the institutional
structure allows ppl to
achieve legitimately
- deviance is a result of not
being able to achieve socially
approved goals by legitimate
means
- The American Dream
- American culture values
material wealth and high status
(money success)
- official statistics - most crime is
property crime
- assumes a value
consensus - not
everyone's goal is money
- ideology states that society is a
meritocracy (everyone has equal
opportunities)
- reality = disadvantaged groups
denied opportunities due to
discrimination
- strain between goal
and opportunities =
frustration
- pressure to deviate
and use illegitimate
ways (strain to anomie)
- pressure increases as culture
emphasises winning the game to be
more important than playing by the
rules
- Deviant adaptations to strain
- one's position in the
social structure affects
how they
adapt/respond to the
strain to anomie
- Conformity
- strive to achieve goals
legitimately (m/c w/
good opportunities)
- Innovation
- accept goals but
use illegitimate
means (lower class)
- official statistics - w/c crime
rates higher
- stats over represent w/c -
don't all deviate (deterministic)
- Ritualism
- given up on goals but have
internalised the legitimate means
(lower m/c in routine office jobs)
- Retreatism
- reject goals and legitimate means
becoming dropouts (tramps, drug addicts,
alcoholics psychotics etc)
- Rebellion
- reject existing goals and means but replace them
with new ones = desire revolutionary change (political
radicals and hippies)
- shows how normal and deviant
behaviour can stem from the same
goals
- doesn't explain non-utilitarian crime and state
crimes e.g. violence, vandalism, genocide,
troture)
- ignores group deviance e.g.
delinquent subcultures
- Marxists - ignores powewr
of ruling class - reinforce
laws that criminalise the
poor