Anomie Emile Durkheim

Anomie

• Emile Durkheim

• Robert Merton’s Modes of Adaptation Disparity between promises of prosperity and opportunity to realize success “A cardinal American virtue, ambition, promotes a cardinal American vice, Deviant Behavior.”

Anomie

• Conformity Innovation Ritualism Retreatism Rebellionism

• Cloward and Ohlin’s Differential Opportunity

Anomie/Strain Theories

• Albert Cohen’s Strain Theory Non-Utilitarianism Short Run Hedonism Group Autonomy

• Middle Class Measuring Rods

• Reaction Formation

• Mobilization for Youth Program as application of theory to practice.

Anomie/Strain Theories

• Assessment of Anomie Theory Merton’s work one of the most cited papers in all of sociology over a 20 yr. period Popular bc it holds out the possibility that crime can be eradicated (because people are basically good)

• Weaknesses: Cohen’s theory…Too atomistic and “places undue emphasis on the discontinuity of the deviant acts” Whatever does that mean?

Anomie/Strain Theories

• Weaknesses:

• 1.Merton’s explanation is incomplete: how do goals and means get defined in the first place?

• 2.Merton does not tell us why some people who are frustrated keep from committing crimes.

• 3. He exaggerated the homogeneity and solidarity of social class.

• 4. He does not specify why some people commit one kind of crime while others choose different types

Anomie

• Criminal gangs Conflict gangs Retreatist gangs--double failures

• Cohen’s Strain Theory Maliciousness Negativism

Social Learning Theories

• Gabriel Tarde’s Theory of Imitation Law of Close Contact Law of Imitation of Superiors by Inferiors Law of Insertion

• Edwin Sutherland’s Differential Association Exposure Theory

Social Learning Theories

• Differential Association 1. Learn to define certain situations as criminal 2. Master techniques 3. Master motives, attitudes, and rationalizations

Social Learning Theories

• Factors Influencing Behavior Frequency Duration Priority Intensity

• Techniques of Neutralization/Drift Theory David Matza and Gresham Sykes

Social Learning Theories

• Drift Theory Elements: Denial of Responsibility Denial of Injury Denial of Victim Appeal to Higher Loyalties Condemn the Condemners

Drift Theory

• Carl Klockars’s The Professional Fence

• Apologia Pro Vita Sua

• Vocabulary of Motives/Techniques of Neutralization

• Denial of Responsibility: Never stole anything himself..fencing would take place even if he didn’t do it

The Professional Fence

• Denial of Victim: Respectable society buys from him. Claims he has good relations with the police and judges…some of them buy from him.

• Denial of Injury: Insurance companies charge high premiums so who really gets hurt?

Assessment of Learning Perspective

• Enormous impact on study of crime and social control.

• Normalizes our images of criminals, they are fellow human beings

Assessment of Learning Perspective

• Crime/Deviance is neither abnormal condition nor the product of abstract social forces…it is concrete and the product of learning to be in the world in a particular way, learning with and from others about how to define, feel and act.

Assessment of Learning Perspective

• Overly deterministic learning—don’t blindly run into criminal subcultures. They do it because of the chance for respect/rewards.

• Matza says that crime can best be understood as partly chosen, partly determined…soft determinism

Assessment of Learning Perspective

• Overemphasis on Personal Associations (as opposed to secondary ones like movies or news media) in the learning of criminal behaivor. Copycat killers didn’t learn it from another killer…saw it on news but still learned it.

• Some say it does not apply to certain types of criminal behavior, impulsive violence.

Assessment of Learning Perspective

• Does not account for why a person associates with certain types of people in the first place

• The Labeling Perspective

• Three Interrelated Concerns: 1)Social-Historical Development of Labels 2)Application of labels 3)Practical Consequences of Labeling Process

• The Labeling Perspective

• Mead’s Psychology of Punitive Justice

• Tannenbaum’s Crime and Community

• Lemert’s Social Pathology

• Becker’s The Outsiders and The Other Side

• Why was this Perspective so popular in the 1960s?

• The Labeling Perspective

• Labeling Perspective has Different Focus from Other Theories of Deviance

• Becker’s Issues with the Process

• Becker’s Sequential Model of Deviance

• Deviance as a Master Status

• The Labeling Perspective

• Primary and Secondary Deviance Labeling Amplifies Deviance

• Retrospective Interpretation

• Goffman’s Stigma

• So Why Do We Label?

• The Labeling Perspective

• Can You Recover from a Label?

• What About Rejecting a Label?

• Notion of Power: Links to Conflict Theory