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Lecture 16:
Anomie/Opportunity
Critical/Marxian
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Merton’sSocial Structure & Anomie
- Background: Durkheim and Anomie (1938)
- Merton’s “role model” and “self-fulfilling prophecy”
- Assumptions
- The disadvantaged are motivated to commit crime
- This motivation stems from a poor balance between social structure and cultural definitions of success
- Conceptual tools
- Anomie (vs. Strain)
- Common success goals but not opportunity (why?)
- Reference groups and relative deprivation
- Typology of balanced, ritualistic, anomic societies
- Typology of individual adaptations to strain
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individual adaptations
Success Legitimized
Goals Means/Norms Image?
Conformist + +
Innovation + -
Ritualism - +
Retreatism - -
Rebellion +/- +/-
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- Variation in Illegitimate opportunity
- Typology of Delinquent “Gangs”
- Criminal/Theft: Stable and integrated conventional and criminal system
- Conflict: Instability, lack of integration
- Retreatist: “Double failures” in any system
- Policy: Mobilization for Youth
Limited legitimate economic opportunity
Frustration, deprivation, gang formation
- Stable integrated convention/criminal = theft gang
- Nonintegrated, no crime = conflict gang
- Double failure = retreatist “gang”
extension I: Cloward and Ohlin’s Differential
Opportunity Theory (1960)
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- Reaction formation
- Middle class measuring rod
- Ambition, individual responsibility, skills & achievement, postponing gratification, rationality & planning, manners & courtesy, control of violence, constructive recreation, respect for property
- “Malicious, negativistic, nonutilitarian
delinquency”
Working class socialization
School failure
Loss of esteem, rejection
Reaction formation Delinquency
Extension II: Cohen’s Status Frustration Theory
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other extensions
• Societal: “Crime and the American
dream” (Messner and Rosenfeld
• Individual: General strain theory
(Agnew 2001)
• Subcultural: Lower-class culture
(Miller 1958)
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Supported Work Offenders Ages 27 and Over
1
0 6 12 18 24 30 36 Duration in Months
Cumulative Proportion without Arrest^ Control
[Uggen 2000: do jobs reduce crime?]
time to new arrest: controls
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Supported Work Offenders Ages 27 and Over
1
0 6 12 18 24 30 36 Duration in Months
Cumulative Proportion without Arrest
Treatment Control
time to new arrest: treatment
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(a) Offenders Ages 26 and Under
1
1 7 13 19 25 31 37 Duration in Months
Cumulative Proportion without Arrest
treatment control
among younger group…
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next
• Conflict/Marxian theories
• Gender and delinquency
