Functionalist Explainations

Question 1

What does functionalists Merton (1938) say about subcultures?

Answer 1

• Individuals may feel a strain between mainstream goals of society of money through education and an individual’s ability to achieve them
• Since they can’t legally achieve the goals, they may turn to deviant behaviour through retreating, innovating and being ritualistic
• Merton didn’t consider it a collective response or applying it to youth subcultures

Question 2

What do functionalists Cloward and Ohlin (1961) say about youth subcultures?

Answer 2

• They applied Merton’s theory to the youth arguing that young people are blocked from achieving success through legitimate means so they adopt values such as aggression and being good in a fight to illegitimately achieve success
• They oversimplify subcultures and don’t consider the role of individual psychology and peer pressure

Question 3

What does fuctionalist Cohen (1955) say about youth subcultures?

Answer 3

• He argued that teenage boys desire status . He claimed that working - class boys are aware of mainstream values such as good qualifications, success at school, a good job and financial success. Due to a lack of opportunities, they will feel status frustration as middle class boys will achieve the goals in the value system in contrast to them making them feel inferior causing them to join subcultures for success
• Cohen oversimplifies social class and neglect agency and individual differences

Question 4

What does Functionalist Miller (1958) say about youth subcultures?

Answer 4

• Working - class boys experience being disadvantaged and excluded from mainstream society so they develop a shared set of norms and values allowing to create subcultures called focal concerns with values like toughness, freedom and excitment
• Miller overgeneralises by focusing on deterministic tendencies

Question 5

What is innovation?

Answer 5

Innovation involves rejecting both the cultural goals and the legitimate means of achieving them through creating new goals and values and new ways of achieving to form subcultures

Question 6

What is ritualism?

Answer 6

Ritualism involves achieving cultural goals of success without legitimate means that eventually become normalised for the individuals including obsessive pursuit of status symbols

Question 7

What is retreatism?

Answer 7

Both cultural goals and legitimate means of achieving them are abandoned manifesting into youth subcultures like gangs and drug culture

Question 8

How can functionalists be critisised overall?

Answer 8

• Don’t consider regional, ethnic and individual variations
• All focus on the typical criminal being a young working - class male
• They reflect Heidensohn who argue that female criminality is ignored
• Doesn’t consider Bennet’s view of a buzz causing crime

Question 9

What is Eisenstaedt (1956) theory for the development of youth culture?

Answer 9

Youth culture allows young people to be brought into society as there are risks of feeling stress and anomie. It provides a shared sense of norms and values with peers and a sense of belonging as a safe outlet for tensions. Rebellions can be seen as normal to test boundaries, experimentation and reinforcing acceptable norms

Question 10

What is Abrams (1959) theory for the development of youth culture?

Answer 10

The emergence of media - manipulated youth culture was linked to their emergence as a distinct group with spending power who started to be targeted by businesses and the media

Question 11

How can functionalist explanations for the development of youth culture be evaluated?

Answer 11

• didn’t account for individual subcultural differences
• the evidence given came from white middle - class American males without considering social class, race and gender
• the issues may only be applicable to Western culture
• it isn’t homogeneous as subcultures can emerge based on individual differences such as class
• postmodernists believe the values of age can’t only be defined by age

Question 12

What is the functionalist view on youth?

Answer 12

• Youth is seen as a transitional stage from childhood to adulthood, children experience social integration through their families, and adults create their own families when they have children and also experience integration through their work. As they seek independence from their families, youth get their sense of belonging from their peers
• Youth is a way to test boundaries, experimentation and reinforcing acceptable norms and values and thus will contribute to social order

Question 13

What does Parsons (1962) argue about youth culture?

Answer 13

He argued that youth as a social category only emerged due to changes in family to a purely nurturing environment due to capitalism. Whilst in a pre - capitalist society, the transition from childhood to adulthood was a rite of passage