outline and assess subcultural theory as an explanation for crime and deviance Flashcards
intro
juvenile delinquency refers to a collective of crime generally committed out of boredom and generally do not involve financial reward. They include vandalism, territorial gang violence and drug-taking These crimes are generally committed by subcultures or gangs.
Much of the sociological work relating to young people and offending is known as ‘subcultural theory’. It includes research into youth groups who have their own set of norms and values.
point 1
Cohen, a functionalist drew upon both Merton’s ideas of strain and also on the ethnographic ideas of the Chicago school of sociology. Cohen was particularly interested in the fact that much offending behaviour was not economically motivated, but simply done for the thrill of the act. (This is as true today as it was in the 1950s, for vandalism typically accounts for about 18% of current crime recorded by the CSEW).
evidence 1
According to Cohen, ‘lower-class’ boys strove to emulate middle class values and aspirations, but lacked the means to attain success. This led to status frustration. The result was that they rejected those very values and patterns of ‘acceptable’ behaviour which they could not be successful within and inverted traditional them.
furthermore 1
Cloward and Ohlin argued that Merton had failed to appreciate that there was a parallel opportunity structure to the legal one called the illegitimate opportunity structure which had three possible adaptations or subcultures.
Criminal- where there is a thriving local criminal subculture, with successful role models.
Conflict - Here there is no local criminal subculture to provide a career opportunity. Cloward and Ohlin give the example of violent gang ‘warfare’.
Retreatist- where the individual has no opportunity or ability to engage in either of the other two subculture. The result is a retreat into alcohol or drugs.
eval 1
Brake argues from a Marxist perspective. He says that working class youth were more criminal because they were more likely to be in a position to show resistance to capitalism than older people. These sub–cultural approaches assume there is a common value system to deviate from. Marxists don’t agree – they see these values as imposed by the ruling class. Sub-cultural theories don’t explain why people decide, to, participate in deviant sub-cultures. Sub-cultural approaches over focus on working class males and fail to highlight deviant subcultures in other sections of society.
point 2
According to Scraton and Gordon, Marxists, policing, media coverage and political debates all centre around the issue of ‘race’ being a problem. leaving Ethnic minorities in a significantly worse socio-economic position than the ‘white’ majority.
evidence 2
In response to this, ‘cultures of resistance’ have emerged, in which crime is a form of ‘organised resistance’ which has its origins in the anti-colonial struggles. When young members of the ethnic minorities commit crimes they are doing so as a political act, rather than as a criminal act.
furthermore 2
Some Marxists have focused on working-class deviant, youth subcultures, Hebdige looked for the meanings behind the style of punk rockers in the late 1970s. He argues that punks set out to deliberately shock the establishment and society by adopting a style which re-used ordinary objects like bin-liners and safety pins as well as deviant symbols such as the swastika and sexual bondage gear to symbolically resist the dominant cultural values of British society of the time.
eval 2
writers such as Scraton as ‘romanticising’ crime and criminals and in doing so ignoring the very real harm that crime does to its victims.
Marxists under-estimate the extent to which some changes in youth culture are manufactured by capitalism and shaped by consumerism.
Recent postmodern approaches reject their explanation for behaviour. Katz, for example argues that crime is seductive - young males get drawn into it, not because of any process of rejection, but because it is thrilling.
point 3
Lea and Young’s work draws on the Marxist subcultural approach and more heavily from the ideas of Merton Subcultures develop amongst groups who suffer relative deprivation and marginalisation. Specific sets of values, forms of dress and modes of behaviour develop which reflect the problems that their members face.
evidence 3
However, whereas the Marxist subcultural writers seek to explain the styles of dress, and forms of language and behaviour as forms of ‘resistance’ to capitalism, Lea and Young do not see a direct, ‘decodable’ link. For Lea and Young, one crucial element of subcultures is that they are still located in the values of the wider society. Subcultures develop precisely because their members subscribe to the dominant values of society, but are blocked off (because of marginalisation) from success.The outcome of subculture, marginalisation and relative deprivation is street crime and burglary, committed largely by young males.
furthermore 3
Lea and Young have pointed out that the majority of crimes are actually ‘intra-racial’, that is ‘black on black’. This cannot therefore reflect a political struggle against the white majority.
eval 3
Matza argued that there were no distinctive sub-cultural values, rather that all groups in society utilised a shared set of subterranean values. The key thing was that most of the time, most people control these deviant desires. They only rarely emerge, But when they do emerge, we use techniques of neutralization to provide justification for our deviant actions. These are Denial of responsibility, Denial of victim, Denial of injury, Condemnation of condemners and Appeal to higher loyalties.
conclusion
to conclude, there are many different approaches to explaining subculture and its place in society, all of which are as valid today as they were when the original research was carried out, for example Phil Cohen, a marxist studied 1970s skinheads and proposed that the skinhead style was a symbolic reaction to the decline of working class communities. For example, their dress exaggerated working-class masculinity and aggression.
