subcultural theories

Question 1

Cohen’s status frustration

Answer 1

working-class boys experience failure in education, leading to status frustration and formation of delinquent subcultures with alternative status systems

Question 2

Cloward and Ohlin’s illegitimate opportunity structures

Answer 2

access to criminal careers differs based on local opportunities, creating criminal (organised crime), conflict (gang violence), and retreatist (drug addiction) subcultures

Question 3

Miller’s focal concerns

Answer 3

working-class subcultures have values like toughness, excitement, fate, autonomy, and trouble, which encourage deviance

Question 4

evaluation of subcultural theories

Answer 4

overemphasise male working-class youth, neglect white-collar crime, and sometimes assume shared subcultural values without strong evidence