Youth Deviance

Question 1

Merton

Answer 1

Functionalist Deviance:
Individuals experience a strain between goals/values of society and what they are able to achieve
This results in deviant responses
Conformity, Innovation, Ritualism, Retreatism, Rebellion

Question 2

Coward and Ohlin

Answer 2

Functionalist Deviance:
Blocked opportunities
Develops Merton’s ideas but focuses on opportunities to commit crimes
Young working class males find themselves in local areas with high crime
Denied status through legitimate means, must join one of these subcultures:
Criminal Subculture
Conflict Subculture
Retreatist Subculture

Question 3

Matza

Answer 3

Deviant Career:
Criminality is a phase you drift in and out of rather than a deviant career

Question 4

Cohen

Answer 4

Functionalist/Media Deviance:
WC boys are aware of mainstream value but lack means to success in education
They join deviant subcultures as a form of dealing with this status frustration

Question 5

Miller

Answer 5

Functionalist Deviance:
Suggests WC boys are socialised into a number of distinct values that mean they were more likely to be deviant
Focal concerns:
Excitement, toughness, smartness, trouble, autonomy, fate

Question 6

Lea and Young

Answer 6

Class and Deviance:
Three main explanations for youth deviance
Relative deprivation, marginalisation, subcultures

Question 7

Murray

Answer 7

Class and Deviance:
Youth in deviant subcultures have not received appropriate socialisation into value consensus
Underclass don’t want to work and are dependent on welfare
Sees entire underclass as a deviant subculture
Those in single Mother households have a greater chance of criminality as boys have no role model and girls seek substitutes like sex

Question 8

MacDonald

Answer 8

New Right Deviance:
Summarised several studies of youth undertaken to test Murray’s ideas
Found there is no dependency culture and ‘underclass’ youth want to work

Question 9

Jacobson et al

Answer 9

Jacobson et al
Class and Deviance:
Multiple disadvantages in 200 people in custody they studied
75% absent fathers, 50% deprived households, disrupted education

Question 10

Farrington

Answer 10

Class and Deviance:
Cambridge study in delinquent development sampled 400 young males
Suggested socioeconomic deprivation was a key predictor of criminality

Question 11

Becker

Answer 11

Interactionist Deviance:
Labelling relates to power
We all label but some have the power to make it stick
Leads to a self fulfilling prophecy as people internalise label and change behaviour to live up to it

Question 12

Young, Class and Deviance

Answer 12

Class and Deviance:
Bulimic society encourages us to worship money, status and success
This causes an ‘intensity of exclusion’ for those who are deprived
Are deviant as they are driven to be included

Question 13

Harding, Class and Deviance

Answer 13

Class and Deviance:
Like a casino, gangs are a social arena of competition
Members struggle for distinction, position, status and survival
Success is determined by accumulating ‘street capital’ like chips in a casino

Question 14

Decker and Van Winkle

Answer 14

Class and Deviance:
Reasons for joining youth gangs are ‘pulls’ and ‘pushes’
Pulls: Attractiveness of gang, status, excitement, money
Pushes: Soc/eco/cultural disadvantages, feeling excluded and desire for protection

Question 15

Willis

Answer 15

Class and Deviance:
Studied an all-boys school in Birmingham of WC lads
They saw themselves as failures and formed anti-school subcultures which gave them status
Didn’t value education and waited to inevitably get jobs in factories like Dads

Question 16

O’Donell and Sharpe

Answer 16

Class and Deviance:
Predicted disappearance of a cocksure attitude towards employment

Question 17

MacDonald and Marsh

Answer 17

Class and Deviance:
Support findings found on young WC people in Teesside
Still reject academic success and formed anti-school subcultures

Question 18

Brown

Answer 18

Class and Deviance:
Three responses to education from WC youths
Getting in: low achievers wanting manual jobs
Getting out: high achievers using education to improve social position
Getting on: just comply and get on

Question 19

Lacey

Answer 19

Class and Deviance:
Study of secondary school found pupils arrive with pro-school norms and values
Setting for ability and competition led to demoralisation among WC
Develops an anti-school subculture

Question 20

Cicourel

Answer 20

Interactionist Deviance:
The process of dealing with potential deviant involves three stages:
Police search an individual based on interpretations of behaviour as suspicious
Police arrest the individual
Probation officer has a picture of a typical delinquent and assesses suspect based on that
Justice can be ‘negotiated’ based on class as if the individual is ‘apologetic’ or has an ‘apologetic’ family they may be let off
Delinquents are constructed by agencies of social control

Question 21

Alexander

Answer 21

Ethnicity and Deviance:
Studied group of Bengali youth in inner-city London during the moral panic of ‘Asian Gangs’
Found they did get involved in fighting but that the gang was often tenuous and fragile
Argued Asian Gangs were a myth created by media fueled by Islamophobia
Stereotypes were picked up by teachers who projected this gang label onto friends with a common identity/ethnicity

Question 22

Messerschmidt

Answer 22

Gender and Deviance:
Gangs act as a location for ‘doing masculinity’ that has to be proved

Question 23

Campbell

Answer 23

Gender and Deviance:
State has unleashed extreme forms of masculinity through abandonment of communities
Antisocial behaviour has become a means for young men to express masculinity
Result of being denied legitimate means through education and employment

Question 24

Harding, Gender and Deviance

Answer 24

Gender and Deviance:
How masculinity is accomplished depends on environment
Those without paid employment will find other means to achieve masculinity

Question 25

Mac an Ghaill, Gender and Deviance

Answer 25

Gender and Deviance: Found a number of fluid groups with different responses to school Ordinary lads: not academic but indifferent to school Academic achievers: pro-school and worked hard Macho lads: formed anti-school subculture where they valued acting tough

Question 26

Archer and Yamashita

Answer 26

Gender and Deviance: Studied boys in inner-city London with anti-school values Attached to a bad boy image related to hyperheterosexuality and saw academics as ‘soft’ Committed to staying local with aspirations but also saw themselves as having to be tough in this area

Question 27

Lees

Answer 27

Gender and Deviance: Controlled by the peer group in terms of ‘reputation’ stop them from being deviant

Question 28

Heidenson

Answer 28

Gender and Deviance: Girls are subject to more social control in terms of peer group and family Also controlled by the idea of staying in the domestic sphere and fear of going out at night By choosing to be deviant, they face ‘double deviance’

Question 29

Harding, Gender and Deviance 2

Answer 29

Gender and Deviance: Girls in gangs use social skills to carve a role, they don’t become ‘leaders’ but ‘fixers’ Girls can become an important part of operations using these social skills Violence is used to ‘keep them in line’

Question 30

Sewell

Answer 30

Ethnicity and Deviance: African-Caribbean male street culture values instant gratification and not education 4 reactions to school: conformists, innovators, retreatists, rebels Rebels accounted for only 18% of them but they got the most attention so generalisations made

Question 31

Mac an Ghaill, Ethnicity and Deviance

Answer 31

Ethnicity and Deviance: Class and gender intersect with racial stereotypes creating different responses Rasta Heads, Warriors and Black Sisters

Question 32

Archer

Answer 32

Ethnicity and Deviance: Asian/Muslim boys demonstrated masculine/religious identities in peer groups to hide from islamophobia Gained status and protection through bullying in these anti-school subcultures

Question 33

Mirza

Answer 33

Ethnicity and Deviance: African Caribbean girls resented teacher labelling/racism and expectational failure Conformed and worked hard but rejected teaching methods Used ‘strategic rationalisation’ to find other ways to succeed despite racism

Question 34

Stand and Winston

Answer 34

Ethnicity and Deviance: Found negative peer relationships were an issue in the underachievement of African-Caribbean boys Whereas white boys was low self-esteem and lack of parental aspirations Asian boys tended to have positive peer groups that were pro-school

Question 35

Nightingale

Answer 35

Ethnicity and Deviance: Studied young black males in Philadelphia Argued they consumed mainstream US culture through media like everyone else and therefore shared the same values However, they were excluded, racially and economically, from fully participating in mainstream means of achieving society’s goals Some turned to deviance because of this

Question 36

Bourgois

Answer 36

Ethnicity and Deviance: Studied latino and African-American drug dealers in New Yorks’ El Barrio Area Discussed ‘anguish of growing up poor’ in the richest country in the world Argued it created an inner-city street culture in which deviant practice became a norm

Question 37

Young, Interactionist Deviance

Answer 37

Interactionist Deviance: Police tended to see hippies as dirty, scruffy, idle pot-heads The result was drug taking started to become a central part of their identity Led to a more cohesive identity among the hippies

Question 38

Young, Interactionist Deviance 2

Answer 38

Interactionist Deviance: Deviancy Amplification Spiral First stage, translation of fantasy in which police accept media stereotypes as they are isolated Second stage, negotiation of reality in which police negotiate evidence to fit preconceived stereotypes Third stage, amplification in which labelling leads to self-fulfilling prophecy that may amplify deviance