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Subcultural Strain Theories (Cloward and Ohlin: three subcultures…
Subcultural Strain Theories
Cohen: status frustration
Cohen argues that much deviance results from the lower classes' inability to achieve mainstream success goals by legitimate means such as education
Cohen notes that working-class boys face anomie in the middle-class education system
They're culturally deprived and lack the skills to achieve, leaving them at the bottom of the official status hierarchy
As a result, they suffer status frustration. They resolve it by rejecting mainstream middle class values and turn instead to others in the same situation, forming a subculture
Alternative status hierarchy
For Cohen, the subculture offers an illegitimate opportunity structure for boys who have failed to achieve legitimately
The subculture provides an alternative status hierarchy where they can win status through delinquent actions
Its values are malice, spite, hostility and contempt for those outside it. The subculture inverts mainstream values. What society praises, it condemns
Cloward and Ohlin: three subcultures
They note that not everyone adapts to a lack of legitimate opportunities by turning to utilitarian crime. Some subcultures resort to violence; others turn to drug use
Different neighbourhoods provide different illegitimate opportunities to learn criminal skills and develop criminal careers
Criminal subcultures
These provide youths with an apprenticeship in utilitarian crime. They arise in neighbourhoods where there is a longstanding, stable criminal culture and a hierarchy of professional adult crime
Adult criminals can select and train those youths with the right abilities and provide them with opportunities on the criminal career ladder
Conflict subcultures
These arise in areas of high population turnover that prevent a stable professional criminal network developing. The only illegitimate opportunities are within loosely organised gangs
Violence provides a release for frustration at blocked opportunities and an alternative source of status
Retreatist subcultures
The "double failures" who fail in both the leitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures often turn to a retreatist or "dropout" subculture based on illegal drug use
Evaluation of Cloward and Ohlin
They ignore crimes of the wealthy and the wider power structure, and over-predict the amount of working-class crime
Unlike Cohen, they try to explain different types of working-class deviance in terms of different subcultures
They wrongly assume that everyone starts off sharing the same goals