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MERTONS STRAIN THEORY - Coggle Diagram
MERTONS STRAIN THEORY
RESPONSES TO STRAIN
- 1) CONFORMITY: accepts culturally approved goals and strive to achieve them legitimately
- 2) INNOVATION: accepts goal of money succeed but uses 'new', illegitimate means e.g theft/fraud to achieve it
- this at lower end of class structure are under pressure to innovate
- 3) RITUALISM: give up on tyring tio achieve foals but have internalised the legitimate means so they follow rules for their own sake
- typical lower M/C office workers in dead-end jobs
- 4) RETREATISM: Reject goals and legitimate means and become dropouts
- merton included 'psychosis, outcasts, drug-addicts'
- 5) REBELLION: reject existing societies foals and means but replace them with new ones in a. desire to bring revolutionary change, and create a new kind of society
- this included political radicalises and hippies
THE AMERICAN DREAM
- Americans expected to pursue this goal by legitimate means
- e.g self-discipline, study, qualifications
- ideology of American dream tells Americans their society is meritocratic
- however many disadvantaged groups are denied opportunities to achieve legitimately
- e.g poverty, discrimination within workplace, ethnicity
- the resulting strain between the cultural goal of money success, and the lack of legitimate opportunities to achieve, it produces frustration and
- this creates pressure to resort to illegitimate means such as crime.
EVALUATION
- too deterministic; the working class experience the most strain, yet they don’t all deviate.
- Marxists argue that it ignores the power of the ruling class to make and enforce the law in ways that criminalise the poor but not the rich
- It assumes there is a value consensus that everyone strives for money success and ignores the possibility that many may not share this goal
- Effective in explaining the patterns shown in official crime statistics
- most crime is property because American society values material wealth so highly.
- Lower-class crime rates are higher, because they have least opportunity to obtain wealth legitimately.
?
- argue that people engage in deviant behaviour when they are unable to achieve socially approved goals by legitimate means
- Merton’s explanation combines 2 elements:
- Structural factors - society’s unequal opportunity structure
- Cultural factors - the strong emphasis on success goals and the weaker emphasis on using legitimate means to achieve them
- For merton, deviance is a result of strain between 2 things:
- The goals that a culture encourages individuals to achieve
- What the institutional structure of society allows them to achieve legitimately