Writing Assignment

Chapter outline Introduction

Durkheim and criminology

Durkheim and social change

Durkheim, suicide and anomie

Assessing Durkheim

Merton and anomie

Anomie and the ‘American dream’

Assessing Merton’s anomie theory

Later strain theory

Cloward and Ohlin

General strain theory

Messner and Rosenfeld

Assessing strain theory

Questions for further discussion Further reading Websites

9 Durkheim, anomie and strain

9 · Durkheim, anomie and strain182

CHAPTER SUMMARY

In previous chapters we have explored some ways in which positivism has shaped and infl uenced criminology. In particular, the last two chapters were concerned with approaches that were predominantly individualistic in focus – biological and psychological positivism. Here we shift focus to look at the emergence of sociological criminology. Of the three main ‘founding fathers’ of sociology, it was only Émile Durkheim who discussed the subject of crime at any length.

In this chapter we explore:

elements of Durkheim’s thought and the infl uence this has had on later criminological writing;

the linked concepts of anomie and strain; how these concepts have been utilised by various writers to help us organise

our thinking about the nature of crime in modern society.

Introduction Though Marx has had a considerable infl uence on criminological thought, he had little directly to say about crime. Émile Durkheim, by contrast, had a considerable amount to say about crime. His ideas can be said to have had a signifi cant bearing on the Chicago School (see Chapter 10), on Robert Mer- ton and strain theory, and on more contemporary theories of punishment (see Chapter 23). Indeed, a convincing case can be made that Durkheim is one of the great underestimated fi gures in criminology (Smith, 2008). As with the rest of his work, Durkheim’s preoccupation was with the ways in which the social aspects of phenomena might be understood and illustrated. His major writings on crime emerge from his work on the division of labour and on the nature of social solidarity.

Durkheim and criminology Crime, for Durkheim, was those actions that offended against collective feelings or sentiments. Crime is not something that is unchanging, or has some essence. Rather, the notion of ‘crime’ refl ects par- ticular social conventions and these vary according to time and place. Moreover, it is not the case that ‘crimes’ are everywhere equally harmful to society; that is, crimes cannot be conceived as matters that are specifi cally injurious to the wider community. Rather, they are best understood, he argued, as vio- lations of a moral code – what he referred to as the

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conscience collective of society. It is because this moral code is violated that punishment is required. As Garland (1990: 30) explains it:

The criminal act violates sentiments and emo- tions which are deeply ingrained in most members of society – it shocks their healthy con- sciences – and this violation calls forth strong psychological reactions, even among those not directly involved. It provokes a sense of outrage, anger, indignation, and a passionate desire for vengeance.

According to Durkheim a certain amount of crime is normal in any society:

Crime is present not only in the majority of soci- eties of one particular species but in all societ- ies of all types. There is no society that is not confronted with the problem of criminality. Its form changes; the acts thus characterized are not the same everywhere; but, everywhere and always, there have been men who have behaved in such a way as to draw upon themselves penal repression.

(Durkheim, 1938: 65–66)

Crime, for Durkheim, plays a number of important functions. First, it has an adaptive function in that it introduces new ideas and practices into society, thereby ensuring that there is change rather than stagnation. It also has a boundary maintenance func- tion, reinforcing social values and norms – crudely, through its stimulation of collective action against deviance, it helps to reaffi rm the difference between

Durkheim and criminology 183

right and wrong. To this extent crime should be considered to be a normal element in any properly functioning society.

Let us make no mistake. To classify crime among the phenomena of normal sociology is not to say merely that it is an inevitable, although regret- table phenomenon, due to the incorrigible wick- edness of men; it is to affi rm that it is a factor in public health, an integral part of all societies.

(Durkheim, 1938: 67)

His phrase – crime ‘is a factor in public health’ – seems odd at fi rst sight. Surely, crime is bad, nega- tive, unhelpful, destructive? Durkheim’s argument was intended as a corrective to those views that took crime to be entirely anti-social, strange or par- asitic. Rather, he pointed out that it had a social role. However unpalatable it may seem, sociologically we must recognise the functions it performs. It is, for example, part of our social ‘glue’. By proscrib- ing certain forms of behaviour we simultaneously indicate what acceptable behaviour looks like. By punishing, we reinforce legal and moral rules. Thus, by implication, too little crime could be as concerning as too much. This is an observation of huge importance to criminologists. As Durkheim observes in an important passage, there is no pros- pect of crime disappearing:

In a society in which criminal acts were no longer committed, the sentiments they offend would have to be found without exception in all individual consciousnesses, and they must be found to exist with the same degree as senti- ments contrary to them. Assuming that this con- dition could actually be realized, crime would not thereby disappear; it would only change its form, for the very cause which would thus dry up the sources of criminality would immediately open up new ones.

(Durkheim, 1938: 67)

In the opening chapter of this book we discussed what is meant by this thing we call ‘crime’. Very quickly it becomes clear in such a discussion that crime has no essence. It varies by time and by place. The sociological study of crime, therefore, immedi- ately must become much more than simply look- ing at patterns and trends, discussing practical responses to crime and how they might be altered or improved. Crime, in the hands of a sociologist such as Durkheim, becomes an important tool that can tell us much about the nature of the social order in which we live. The types of behaviours that

we legislate against – and call crimes – and the spe- cifi c ways in which we respond to them – the types and amounts of punishment – are indicators of the nature of our society.

One of the clearest illustrations of this style of sociological thinking can be found in Durkheim’s focus on the importance of the nature of social reactions to crime. Here, Durkheim was highlight- ing what has become an important criminological truth:

We must not say that an action shocks the con- science collective because it is criminal, but rather that it is criminal because it shocks the conscience collective. We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

(Durkheim, 1972: 123–124)

As we will see in subsequent chapters (and Chap- ter 11 in particular), this observation runs through much criminological theory, not least labelling the- ory, some radical criminologies and, indeed, con- trol theory.

Durkheim and social change If crime and punishment have the ability to pro- vide us with important insights into the nature and functioning of society, the periods of dramatic social change will surely be refl ected in the penal sphere. In The Division of Labour in Society Durkheim analysed and sought to understand the profound changes affecting modern industrial societies. What occurred as relatively primitive societies was super- seded by more complex ones. In his analysis, Dur- kheim identifi ed two ideal typical social formations, which he terms ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic’, each typifying differing forms of social solidarity.

Ideal types are abstractions designed to help iden- tify and explain patterns that appear in the real world, rather than straightforward, faithful descrip- tions of that world. Max Weber described ideal types as one-sided accentuations, and as syntheses of particular phenomena, arranged in order to pro- vide a unifi ed construct useful for analysis. These terms – ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic’ solidarity – and other ideal types that we will meet, are best seen as explanatory or didactic models, used to help us understand particular social phenomena by focus- ing on certain core characteristics.

In more primitive societies, characterised by mechanical solidarity, there is, he argued, a rela- tively undifferentiated division of labour. People

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live fairly common, shared lives in which work is generally identical and values are shared. Under conditions of mechanical solidarity, he argued, the social order was largely organised through similar- ity, and social norms were enforced through retrib- utive sanctions. Such sanctioning served to identify and exclude offenders, to treat them as outsiders.

Such societies are gradually superseded by more complex formations characterised by what Durkheim referred to as organic forms of solidarity. Within such societies there is a relatively highly differentiated division of labour, and social solidarity is organised around difference rather than similarity. Such social transformation is refl ected in the systems of law and punishment characteristic of the different types of social solidarity. Under mechanical solidarity the pri- mary function of law is to enforce uniformity and to limit or even prevent deviation from the common pattern. Under conditions of organic solidarity on the other hand the primary function of law is to regulate the interactions between the different parts of society and between members.

What we have here, then, is a sophisticated attempt to examine how social bonds and reciprocal ties and obligations are maintained (a) in times of very rapid social change and (b) in societies that are highly internally differentiated. Durkheim was writing in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, in a period in which all major writers (as varied as Karl Marx

and Charles Dickens) were struggling to understand the nature of the social transformation in front of them. In this regard, Durkheim confronted head-on one of the great questions of the moment: what is it that will provide social solidarity and coherence in these new times? One can see similar questions being asked of globalisation now. Is the new global order breaking down all the old certainties? Will these new social arrangements bring with them the collapse of social structures? Are we losing the abil- ity to regulate behaviour and maintain order?

The transformation of social systems toward those characterised by organic solidarity is accom- panied by a decline in retributivism. This is viewed by Durkheim as involving an increasing valua- tion of human dignity – akin to what Elias (1978) referred to as a ‘civilizing process’ (see Chapter 23). Now, for Durkheim, the modernisation of society, involving a shift from mechanical to organic soli- darity, is far from straightforward. In particular, there is a danger, Durkheim argued, that the forms of regulation that bound less complex societies together wouldn’t be replaced quickly and effec- tively enough by new forms of moral regulation. One potential consequence of this is what he refers to as anomie , where moral constraints are insuffi - cient effectively to limit individual desires. The link with crime and deviance should be clear. We return to anomie below.

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Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)

Born in eastern France, Durkheim was the son of a rabbi. Indeed, not only his father, but his grandfather and great-grandfather had been rabbis also, and it was expected that Émile would also follow this path.

He studied at the École Normale Supérieure and in his early twenties became a teacher of philosophy. By the age of 29 he got a job at the University of Bor- deaux, where he taught the very fi rst sociology course in France. It wasn’t until 1902, when Durkheim was 44, that he became a Professor of Philosophy and Educa- tion at the University of Paris.

The Division of Labour in Society, arguably Dur- kheim’s greatest work, was published in 1893, and this was quickly followed by The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897) and, later, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912).

Durkheim died in 1917 not long after his son, also a gifted academic, had been killed in the First World War. Émile Durkheim, one of the ‘founding fathers’ of

sociology.

Durkheim and criminology 185

Durkheim, suicide and anomie For our purposes here Durkheim’s other centrally important piece of work concerned suicide and how this apparently most individual of acts might be used as an indicator of how sociological analysis might be undertaken. Suicide was chosen as a subject of study for a number of reasons. At the time Durkheim was writing, suicide was a crime in most of Europe – and was generally considered a deviant act. Moreover, as remains the case today, it was generally viewed as an individual rather than a social phenomenon. Suicide, for Durkheim, therefore provided the basis for illustrating the sociological aspect of even the apparently most individualised forms of deviance.

Durkheim’s focus was upon suicide rates , using offi cial records, and he sought to explain how pat- terns of suicide might be explained by reference to such sociological phenomena as religion, social structure, economic conditions and so on. The study of suicide rates threw up a number of inter- esting features. He found, for example, that:

Rates of suicide were higher in Protestant than Catholic countries.

Single people were more prone to suicide than those who were married.

Suicide among military personnel was higher than among civilians.

Suicide rates drop in times of war.

Suicide rates were higher in times of economic crisis than economic stability.

In explaining the patterns he observed, Durkheim identifi ed four ‘ideal types’ of suicide. We met this term earlier in relation to the two main types of social solidarity identifi ed by Durkheim. Consequently, these types, he argued, are rarely found in their ‘pure’ form. The four types he called altruistic, egois- tic, anomic and fatalistic (though he felt this last type to be of little importance at the time he was writing) . The rates of suicide, he argued, could be explained by

the degree of social solidarity, and he distinguished two aspects of solidarity: integration into social groups and regulation by social norms (see Table 9.1).

Anomic suicide, as Table 9.1 suggests, arises where the degree of regulation is insuffi cient (as also happens potentially during the shift from mechan- ical to organic solidarity). Central to Durkheim’s sociology was the assumption that one of the keys to successful social integration was the regulation of human desires and that, where this was problem- atic, individuals experienced a form of ‘normless- ness’. This had, he felt, an obvious link to suicide:

With increased prosperity, desires increase . . . Overweening ambition always exceeds the results obtained, great as they may be, since there is no warning to pause here . . . since this race for an unattainable goal can give no other pleasure but that of the race itself . . . once it is interrupted the participants are left empty-handed . . . How could the desire to live not be weakened under such conditions?

(Durkheim, 1897/1951: 253)

To reiterate, Durkheim’s view was that social soli- darity was a product of two forces:

integration – social cohesion brought about by shared beliefs and practices; the forces of attraction that bring people together;

regulation – the constraints that limit human behaviour and desires.

He related this to the study of suicide by show- ing how variation in integration and regulation (too much or too little of each) is linked with rates of suicide at particular times. Too little regulation – where the individual is insuffi ciently regulated by the group – produces high levels of what he called anomic suicide. However, Durkheim also uses the term anomie in another context, and arguably in a slightly different way. For Durkheim, regulation becomes increasingly important as societies become

Type Degree of solidarity Psychological state

Egoistic Lack of integration Suicides of Protestants and single people

Anomic Lack of regulation Suicides during economic crisis

Altruistic Excessive integration Suicides in primitive societies, military suicides

Fatalistic Excessive regulation Suicide of slaves

Table 9.1 Durkheim’s typology of suicide

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more complex. As was suggested earlier, in times of rapid social change – such as that from mechanical to organic solidarity – systems of regulation may be insuffi cient. Where this is so, what emerges is a state of anomie or the anomic form of the divi- sion of labour. This, in some respects, is a critique of modern industrialism and the failure of its systems of moral regulation to keep pace with changes in the economic and occupational structure of soci- ety. Individual desires, ambitions and appetites are stimulated but insuffi ciently controlled or limited. It is this argument, as we will see below, that, largely as a result of the work of Robert Merton, has become deeply embedded in contemporary criminology.

Assessing Durkheim It is not only through the notion of anomie that Dur- kheim has exerted a very particular and profound infl uence over criminological theory. More gener- ally, his observations about the ‘normality’ of crime, and the importance of societal reaction in framing what is to be considered criminal, are now corner- stones of the sociological approach to the study of crime and crime control. Smith (2008: 339) argues that the following seven key insights in criminology arguably have their origins in Durkheim’s work:

Deviance is, in part, the product of weak moral integration and poor social regulation.

Deviance is a social fact that is patterned and regular when viewed in aggregate. In a sense we can think of a certain amount of crime as ‘normal’ and ‘inevitable’, perhaps even as ‘useful’ for any given social organisation.

Defi nitions of deviance and perceptions of its severity are cross-culturally variable.

Social change, such as the transition to modernity, can often generate anomie and with this an increase in levels of crime.

The law refl ects the cultural values of a society, although the strength of this connection can, of course, vary.

Crime is meaningful. It generates emotional responses and is perceived as a violation of a moral code.

Punishment has a ritual and expressive dimension.

Before moving on, however, there are a number of criticisms of Durkheim’s work that have been made and which we must briefl y consider. First, Dur- kheim’s work arguably underplays the way in which

systems of punishment are shaped by the nature and distribution of power within society. That is to say, it is possible, as radical critics might argue, that rather than punitive responses tending to be directed at actions which transgress generally held social norms, it is actions which run counter to the interests of par- ticular groups that tend to be punished. Second, but relatedly, the assumption of consensus which under- pins the notion of conscience collective is precisely that, an assumption, rather than something that Durkheim demonstrated empirically.

Third, it is debatable whether Durkheim’s argu- ments about the functional utility of crime actu- ally apply to all types of crime. Thus, it is possible to identify criminal acts that simply don’t call forth the type of moral outrage that Durkheim took to be illustrative of challenges to the collec- tive conscience. Finally, critics have also pointed to the circularity in the functionalist character of elements of Durkheim’s explanation of why laws are enacted and criminals punished. As Garland (1983: 52–53) notes:

The discussion of crime reproduces all the cir- cularity of Durkheim’s basic arguments. We are told that crime consists in acts ‘universally dis- approved by members of each society’. Clearly, as an empirical statement this is questionable; one must presume that the offenders themselves do not wholly partake in this universal spirit of disapproval. However, Durkheim tells us that he refers only to healthy consciences, that is, to those which share the sentiments of the col- lective conscience. But since violation of the collective conscience is the very quality which gives certain acts the attribute of criminality, the appeal to ‘healthy consciences’ as a proof is an empty form of tautology.

Review questions

1 What are the main characteristics of mechanical and organic solidarity?

2 Why does anomie occur in the process of social change?

3 What are the four main types of suicide identifi ed by Durkheim?

4 What are the key criminological insights that might be said to have their origins in Durkheim’s work?

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Merton and anomie One infl uential commentator judged Robert K. Merton’s anomie theory ‘the single most infl uential formulation in the sociology of deviance’ (Clinard, 1964: 10). It has however fallen ‘distinctly out of fashion, perhaps permanently so in any explicit form. Like functionalism, from which it derives, it has become a routine conceptual folly for students to demolish before moving on to more rewarding ground’ (Downes and Rock, 2003: 104). Indeed, Downes and Rock argue that it has been Robert Merton’s version of anomie theory that has been subject to the most vociferous criticism, rather than Durkheim’s approach.

Although Durkheim was by no means entirely consistent in his portrayal of anomie, as we have seen he viewed it as the product of rapid social change unaccompanied by corresponding growth in systems of moral regulation. Anomie for Dur- kheim, then, is that state of affairs brought about by insuffi cient normative regulation. Building on this idea, but within the specifi c context of having lived

through the Depression experienced by America in the 1930s, Robert Merton saw anomie as resulting from the absence of alignment between socially desired aspirations, such as wealth, and the means available to people to achieve such objectives. Mer- ton, like the researchers of the Chicago School that we will meet in the next chapter, sought a more sociological explanation of crime as a corrective to the generally individualised explanations that still tended to dominate. Merton’s aim was to:

discover how some social structures exert a defi - nite pressure upon certain persons in the society to engage in non-conforming rather than con- forming conduct. If we can locate groups pecu- liarly subject to such pressures, we should expect to fi nd high rates of deviant conduct in these groups, not because the human beings comprising them are compounded of distinctive biological tendencies but because they are responding nor- mally to the social situation in which they fi nd themselves.

(Merton, 1969: 255)

Crowds form outside as the Brooklyn branch of the Bank of the United States closes its doors, 11 December 1930. The mismatch between aspiration and reality was central to the development of sociological concepts of anomie and strain theory during the period of the Depression in the United States.

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Merton’s theory was built on a critique of particu- lar elements of American culture. The emphasis on consumption and the tendency towards greed, ever-increasing material desires and dissatisfaction, which some critics would take to be defi ning nega- tive characteristics of modern capitalism, also lie at the heart of much of anomie theory’s portrayal of the sources of deviance. It was this focus that dis- tinguished it from the ecological approach adopted by many of the Chicago School sociologists with their concern with neighbourhoods and the social structure of the city. In an oft-quoted statement, Merton observed that ‘a cardinal American vir- tue, ambition, promotes a cardinal American vice, deviant behaviour’ (Merton, 1949: 137, quoted in Downes and Rock, 2003: 94). At the heart of this is the ‘American dream’.

Anomie and the ‘American dream’ At the core of the ideology of the American dream was the idea that prosperity and success were avail- able to all those who worked hard. The Depression of the 1930s, however, had given the lie to the idea of America as a prosperous, egalitarian society, though President Roosevelt’s New Deal sought to maintain faith in the vision of opportunity for all. Mertonian anomie theory emerged in this period. It got a further boost in the early 1960s from the Kennedy government and its concern with civil liberties and opportunity. According to Merton any society identifi es certain culturally preferred goals. In American society this is material success:

It would of course be fanciful to assert that accu- mulated wealth stands alone as a symbol of success just as it would be fanciful to deny that Americans assign it a high place in their scale of values. In some large measure money has been consecrated as value in itself . . . [However it is] acquired, fraudulently or institutionally, it can be used to purchase the same goods and services.

(Merton, 1968: 190)

However, not everyone can realistically achieve such goals. There is not the means for everyone to succeed. The dissonance between socially desired ends and limited means produces a ‘strain to ano- mie’ – effectively a range of behavioural adaptations to these social and psychological circumstances. In Merton’s terms this strain to anomie is the product of the ‘contradiction between the cultural emphasis on pecuniary ambition and the social bars to full opportunity’. Merton summarised his argument as follows:

The dominant pressure of group standards of success is, therefore, on the gradual attenuation of legitimate, but by and large ineffective, striv- ings and the increasing use of illegitimate, but more or less effective, expedients of vice and crime. The cultural demands made on persons in this situation are incompatible. On the one hand, they are asked to orient their conduct toward the prospect of accumulating wealth and on the other, they are largely denied effec- tive opportunities to do so institutionally. The consequences of such structural inconsistency are psychopathological personality and/or anti- social conduct, and/or revolutionary activities.

(Merton, 1938: 71)

The bulk of individuals will continue to conform, he suggested, despite the strain to anomie. How- ever, ‘certain phases of social structure generate the circumstances in which infringement of social codes constitutes a “normal” response’ (Merton, 1938: 672). The strain to anomie is stronger for certain social groups than others. The social struc- ture effectively limits the possibilities for some groups more than it does for others – in short, the lower classes. In this fashion, it has been argued that Merton is forwarding a cultural argument to explain the nature of crime in American society and a structural argument to explain its uneven distribution (Vold et al. , 2002).

For those who don’t conform there are four devi- ant adaptations: innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion. These are distinguished by whether cul- turally prescribed goals and institutionally available means are accepted or rejected. The fi ve sets of rela- tionships can be illustrated as shown in Table 9.2.

Mode of adaptation

Culture goals Institutionalised means

I Conformity + +

II Innovation + –

III Ritualism – +

IV Retreatism – –

V Rebellion +/– +/–

Table 9.2 Merton’s typology of modes of individual adaptation

Durkheim and criminology 189

Innovation is the application of illegitimate means to the achievement of socially approved and legiti- mate ends. The innovator accepts the social goal of material success, but has not the legitimate means for achieving it: ‘such anti-social behaviour is in a sense “called forth” by certain conventional values of the culture and by the class structure involving differential access to the approved opportunities for legitimate, prestige-bearing pursuit of the cul- ture goals’ (Merton, 1938: 679). Deviance is the consequence.

In this sense, much organised crime shares both the overall aims, and indeed many of the means, of standard capitalist activity. It differs in that it operates outside the law in some important ways. Innovators accept the cultural goals, but don’t use the standard institutionalised means. The pro- tagonists in a number of Hollywood portrayals of American mafi osi – Francis Ford Coppola’s God- father fi lms and Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas , for example – continue to espouse many traditional values and goals whilst using culturally illegiti- mate means for their achievement. Confronted with the ‘absence of realistic opportunities for advancement’, Merton argued, some people are particularly vulnerable to the ‘promises of power and high income from organized vice, rackets and crime’ (Merton, 1968: 199).

Arguably, it is in the area of corporate and white-collar crime that this particular adaptation often appears. Accounts of insider trading, corpo- rate fraud, major failures in industrial health and safety are all replete with illustrations of individu- als focused upon achieving material and career suc- cess, whilst failing to operate within rules and laws.

Protagonists like Gordon Gekko in the 1987 fi lm Wall Street and Sherman McCoy in Tom Wolfe’s novel Bonfire of the Vanities , published in the same year, captured the greed and rampant materialism of that era – a period many critics felt promoted the idea of success at all costs (Downes, 1989).

By contrast, ritualism concerns those circum- stances in which the cultural goals disappear – they are lost sight of – whilst attachment to the institu- tional means becomes seemingly ever stronger. It is deviant because, although the means conform to social expectations, the search for the socially val- ued goal of fi nancial success has been abandoned. This is a routinised nature of elements of bourgeois life, a sticking to the rules at all costs, and a scal- ing down of aims to the point where they can be achieved effortlessly. Merton’s example here was the bureaucratic mindset.

Retreatism, the least common of the adapta- tions according to Merton, involves the rejection of both the objectives and means, and concerns people who ‘are in society but not of it’. Mer- ton’s examples are the hobo, the drug taker and

Marlon Brando as Don Corleone in the fi lm The Godfather: a man with seemingly traditional values and many legitimate aspirations, all achieved through violence and racketeering – an example of ‘innovation’ in terms of Merton’s typology.

Merton saw Charlie Chaplin’s comic tramp fi gure as a supreme form of ‘retreatism’ in terms of his typology – rejecting both society’s goals and the means of achieving them, and hence unlikely to engage in criminal activity.

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elements of the tramp played so famously by Charlie Chaplin: ‘always the butt of a crazy and bewildering world in which he has no place and from which he constantly runs away into a con- tented do nothingness’ (Merton, 1949: 251). As such, it may be characterised by drug use/addic- tion, alcoholism, homelessness and so on. It is an adaptation, Merton felt, that tends not to involve the victimisation of others, and is often a private, rather than a public, response. Retreatism became something of a subcultural style in the 1960s with the advent of the hippie movement.

The fi nal adaptation is rebellion . This is a more radical alternative, seeking to replace both the means and the ends as a way of resolving the strain to anomie. This might be the political radical pro- posing an entirely new set of culturally approved goals and means for their achievement. Unlike some criminological theories, Merton was explicit in his acknowledgement that anomie theory was ‘designed to account for some, not all, forms of

deviant behaviour customarily described as crimi- nal or delinquent’ (Merton, 1968: 195).

Assessing Merton’s anomie theory Despite its enormous infl uence, it was some two decades before Merton’s famous article began to resonate powerfully through criminology. It did so partly as a result of Albert Cohen’s Delinquent Boys (1955) , Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin’s Delin- quency and Opportunity (1960) , as well as Merton’s reworking of the original article. As Downes and Rock argue, anomie theory has had an odd shelf life: for its fi rst few decades after Merton’s original exposition in 1938 it was accepted rather uncriti- cally. Since the early 1960s, however, the reverse has been true, with its rejection arguably being more critical than is deserved. Again, rather like function- alism, anomie theory may not be referred to explic- itly very much these days, but seasoned observers can see its footprints everywhere:

Robert K. Merton (1910–2003)

Born Meyer Robert Schkolnick in Philadelphia on American Independence day 1910, Merton’s parents were working-class Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The family lived above the father’s dairy prod- ucts shop in South Philadelphia. It was common at this time to Americanize names and Merton initially changed his to Robert K. Merlin (as a young man he worked as a magician) before a friend advised him that it was rather ‘hackneyed’.

Inquiring as to why Merton should have focused his attention on the unintended consequences of the Ameri- can dream, Lilly and colleagues point to his social ori- gins. Born into considerable poverty, Merton gained a scholarship to Temple University in Philadelphia, pub- lished his famous article ‘Social Structure and Anomie’ whilst teaching at Harvard University, aged 28, and became a professor at Columbia University three years later. Though speculative, ‘this personal journey’, they suggest, ‘may have helped focus Merton’s attention on the prominent role in the national culture of social ascent’ (Lilly et al., 2002: 53).

Among others, he coined the phrases ‘self-fulfi lling prophecy’, ‘role model’ and ‘reference group’. Merton is also credited with being the creator of the idea of focus groups as a research tool. Merton’s son, Robert C. Merton, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1997.

Robert K. Merton (1910–2003): born into impoverished circumstances in Philadelphia, he captured part of the dark side of the American dream in his work on anomie.

Durkheim and criminology 191

It has an anonymous presence in Jock Young’s essay in labelling theory, The Drugtakers, and appears under its own name as one of the prin- cipal themes in his account of the making of left realism in the 1980s. It is the invisible prop to the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cul- tural Studies’ radical work on class, youth, and deviance in Britain.

(Downes and Rock, 2003: 105)

Numerous potential shortcomings have been identi- fi ed in Merton’s anomie theory (we return to this at the end of the chapter). As Akers and Brezina (2010: 97) observe, ‘surprisingly, Merton’s theory has not been well tested. A proper test of theory would require measures of the relative emphasis placed on monetary success and the extent to which individu- als achieved or expected to achieve such success.’

Although Merton’s work and Durkheim’s were only ‘loosely coupled’ (Cullen and Messner, 2011), some of the criticisms of Mertonian anomie theory refl ect differences between the two uses of the term ‘anomie’. There was, as we have seen, something of a shift in the use of the term anomie, which is neatly captured in the following passage from Ste- ven Box (1981: 97–98):

Merton’s analysis . . . appears to follow Dur- kheim’s usage of the concept of anomie. But the appearance is, I think, deceptive, for during the argument Merton shifts his meaning of anomie away from a Durkheimian position towards one which is peculiarly his own. Initially, Merton appears to be discussing the emphasis on normative means of achieving cultural values . . . However, later in his analysis, Merton appears to shift the focus of his attention away from an emphasis on normative means to differential access to opportunity structures, such as schools and employment organ- izations, through which cultural values can be properly and legally realized . . . The emphasis on normative means is fundamentally Durkheimian because, by implication, it suggests that human aspirations have to be regulated and channelled.

Merton’s initial use of the term was faithful to this conception, Box argues, in that at its core the empha- sis is upon an overriding cultural goal – worldly material success. The diffi culty for Merton was how to explain the apparent over-involvement of people from lower social classes in criminal and deviant activity if this cultural goal was universally accepted.

Merton needed to transform the conception of anomie; he did this by shifting from an

under-emphasis on normative means to a dis- cussion on the differential access to legitimate opportunity structures, particularly education and occupational opportunities. Anomie was no longer a condition of deregulation or normless- ness, but one of relative deprivation. Individual motivation behind deviant behaviour emerged out of the frustrations of such deprivations and these emotions existed because individuals had internalized the ‘American Dream’.

(Box, 1981: 99–100)

Competition and frustration around status have been suggested as being a key to understanding youthful delinquency – and stealing from cars is seen as a means of achieving status for young people who feel excluded from more conventional means of doing so.

Review questions

1 What were Merton’s main criticisms of American culture?

2 What are the main forms of adaptation described by Merton?

3 What is meant by relative deprivation?

9 · Durkheim, anomie and strain192

Later strain theory It was Albert Cohen’s work which picked up on Merton’s theory and introduced the notions of cul- ture and subculture to the study of delinquency. Cohen was critical of Merton’s approach because of its failure in his eyes to explain the nature or content of juvenile delinquency. Relative depri- vation, identifi ed as the major impetus to adult deviance in Merton’s usage of the term anomie, is less useful, Cohen argued, in explaining juvenile motivations. Crucially, rather than being oriented towards the legitimate goals of adult society, many young people engage in behaviour which is ‘non- utilitarian, malicious and negativistic’ (1955: 25). It is not material success that delinquents are search- ing for, but meaning in some other way. We return to this idea in greater detail in the next chapter, when we consider subcultural theory.

Rather than anomie, Cohen suggests that com- petition and frustration around status are the key to understanding youthful delinquency. It is here the parallels with Merton are visible. Cohen argues that in contemporary society issues of status are largely settled according to criteria such as educational success. However, not everyone is equally placed in this competition. The terms and criteria used by teachers and others are far from straightforwardly objective and they distinguish between children in both moral and social terms, i.e., crudely, according to middle-class standards. Signifi cant proportions of working-class children are therefore faced with a number of status diffi culties and linked feelings of shame or guilt on the one hand and resentment on the other. These young people are placed under severe strain . The issue is how such diffi culties can be resolved. One solution is to form attachments with others in similar situations, to form gangs or other groupings and to reject some of the core adult values. This is the basis, in Cohen’s terms, for the formation of delinquent youth subcultures.

Cloward and Ohlin Infl uenced by Merton and by Albert Cohen, as well as by Edwin Sutherland’s notion of differential association, the next milestone in strain theory was Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin’s Delinquency and Opportunity, published in 1960. Their debt to Mer- ton can be seen in one of their central questions (1960: 32): ‘Under what conditions will persons experience strains and tensions that lead to delin- quent solutions?’ At the heart of their answer is the

observation that in ‘a system that stresses ability as the basis of advancement, the failures who view themselves as equal in ability to those who succeed tend to feel unjustly deprived’ (1960: 117). That is to say, where people are led to believe that the ability they have will enable them to gain access to education and thereby to occupational success, but where opportunities are limited and decisions are frequently based on other criteria such as class, ethnicity and sex, the outcome is that a proportion of the population feel anger at their unreasonable exclusion. The solution again is the rejection of core middle-class values.

However, as we noted earlier, Cloward and Ohlin also sought to incorporate elements of Sutherland’s differential association theory. They do so by argu- ing that there are numerous means of resolving the adjustment or strain problems. The particular delinquent solution adopted will depend upon the nature of illegal or criminal means available in the particular environment. In this way:

The concept of differential opportunity struc- tures permits us to unite the theory of anomie, which recognizes the concept of differentials in access to legitimate means, and the ‘Chicago tra- dition’, in which the concept of differentials in access to illegitimate means is implicit . . . The approach permits us to ask, for example, how the relative ability of illegitimate opportunities affects the resolution of adjustment problems leading to deviant behaviour.

(Cloward and Ohlin, 1960; reproduced in Jacoby, 2004: 286–287)

We return to Cloward and Ohlin and the subcul- tural elements of the approach in Chapter 10. Strain theory was remarkably infl uential in its time. Lloyd Ohlin, for example, was appointed by Robert Kennedy when he was Attorney General, to help develop federal crime policy, and his and Cloward’s work later formed the basis for much of President Lyndon Johnson’s action in the war on poverty in the mid-1960s. The apparent lack of success of many of these programmes led President Nixon to abandon them and led many critics to focus their attention on strain theory.

General strain theory More recently, Robert Agnew has sought to build on Merton’s ideas. Agnew suggests that there are at least four reasons why strain theory has declined in popularity:

CH10

Later strain theory 193

It has tended to focus on lower-class delinquency.

It has neglected all but the most conventional goals (middle-class status and wealth).

It overlooked barriers to achievement other than social stratifi cation (these might include gender, race, intelligence and many others).

It has found it diffi cult to explain why some people who experienced strain didn’t turn to criminal activity. Arguably, strain and frustration are experienced by many who continue to conform.

As a consequence Agnew sought to develop a more general strain theory, though his specifi c focus was upon adolescent delinquency and drug use. His extension and elaboration of strain theory involves the identifi cation of two types of strain over and above the central problem of failing to achieve one’s personal goals. The fi rst, slightly at variance with Merton’s theory, he suggests arises from the ‘actual or anticipated removal (loss) of positively valued stimuli from an individual’ (1992: 57). The withholding of something that is valued – privi- leges, opportunities, relationships – is the source of strain. The second form of strain is the result of ‘actual or anticipated presentation of negative or noxious stimuli’ (1992: 58) such as relationships at home, work or elsewhere that are abusive.

The greater the extent of strain, the more likely the adaptive response is to be deviant. In this con- text, delinquency and drug use are means of cop- ing with negative relationships and emotions. The likelihood of deviant adaptations may be offset, Agnew argues, by the existence of support from other sources, the availability of alternative goals, and personal characteristics such as high levels of self-control and fear of adverse consequences. Relat- edly, Agnew (2001) identifi es a number of factors that increase the likelihood that strain will lead to crime and delinquency:

Where the strain is perceived to be ‘unjust’; where people feel that they have been treated unfairly, they are more likely to become angry, and anger, according to Agnew’s strain theory, is linked with increased likelihood of offending.

When strain is high in magnitude, it is more diffi cult to ignore and to manage in ways that are legitimate.

Where the strain is caused by, or is associated with, low social control, it is more likely to result in a deviant adaptation.

Strains may also lower levels of social control.

Where the strain creates pressure to engage in ‘criminal coping’ – such as strain induced by criminal victimisation leading to a desire for revenge.

Figure 9.1 The central propositions of general strain theory Source: Agnew (2006: 19).

The major strains: Individuals are treated in a negative manner by others Individuals lose something Negative emotions Crime they value Individuals are unable to achieve their goals

Factors influencing the effect of strains and negative emotions on crime

Ability to cope with strains in a legal manner

The costs of criminal coping

Disposition for criminal coping

9 · Durkheim, anomie and strain194

General strain theory identifi es a range of strains that are particularly conducive to crime (Akers and Brezina, 2010: 103–104):

Parental rejection – Parents who reject their children do not express love or affection for them, show little interest in them, provide little support to them, and often display hostility toward them

Supervision/discipline that is erratic, excessive, and/or harsh (use of humiliation/ insults, threats, screaming, and/or physical punishments).

Child abuse and neglect , including physical abuse; sexual abuse; and the failure to provide adequate food, shelter, medical care, and affection/attention (neglect).

Negative secondary school experiences , including low grades, negative relations with teachers, and the experience of school as boring and a waste of time.

Abusive peer relations , including insults, ridicule, threats, attempts to coerce, and physical assaults.

Work at jobs in the secondary labour market – Such jobs commonly involve unpleasant tasks, little autonomy, coercive control, low pay, few benefi ts, little prestige, and very limited opportunities for advancement.

Unemployment , especially when it is chronic and blamed on others.

Marital problems , including frequent confl icts and verbal and physical abuse.

The failure to achieve selected goals , including thrills/excitement, personal autonomy, masculine status and the desire for much money in a short period of time.

Criminal victimisation .

Residence in severely deprived communities , which is associated with exposure to a host of strains – including criminal victimisation and economic problems.

Homelessness .

Discrimination based on characteristics such as race/ethnicity, gender, and religion.

What is particularly problematic is chronic or repeated strains. Agnew argues that such chronic strains are likely to create a predisposition to crime. They do this in a number of ways. Through repeti- tion they reduce the ability of individuals to cope with strain. Thus, if one is regularly bullied, it may, over time, become increasingly diffi cult to resist resorting to violence in response. Chronic strains may lead to the development of negative emotional traits such as anger, depression, fear and frustration, each of which may be conducive to crime. Agnew quotes a passage from Elijah Anderson’s Code of the Street in support of this:

Frustrations mount over bills, food, and, at times, drink, cigarettes, and drugs. Some tend toward self-destructive behaviour; many street-oriented women are crack-addicted (‘on the pipe’), alco- holic, or repeatedly involved in complicated relationships with the men who abuse them. In addition, the seeming intractability of their situation, caused in large part by the lack of well-paying jobs and the persistence of racial dis- crimination, has engendered deep-seated bitter- ness and anger in many of the most desperate and poorest blacks, especially young people . . . the frustrations of persistent poverty shorten the fuse in such people, contributing to a lack of patience with anyone, child or adult, who irritates them.

(Anderson, 1990: 10–11)

Agnew summarises these arguments in Figure 9.2.

Chronic or repeated strains

Reduce ability to legally cope Negative emotional states Negative emotionality/low constraint

Reduce social control Foster the social learning of crime

Predisposition for crime

Figure 9.2 The mechanisms by which chronic or repeated strains increase the predisposition for crime Source: Agnew (2006).

Later strain theory 195

Messner and Rosenfeld A variant on Agnew’s general strain theory, called institutional anomie theory, is proposed by Messner and Rosenfeld (2001). Focusing, like Merton, on the ‘American Dream’ they suggest an anomic society has been created which privileges success over all other socially approved goals:

A primary task for noneconomic institutions such as the family and schools is to inculcate beliefs, values and commitments other than those of the marketplace. But as these noneco- nomic institutions are relatively devalued and forced to accommodate to economic consider- ations, and as they are penetrated by economic standards, they are less able to fulfi l their distinc- tive socialization functions successfully.

(Messner and Rosenfeld, 2001: 150)

At its simplest, their argument is that ‘the Ameri- can Dream itself exerts pressures toward crime by encouraging an anomic cultural environment, an environment in which people are encouraged to adopt an “anything goes” mentality in the pursuit of personal goals’ (2001: 61). There are a number of specifi c features of the American dream, they sug- gest, that are crucial. These are:

the emphasis on achievement and on the winner- takes-all mentality;

the individualism that focuses attention on rights rather than responsibilities;

the materialism that fetishises wealth;

the fact that these values permeate the whole of society – which they call universalism .

The effect of these cultural values is to privilege economic goals over others – for example, educa- tion becomes increasingly devoted to servicing the labour market and the family becomes increasingly dominated by work. The tendency to focus on ends rather than means makes it increasingly diffi cult for institutions such as schools and families to exert appropriate social control. Messner and Rosen- feld’s argument owes much to earlier strain theory but also refl ects the critical criminologist’s discon- tent with the nature of contemporary capitalism. In addition, they refl ect Durkheim’s central point about the normality of crime:

There is nothing necessarily ‘sick’, pathological, dysfunctional, or disorganized about a society organized to produced high rates of crime . . . a particular level and type of crime are a normal

outcome of a specifi ed set of cultural and social arrangements . . . A low level of predatory crime would be a sign of ‘something wrong’ with a society that places a premium on the individual competitive pursuit of fi nancial gain, encourages people to create ever more effi cient means of best- ing others, and offers comparatively little protec- tion or comfort to the unsuccessful. We would be on the lookout for something out of the ordinary, something abnormal, about unusually low or fall- ing crime rates in a society organized for crime.

(Rosenfeld and Messner, in Henry and Lanier, 2005: 168)

In contemporary society, crime, for Messner and Rosenfeld, is a product of the dominance of free- market economics, its elevation of material suc- cess above all other goals and its cultural tendency toward anomie. Social controls are weakened and the use of illegitimate means to attain culturally desired goals increases as such means themselves become progressively legitimised. They argue that societies which protect their members from the worst excesses of free-market economics therefore tend to have lower crime rates than others where there is less restriction on the market. Recent research (Downes and Hansen, 2006; Cavadino and Dignan, 2006; Lacey, 2008) tends to provide sup- port for just such a proposition. Thus, Downes and Hansen (2006) in a study of crime rates and welfare spending across 18 societies concluded that:

countries that spend a greater proportion of GDP on welfare have lower imprisonment rates and that this relationship has become stronger over the last 15 years. The consistency in these fi nd- ings across the United States and the other 17 countries studied makes it diffi cult to believe that this relationship is simply accidental or coincidental.

Review questions

1 What are strains? Give some examples.

2 What are the central components of general strain theory?

3 Why do strains increase the likelihood of crime?

4 What are the main characteristics of institutional anomie theory?

9 · Durkheim, anomie and strain196

Assessing strain theory As we noted at the outset, in many respects strain theory has fallen out of fashion. It had major infl u- ence in the 1960s but has waned since, though Agnew’s general strain theory has revitalised discus- sion of such ideas in some quarters. Nevertheless, strain theories contain a number of important fea- tures and it is important to recognise them.

They draw our attention to the social, cultural and economic circumstances that lead to crime.

They point to the necessary relationship between particular forms of social organisation and particular levels of crime.

Merton’s formulation drew attention to the unintended consequences of the social goal of individual economic achievement. Critics of the market society and of consumer capitalism are in many respects working in a similar tradition.

Anomie and strain theory’s predominant concern with the vulnerability of working-class or poorer communities sits comfortably with the liberal sensibilities of much sociological criminology and, undoubtedly, accounts for some of its intuitive appeal.

There are, however, numerous criticisms of strain theory:

The tendency to rely on offi cial statistics as an indicator of the nature and distribution of crime and, connected with this, the tendency generally to focus on lower-class crime are argued to be misleading. Strain theory tends to ignore the crimes of the powerful, for example, or simply the crimes of the middle classes.

It is argued that anomie theory exaggerates the consensus that surrounds fi nancial success as a socially and culturally defi ned objective; there are other, competing means by which success can be measured. Indeed, Merton clearly recognised the existence in American society of a range of ‘counter-cultures’ (lower-middle-class preference for security over competition; the craftsman’s emphasis on skill and ‘expressivity’ over fi nancial reward) but nevertheless assumed a generalised acceptance of the American dream.

For the radical theorist, anomie theory fails to look closely enough at the socio-political circumstances of crime. Thus, according to Taylor, Walton and Young, the major shortcoming of Merton’s analysis was its failure to go beyond the identifi cation of the central contradiction of American capitalism to ask why the situation existed and continued. They quote Laurie Taylor (1971: 148):

It is as though individuals in society are playing a gigantic fruit machine, but the machine is rigged and only some players are consistently rewarded. The deprived ones then either resort to using foreign coins or magnets to increase their chances of win- ning (innovation) or play on mindlessly (ritualism), give up the game (retreatism) or propose a new game altogether (rebel- lion). But in the analysis nobody appeared to ask who put the machine there in the fi rst place and who takes the profi ts. Criticism of the game is confi ned to changing the pay- out sequences so that the deprived can get a better deal . . . What at fi rst sight looks like a major critique of society ends up by taking the existing society for granted. The necessity of standing outside the present structural/cultural confi gurations is not just the job of those categorised in the rebellion mode of adaptation – it is also the task of the sociologist.

In a similar vein, it is argued, again notably by Taylor et al. , that anomie theory over-predicts lower-class crime (and, arguably, lower-class strain ) but it is less clear whether anomie theory is able to account for crimes of the middle class and wealthy.

It is similarly unclear that the theory can deal with the very wide variety of forms of offending (the wide variety of adaptations ) that exist – are sexual violence and theft the product of the same strain to anomie that leads to vandalism, for example?

Early strain theory tends to focus on structural conditions and, consequently, pays relatively little attention to human agency – Agnew’s general strain theory endeavours to deal with this criticism.

Assessing strain theory 197

The theory underplays the importance of social control (and self-control) in the production and moulding of deviance, i.e. it pays insuffi cient attention to the particular social circumstances and opportunities which affect crime.

Merton ignored the possibility of achievements exceeding expectations, rather than simply failing to reach them – what Downes and Rock call the ‘anomie of success’ (2003: 137).

Some deviance, rather than being the product of strain, appears rather to be part and parcel of the routine operation of work or organisations, or even the state. How, for example, might anomie theory deal with state human rights abuses?

Questions for further discussion

1 In what ways might crime be considered normal in society?

2 What are the main differences between Durkheim’s and Merton’s use of the term anomie?

3 In what ways is Merton’s argument structural and in what ways is it cultural?

4 Is it right to say that strain theory over-predicts working-class deviance?

5 In what ways might a society be considered to be criminogenic?

6 Does general strain theory solve the problems identifi ed in earlier strain theories?

Further reading

Agnew, R. (2006) ‘Why do individuals engage in crime?’ in Newburn, T. (ed.) (2009) Key Readings in Criminol- ogy, Cullompton: Willan.

Agnew, R. and Brezina, T. (2010) ‘Strain theories’, in McLaughlin, E. and Newburn, T. (eds) The Sage Hand- book of Criminological Theory, London: Sage.

Cloward, R.A. and Ohlin, L.E. (2006) ‘Delinquency and opportunity’, in Cullen, F.T. and Agnew, R. (eds) Criminological Theory Past to Present: Essential readings, 3rd edn, Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury.

Downes, D. and Rock, P. (2011) Understanding Deviance, 6th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press (ch. 5).

Durkheim, E. (1964) ‘The normal and the pathological’, in Newburn, T. (ed.) (2009) Key Readings in Criminol- ogy, Cullompton: Willan.

Garland, D. (1990) Punishment and Modern Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press (ch. 2).

Merton, R.K. (1938) ‘Social structure and anomie’, in Newburn, T. (ed.) (2009) Key Readings in Criminology, Cullompton: Willan.

Rosenfeld, R. and Messner, S.F. (1995) ‘Crime and the American Dream: An institutional analysis’, in New- burn, T. (ed.) (2009) Key Readings in Criminology, Cullompton: Willan.

Rosenfeld, R. and Messner, S.F. (2013) Crime and Econ- omy, London: Sage.

Young, J. (2007) ‘The vertigo of late modernity’, in Newburn, T. (ed.) (2009) Key Readings in Criminology, Cullompton: Willan.

Websites

There are a number of websites worth visiting. On Dur- kheim’s life and work, it is worth looking at: http: // emiledurkheim.com.

There are some interesting materials on Merton and anomie on the Crime Theory website: www.crime theory.com/Merton/index.html

A short fi lm on Durkheim’s notion of mechanical and organic solidarity can be found here: https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=XGargZd9KkQ&feature=youtu.be

Chapter outline Introduction

The Chicago School

Social ecology

Chicago School and crime

The zonal hypothesis

Shaw and McKay: cultural transmission

Chicago Area Project

Differential association

Differential reinforcement

Assessing the Chicago School

Cultures and subcultures

Albert Cohen

Cloward and Ohlin

David Matza

Subcultural theory

American subcultural theory

British subcultural theory

Assessing subcultural theory

Cultural criminology

Crime as culture

Culture as crime

Media dynamics of crime and control

A critique of cultural criminology

Questions for further discussion Further reading Websites

10 The Chicago School, subcultures and cultural criminology

10 · The Chicago School and cultural criminology200

Introduction In the previous four chapters we looked at some of the roots of what we now understand as criminol- ogy. By the 1930s – the period we begin from in this chapter – criminology was still not a term that was widely used. However, this was soon to change, and what has subsequently become known as the Chicago School is central to that process. Indeed, according to Leon Radzinowicz (1962: 117–118):

In the years between the two world wars, the sig- nifi cance of criminological studies in the United States of America increased out of all recognition. The European infl uence was transcended . . . American criminology entered upon its germinal phase . . . It became an independent discipline, unmistakably original in its approach and con- clusions, full of explanatory vigour, attracting minds of outstanding ability.

Indeed, Lewis Coser (1979: 311–312) says ‘It seems no exaggeration to say that for roughly 20 years, from the fi rst world war to the mid-1930s, the his- tory of sociology in America can largely be written as the history of the Department of Sociology of the University of Chicago.’

The Chicago School Chicago University has a special place in the history of criminology. The reason for this dates back to

1892, when it took the decision to establish the fi rst major sociology department in the United States. By the 1930s the department was a large and vibrant home for a particular brand of sociology – one based on direct experience and observation (gener- ally referred to as ‘ethnography’) – and a massive amount of work which focused on the city in which the university was located.

Some of the most important names in American sociology – Walter Reckless, Frederick Thrasher, Everett Hughes, Robert Park, Edwin Sutherland and later Clifford Shaw, Henry McKay, Louis Wirth and Gerald Suttles – studied Chicago’s immigrant and minority communities, its vice and organised crime, its homeless and, crucially, the make-up of the city itself.

Though generally referred to as the Chicago School, the work of the Chicago sociologists isn’t uniform or particularly systematised (Heidensohn, 1989). If the establishment of the fi rst sociol- ogy department was an important factor in this history, the siting of it in Chicago was vital. At the time, Chicago was America’s second-largest city and it was undergoing rapid and signifi cant change. The rapid industrialisation of the United States saw the growth of steel mills, railroads and other major manufacturing concerns in Chicago and, alongside this, swift demographic changes as African Americans from the South and white immigrants from Europe arrived in large numbers. Half of the population of Chicago in 1900 had been born outside the USA.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

For half a century, from the First World War onwards, criminology was increasingly dominated by sociologists and sociological thought. Initially, via a group of scholars working in, or trained at, the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, the focus of much criminology was upon the nature of the city, its structures and processes, and how these related to patterns of crime and delinquency. This chapter considers how such sociology was based on rich ethnographic studies of the everyday lives of Chicagoans and formed the basis for a tradition which bred a further set of detailed empirical studies focusing on the cultural context and social meaning of deviant activity. Initially, American sociology dominated the fi eld, but from the 1960s onward, British scholars began to turn their attention to the notion of subcultures . Having outlined and assessed ‘subcultural theory’, the chapter concludes by looking at one of the more recent developments in the fi eld – the emergence of ‘cultural criminology’.

The Chicago School 201

Albion Small

Founder of the Sociology Department in Chicago and also of the American Journal of Sociology.

W.I. Thomas

Ethnographer and author of The Polish Peasant .

Louis Wirth

Enormously infl uential urban sociologist.

Edwin Sutherland

Arguably the most famous criminologist of the twentieth century.

Walter Reckless

Deviser of ‘containment theory’.

Erving Goffman

Hugely infl uential sociologist; author of Stigma , Asylums and The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

Everett Hughes

Studied occupations; author of Men and their Work .

Howard Becker

A graduate of the Chicago School and author of Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance .

Herbert Blumer

Coined the term ‘symbolic interaction’.

Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay

Authors of some of the Chicago School’s best-known work.

The infl uence of the Chicago School

10 · The Chicago School and cultural criminology202

Social ecology It was such changes, Lilly et al. (2002: 32) argue, that ‘made the city – and not the “little house on the prairie” – the nation’s focal point’. Just as soci- ology itself was the product of the rapid social, eco- nomic and cultural changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so sociologically informed criminology was itself profoundly infl uenced by the signifi cant social changes of the early twentieth century – not least urbanisation and mass migra- tion. Increasingly, crime came to be seen, at least in part, as a social problem.

The studies of the city itself are often referred to using the term ‘ecology’ – a biological metaphor pointing to the importance of natural patterning produced by differing species within some form of overall ordered universe. In this case, the universe was the city and the ecological focus was upon how the city grew and developed. Much of the Chicago School work was heavily infl uenced by Durkheim and, in particular, the view of crime levels as being

linked to social organisation, and also by Georg Simmel’s (1903) picture of the city as a source of liberation and alienation.

According to Savage and Warde (1993: 13, quoted in Valier, 2002):

The work of the Chicago School is best seen as an extended empirical inquiry into the nature of social bonding in the modern, fragmented, city. The city interested them for empirical, rather than conceptual reasons. It was where the divi- sion of labour was most elaborate and devel- oped, and hence where the fragmentary nature of modern life could most profi tably be studied.

Chicago School and crime Though elements of the Chicago School research were statistically based, this group of sociologists is best known for their detailed ethnographic work, using participant observation in order to pro- duce what Matza (1964) later called ‘appreciative’

Robert Ezra Park (1864–1944)

Born in Pennsylvania, Park grew up in Minnesota on the banks of the Mississippi. Graduating from the University of Michigan in 1887, Park became a newspaperman and worked on daily papers for the next decade in Minne- sota, Detroit, Denver, New York and Chicago.

According to Burgess and Bogue (1964: 3), Park ‘was interested in the newspaper, its power of exposing con- ditions and arousing public sentiment, and in taking the lead against slums, exploitation of immigrants, or cor- ruption in municipal affairs’.

In the mid-1890s he began to study philosophy at Harvard University and subsequently became a post- graduate student in Germany, where, though he was not formally studying sociology, he was infl uenced by Georg Simmel.

‘Dr Park found that, while newspaper publicity aroused a great deal of interest and stirred the emotions of the public, it did not lead to constructive action. He decided that something more than news was needed, that you had to get beneath the surface of things’ (Bur- gess and Bogue, 1964: 3). His academic career then started in 1914 at the age of 50.

I expect I have actually covered more ground tramp- ing about in cities in different parts of the world than any other living man.

(cited in Lilly et al ., 2002: 33)

It is probably the breaking down of local attachments and the weakening of the restraints and inhibitions of the primary group, under the infl uence of the urban environment, which are largely responsible for the increase of vice and crime in great cities.

(Park, 1915)

Robert Park, originally a newspaperman, turned urban ethnographer.

The Chicago School 203

accounts of people’s everyday lives. Shaw and McKay’s (1942) work in Chicago uncovered two important patterns concerning the social and geo- graphical distribution of crime and delinquency. The fi rst was that neighbourhoods tended to be rel- atively stable in their statuses as high-, medium- or low-crime areas. That is, over a 20–30-year period, neighbourhoods would remain as high-crime, say, or low-crime areas despite changes in their racial and ethnic compositions.

Second, they found that crime and delinquency rates tended consistently to be lower in areas of high socio-economic status and higher in areas of relative socio-economic deprivation. This led them to conclude that the factors that helped explain socio-economic differences were also important in explaining social and geographical variation in crime and delinquency. This is not the same as say- ing, however, that poverty causes crime.

The zonal hypothesis At the heart of the Chicago School’s explanation of urban development was their zonal hypothesis , the idea that the city evolved through a series of

concentric circles, each being a zone of social and cultural life. The natural element to all this is the fact that it is not, or at least not entirely, planned. Moreover, the nature of each of the areas comes increasingly to resemble the character and qualities of the inhabitants: ‘The effect of this is to convert what was at fi rst a mere geographical expression into a neighbourhood, that is to say, a locality with sentiments, traditions, and a history of its own’ (Park, quoted in Downes and Rock, 2003: 64).

Early work in Chicago by Ernest Burgess had sought to produce a social map of the city, and this work in the mid-1920s included the fi rst exposi- tion of the idea of concentric circles as the basis for understanding the social organisation of the city. For Burgess the growth of cities is far from haphaz- ard, but actually is heavily patterned in ways that can be understood sociologically. He argued that cities tended to grow outwards in a series of con- centric circles or rings.

As Burgess suggests, and as shown in Figure 10.1, at the heart of the concentric circles is the business district (Zone I) – a zone that has high property val- ues and a small residential population. Outside this

FA CTOR

Y ZONE

I LOOP

II ZONE OF TRANSITION

III ZONE OF WORKING MEN’S

HOMES

IV RESIDENTIAL ZONE

V SUBURBAN ZONE

Figure 10.1 Ernest Burgess: the growth of cities Source : Burgess (1925).

10 · The Chicago School and cultural criminology204

is, for criminological purposes at least, arguably the most important zone (Zone II), known as the zone of transition . This is an area which has a more transient population, one which is poor, living in inadequate and deteriorating housing. Beyond this zone lay three residential zones each of which was broken down into a number of subsections, Burgess’s argument being that newcomers gradually moved outward into more prosperous zones as they became integrated into American cultural life. Zone III is a zone of relatively modest residential homes occu- pied by people who have escaped Zone II. Zone IV, another residential district, is more affl uent and occupies the space up to the city limits. Beyond this are suburban areas which make up Zone V.

According to Burgess (1925: 51):

This chart brings out clearly the main fact of expansion, namely, the tendency of each inner zone to extend its area by the invasion of the next outer zone. This aspect of expansion may be called succession , a process which has been studied in detail in plant ecology. If this chart is applied to Chicago, all four of these zones were in its early history included in the circumference of the inner zone, the present business district. The present boundaries of the area of deteriora- tion were not many years ago those of the zone now inhabited by independent wage-earners, and within the memories of thousands of Chi- cagoans contained the residences of the ‘best families’.

In the zone of transition there were copious exam- ples of deviant behaviour and social problems: crime, prostitution, high infant mortality and poor health and, of course, poverty. Such problems were by no means confi ned to the zone of transition, but they were disproportionately concentrated there. Such deviance is, in effect, largely an effort to create order in an area of disorganisation. This zone was portrayed by the Chicago sociologists as disorgan- ised and unruly, though others such as Matza and Whyte were critical of what they saw as the failure to see the nature of social order and organisation in the diversity and hubbub of this transitional zone.

Thomas and Znaniecki (1918) had earlier argued that ‘The stability of group institutions is . . . sim- ply a dynamic equilibrium of processes of disorga- nization and reorganization. This equilibrium is disturbed when processes of disorganization can no longer be checked by any attempts to reinforce the existing rules.’ Building on this, Shaw and McKay argued that rapid population changes resulted in

a degree of social disorganisation in which estab- lished values lost their hold with predictable conse- quences for crime and delinquency.

Shaw and McKay: cultural transmission Burgess’s work was tested by Shaw and McKay in the early 1940s. Their work (Shaw and McKay, 1942), using Chicago’s juvenile court records over several decades, explored the ecological patterning of such offending. They found that the parts of the city with high delinquency rates were also charac- terised by:

a high percentage of ‘foreign born’ and African- American heads of households;

a high percentage of families on welfare;

a low rate of home ownership, and greatest number of condemned buildings;

decreasing population;

high rates of infant mortality, tuberculosis, insanity, adult criminality and truancy.

These parts of the city are characterised by different value systems from those held by other parts, they argued, and this can have important consequences for the ways in which people behave:

In the areas of high economic status where the rates of delinquency are low there is, in general, a similarity in the attitudes of the residents with reference to conventional values . . . In contrast, the areas of low economic status where the rates of delinquency are high, are characterized by wide diversity in norms and standards of behav- iour . . . Children living in such communities are exposed to a variety of contradictory stan- dards and forms of behaviour rather than to a relatively consistent and conventional pattern.

(Shaw and McKay, 1942: 170–172)

Their research supported Burgess’s ecological thesis and they argued that the high levels of juvenile delinquency found in the zone of transition were a product of social disorganisation in that part of the city. This social disorganisation was characterised by poverty, residential mobility and racial hetero- geneity. In addition, Shaw and McKay introduced the idea of cultural transmission. Their argument was that values, including delinquent values, are transmitted from generation to generation, and it is through such processes that particular areas become established as delinquent areas despite the turnover of people in the area. In such commu- nities there develops a tradition in which various

The Chicago School 205

criminal activities are learned by young boys from the older ones in the area, with particular offences such as shoplifting, car theft and jackrolling (steal- ing) being passed from generation to generation.

This tradition is manifested in many differ- ent ways. It becomes meaningful to the child through the conduct, speech, gestures, and atti- tudes of persons with whom he has contact. Of particular importance is the child’s intimate association with predatory gangs or other forms of criminal or delinquent organization. Through his contacts with these groups and by virtue of his participation in their activities he learns the techniques of stealing, becomes involved in binding relationships with his companions in delinquency, and acquires the attitudes appro- priate to his position as a member of such groups.

(Shaw and McKay, 1942: 436)

Anticipating control theory-related ideas that were to follow in succeeding decades, Shaw and McKay argued that in the wealthier parts of the city chil- dren were more closely and carefully supervised and that such supervision was more diffi cult to achieve in those areas where traditional institutions

such as schools, churches and the family itself were under greater pressure from rapid urban change. In this manner, social disorganisation is a signifi cant breeding ground for delinquency and criminality.

Chicago Area Project Clifford Shaw’s academic studies had a practical component and consequence also. In the early 1930s he established the Chicago Area Project, a series of neighbourhood centres situated around the city. Their function was to coordinate commu- nity resources (churches, schools, local associations and clubs) in tackling local problems. In addition, they acted as a forum for generating funds to spon- sor programmes for adults and young people, again with a view to responding to local problems and, crucially, involving local people in this process. The projects ran for over 20 years and spawned a num- ber of imitators and, whilst there is little evidence that they had any profound effect on local levels of juvenile delinquency, such models continue to exert some infl uence on much local community crime prevention activity.

Differential association Shaw and McKay’s ideas were taken up and modi- fi ed by Edwin Sutherland, another criminologist who studied and, briefl y, worked at Chicago Uni- versity. His focus was less upon the fairly negative idea of social disorganisation. Rather, he explored how differential forms of organisation led to dif- ferent cultural infl uences and mechanisms, and he sought to understand criminal behaviour as learned behaviour. His theory argued that, as with all behaviour, criminal conduct is learned in inter- action with others, being communicated between groups and, indeed, generations. In this, he was much infl uenced by work by the French sociolo- gist Gabriel Tarde and his ‘laws of imitation’, and also by George Herbert Mead’s infl uential work on symbolic interactionism. In a manner similar to Sutherland’s later work, Frederick Thrasher (1927) had argued in The Gang that ideas about behaviour were passed from generation to generation of males on the streets. At the core of the idea of differen- tial association is the notion that if an individual is exposed to more ideas that promote lawbreaking than they are ideas that act as barriers to such con- duct, then criminal conduct becomes highly likely.

In Sutherland’s words differential association is based on the hypothesis that ‘a person becomes delinquent because of an excess of defi nitions

Much of the work of the Chicago sociologists focused on fi rst-hand accounts of life in some of the most run-down parts of the city.

10 · The Chicago School and cultural criminology206

favourable to violation of law over defi nitions unfa- vourable to violation of law’ (Sutherland, 1947: 6) . Shaw’s work in books such as The Jackroller (1930) had shown the important infl uence of friends and peers on juvenile delinquency. For Sutherland, such learning covers the techniques of committing crime (which may be more or less complex) and what he refers to as ‘the specifi c direction of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes’. Differential asso- ciations vary in intensity, frequency and duration, and it is those, he argued, that last longer, are more intense and occur earlier in life that are likely to be more infl uential.

Sutherland’s ideas have been criticised for failing to explain why people develop the asso- ciations they do. Insofar as friendship groups are concerned, it might be argued that the explana- tion is actually more to be found in peer selection than peer infl uence, i.e. people who are disposed toward delinquency search out delinquent peers precisely so as to provide a sympathetic context for their behaviour. Indeed, a number of criminol- ogists, particularly those working in the control theory tradition (Hirschi, 1969), have proposed precisely this. However, in terms of the impor- tance of association, the ‘selection’ criticism is obviously more diffi cult to sustain if the relation- ships concerned are, say, family relationships. The theory of differential association went through a number of forms, eventually being summarised in a set of nine propositions in 1947 (Sutherland and Cressey, 1947/1970: 75–76):

1 Criminal behaviour is learned.

2 Criminal behaviour is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication.

3 The principal part of the learning of criminal behaviour occurs within intimate personal groups.

4 When criminal behaviour is learned, the learning includes (a) techniques of committing the crime, which sometimes are very complicated, sometimes very simple; [and] (b) the specifi c direction of motives, drives, rationalisations, and attitudes.

5 The specifi c direction of motives and drives is learned from defi nitions of legal codes as favourable and unfavourable.

6 A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of defi nitions favourable to violation of law over defi nitions unfavourable to violation

of law. This is the principle of differential association.

7 Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity.

8 The process of learning criminal behaviour by association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns involves all the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning.

9 While criminal behaviour is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those general needs and values since non- criminal behaviour is an expression of the same needs and values. Thieves generally steal in order to secure money, but likewise honest labourers work in order to secure money. The attempts by many scholars to explain criminal behaviour by general drives and values, such as the happiness principle, striving for social status, the money motive, or frustration, have been, and must continue to be, futile, since they explain lawful behaviour as completely as they explain criminal behaviour. They are similar to respiration, which is necessary for any behaviour, but which does not differentiate criminal from non-criminal behaviour.

Differential reinforcement Criminologists such as Akers (see Chapter 8) and others have sought to extend Sutherland’s ideas in a fairly direct form, using social learning theory to explore how criminal learning is undertaken. Akers’ theory of ‘differential reinforcement’ takes Sutherland’s ideas of ‘defi nitions’, and distin- guishes between the ‘general’ (overall beliefs about what is good and bad) and the specifi c (particu- lar conditions under which things are considered to be good or bad or right or wrong). This intro- duces the possibility that certain forms of crimi- nal behaviour might generally be considered to be wrong, but may be permitted under certain circumstances.

Differential reinforcement relates to the antici- pated consequences of particular actions, i.e. whether they are likely, for example, to result in punishment. We tend to do things that will not result in punishment, but in choosing courses of action we are infl uenced by what others do through a process that Akers refers to as imita- tion. Akers’ expansion of Sutherland’s ideas leads to the proposition that initial delinquent activity results from a combination of differential asso- ciation and imitation. This initial participation

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The Chicago School 207

will be differentially reinforced – meaning that it may be continued if the reinforcement is posi- tive, or it will cease if the reaction is experienced as negative. These reinforcements may be directly experienced – say in the form of punishment – or observed in others.

Edwin Sutherland’s ideas have had a lasting impact on various aspects of criminology. His the- ory of differential association was arguably crucial in moving criminology away from theories domi- nated by those who sought their answers in human biology, physiology or through psychiatry, and his ‘legacy to criminology is not his specifi c learning theory but his argument that criminal behaviour is normal learned behaviour’ (Vold et al. , 2002: 175). On a more general level, however, as Downes and Rock (2007) note, differential association theory’s infl uence was in acting as a bridge between the early work of the Chicago School and what later became known as subcultural theory. This was true not just of American subcultural theory but also of British work in this area in the 1960s and 1970s. Before we turn our attention to subcultural theory, we must look at some of the criticisms levelled at Chicago School sociology.

Assessing the Chicago School One of the most oft-proffered negative views of the Chicago School is that the work is somewhat atheoretical. Some critics view the work of the Chicago sociologists as being rather overly descrip- tive and lacking in clear, theoretically based, test- able hypotheses. Downes and Rock quote Joseph Gusfi eld’s reminiscence that he and his colleagues harboured an ‘indifference, even disdain, for the endless efforts of sociologists to develop refi ned theory or methodological rigour’ (2003: 76). It is important not to overstate such criticism, however. By contrast, Lewis Coser (1979: 313), discussing the work of the Chicago School, has argued that:

it must be stressed that their reputation as atheo- retical fact-fi nders and empty-headed empiricists is by no means deserved. The members of the early generation possessed well-furnished theo- retical minds and were very much conversant with social theory, whether European or home- grown. Simmel, Durkheim, the Austrian confl ict theorists, but also Marx (though not Weber) were part of the theoretical toolkits of most Chi- cago sociologists of the fi rst generation, and also, though less uniformly so, of the second.

Second, some commentators have been critical of the idea of the ecological model itself, in particular for its downplaying of those structurally determin- ing factors within cities that were planned and far from ‘natural’.

Third, the idea of social disorganisation itself is by no means always clearly distinguished from the phenomena it is used to explain, such as crime and disorder. That is, there appears sometimes to be an element of teleology in aspects of Shaw and McKay’s explanation.

A fourth criticism concerns the idea of cultural transmission, which, though persuasive and impor- tant, is argued to be unclear in some respects. Thus, it is not always clear how particular cul- tural formations, e.g. criminal (sub)cultures, come into being.

Fifth, much of the Chicago work is regularly criticised for having used offi cial measures of crime as the basis for understanding different parts of the city and for doing so rather uncritically (for a cri- tique of such offi cial statistics, see Chapter 3).

Sixth, elements of the Chicago sociology came close to structural determinism, placing too little emphasis on individual decision-making, and over- emphasising the infl uence of place.

Seventh, some of the work is said to have assumed too close a ‘fi t’ between delinquent values and lower-class status or, the reverse, non-delinquent values and middle-class norms and lifestyles.

Finally, critics question whether ideas such as differential association and cultural transmission can explain all forms of crime. Can they, for exam- ple, explain impulsive or emotive offences where offenders may have had little contact with deviant values or ideas?

Whatever its shortcomings may have been, the detailed ethnographic work of the Chicago School ‘prepared the basis for some of the principal socio- logical stances that were to come’ (Downes and Rock, 2003: 80). Crucial amongst these were more recent studies of neighbourhoods and networks that have explored issues of ‘social capital’ and ‘collective effi cacy’. According to Bursik (2000: 94) these systemic theories of neighbourhood crime rates build on insights originating with Chicago School studies and suggest that:

The levels of residential instability and population heterogeneity will be highest in economically deprived neighbourhoods.

Private and parochial networks will be smaller, be less dense and have less breadth in

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10 · The Chicago School and cultural criminology208

neighbourhoods with high levels of residential instability and population heterogeneity.

Public networks will be smaller, be less dense and have less breadth in economically deprived neighbourhoods.

Crime rates are a function of the ability of private, parochial and public networks to transfer the types of social capital that are necessary for the effective control of crime.

The total effects of economic deprivation, residential instability, and population heterogeneity on crime are mediated by these intervening systemic factors.

One body of work that owes a substantial debt to the Chicago School and has sought to build on many of its insights is Robert Sampson’s work on local neighbourhoods and crime and, more particu- larly, on the idea of ‘collective effi cacy’. Sampson and colleagues’ research in Chicago neighbour- hoods found that a combination of poverty, family instability and high residential mobility tended to be associated with relatively high levels of violent crime (Sampson et al. , 1997). This they related to ‘social disorganisation’, defi ned as the community’s inability to realise its objectives. The notion of ‘col- lective effi cacy’ is almost the reverse of this, being the community’s ability to maintain order through overt action. This can only successfully occur when there is ‘mutual trust’ and suffi cient shared expecta- tions about intervening to maintain order. Essen- tially, it refers to social cohesion – a form of social capital – based on shared values.

Although there are a number of important and very substantial differences between the social eco- logical approach of the Chicago School and later cultural and subcultural theorists, it is also the case that it is in some of this later work that the infl u- ence of the Chicago School can most obviously be seen. The developing interest in modern urban life and its opportunities can be seen early on in the work of Robert Park, who set the tone of much that followed:

The processes of segregation established moral distances which make the city a mosaic of lit- tle worlds which touch but do not interpen- etrate. This makes it possible for individuals to pass quickly and easily from one moral milieu to another, and encourages the fascinating but dangerous experiment of living at the same time in several different contiguous, but otherwise widely separated worlds. All this tends to give to

city life a superfi cial and adventitious character; it tends to complicate social relationships and to produce new and divergent individual types. It introduces, at the same time, an element of chance and adventure which adds to the stimu- lus of city life and gives it, for young and fresh nerves, a peculiar attractiveness.

(Park, 1925: 40–41)

Review questions

1 What is meant by an ecological approach?

2 Explain what is meant by the zone of transition and what its importance was held to be.

3 What is differential association?

4 Why might critics have suggested that Chicago sociology was atheoretical?

Cultures and subcultures Core features of Chicago School sociology – the focus on the city, the ethnographic and appreciative approach to research, and concern with the cultural basis of crime – all fi nd their way into the subcul- tural approaches that emerged initially in America and later Britain after the Second World War.

As was suggested in the previous chapter, it was actually Albert Cohen’s work that initially built on Merton’s theory and which, as importantly, intro- duced the notions of culture and subculture to the study of delinquency. Culture, for Cohen (1955), is systematised ‘traditional ways of solving problems’ transmitted across time. Cohen, who had been a student of Merton’s at Harvard and Edwin Suther- land’s at Indiana, drew on strain theory and the idea of cultural transmission as a means of explain- ing the development of delinquent subcultures.

‘Subcultures’ emerge as means of solving prob- lems created by the incompatible demands of struc- ture and culture. Though conducted much earlier, an early and path-breaking study of Chicago gangs by Frederic Thrasher saw such groupings as being characterised by a quest for excitement among other features. Thrasher’s immense empirical study of 1,313 gangs in the city led him (1927: 57) to defi ne the gang as:

an interstitial group originally formed sponta- neously, and then integrated through confl ict. It is characterised by the following types of

Cultures and subcultures 209

behaviour: meeting face-to-face, milling, move- ment through space as a unit, confl ict and plan- ning. The result of this collective behaviour is the development of tradition, unrefl ective internal structure, esprit de corps, solidarity, morale, group awareness, and attachments to a local territory.

Thrasher’s view of gangs as the product of socially disorganised environments has been particularly infl uential, not only on subsequent studies of gangs, but also in the area of delinquency more generally.

Albert Cohen Albert Cohen was also drawn to the concentration of delinquency within gangs, and in his model viewed gang delinquency as a form of solution to the contradictions, or strains, faced by many young men, in particular as a result of their failure within the educational system. According to Downes and Rock (2007), the way of life outlined in Cohen’s theory of delinquency had six major features:

1 Economic rationality is largely absent.

2 Much delinquent activity is characterised by ‘malice’.

3 The behaviour involves a rejection of dominant values.

4 Gang activity is hedonistic and emphasises instant gratifi cation.

5 Delinquents are not specialists – their delinquent behaviour is varied.

6 Primary allegiance is to the gang rather than other groups.

Young people who have no immediate access to respectable status by virtue of their families, and who fare poorly in the competition for achieved sta- tus, can either continue to conform to middle-class values despite their low-status position, or they can fi nd an alternative source of status: the gang. The gang inverts traditional values – hard work, respect- ability – as a means of creating an alternative world within which status can be achieved. In this sense it is perhaps closest to elements of Merton’s ‘rebel- lion’ adaptation to strain. In a passage resonant of Merton, Cohen (1955: 137) observed that:

Those values which are at the core of the ‘American way of life’, which help to motivate behaviour which we most esteem as ‘typically

Street-corner boys in New York in the 1950s. Gangs, their organisation and operation have been a long-running theme in American criminology.

10 · The Chicago School and cultural criminology210

American’, are among the major determinants of that which we stigmatize as ‘pathological’ . . . the problems of adjustment to which the delin- quent subculture is a response are determined, in part, by those very values which respectable society holds most sacred.

What Cohen called the ‘corner boys’ were poorly prepared and equipped to compete with their higher-class peers. The limited access they have to the status that is valued in American society means they are confronted with a ‘prob- lem of adjustment’. In effect, lower-class boys are handicapped, in part by the limitations of their own socialisation and also by the middle-class atti- tudes and values which are socially esteemed and by which they will inevitably be judged. They are ‘denied status in the respectable society because they cannot meet the criteria of the respectable status system’ (1955: 121).

According to Cohen, to the extent that they care about this they will feel some ‘shame’ and will expe- rience ‘status frustration’. Faced with such problems of adjustment, there is a search for a ‘solution’. The response of the ‘delinquent boy’ is to join together with others in a similar position, forming the basis for the development of a delinquent subculture. Such reaction formation leads to a response that is hostile to middle-class values and rejects middle- class status and middle-class values. This process, argues Cohen, provides a more realistic basis than strain theory (see Chapter 9) for understanding the generally negative and non-pecuniary nature of much lower-class delinquency.

A number of criticisms have been levelled at Cohen’s theory. First, some have been critical of the argument that middle-class values are as widely accepted by lower-class boys as Cohen sug- gests. Other critics, such as Downes (1966), have questioned the extent to which lower-class delin- quent boys are hostile to middle-class norms and values.

Cloward and Ohlin An attempt to build on and test Cohen’s theory was the work undertaken by Cloward and Ohlin (1960) in a book entitled Delinquency and Opportunity. Again, much infl uenced by elements of strain the- ory, Cloward and Ohlin sought to build not only on Merton’s work but also on Edwin Sutherland’s notion of differential association (Cloward had been a student of Merton’s at Columbia, Ohlin a student of Sutherland’s, as well as studying at Chicago).

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Cloward and Ohlin asked ‘under which condi- tions will persons experience strains and tensions that lead to delinquent solutions?’ (1960: 32). In part, the answer was that ‘the disparity between what lower-class youths are led to want and what is actually available to them is the source of a major problem of adjustment’ (1960: 86). Where Cohen had emphasised the importance of schooling and education failure, Cloward and Ohlin’s analysis was in some ways closer to Robert Merton’s original picture of anomie, emphasising economic failure within a culture that idealised fi nancial success.

However, into this mix they add elements of cul- tural transmission theory in order to illustrate how different forms of deviance develop. In essence, they argue that there exists an illegitimate opportunity structure (in parallel to the legitimate one), with some having greater access to this than others. Dif- ferent groups and different neighbourhoods vary in their access to resources and to opportunities – both legitimate and illegitimate. Adaptation to strain is mediated by the availability of particular means. Therefore:

The concept of differential opportunity struc- tures permits us to unite the theory of anomie, which recognizes the concept of differentials in access to legitimate means, and the ‘Chicago’ tradition, in which the concept of differentials in access to illegimate means is implicit. We can now look at the individual, not simply in rela- tion to one or the other system of means, but in relation to both legitimate and illegitimate systems.

(Cloward and Ohlin, 1960: 151)

They argued for the existence of greater speciali- sation in delinquency than Cohen had allowed for and, utilising Sutherland’s ideas, identifi ed three types of delinquent subculture:

Criminal – In which gangs worked largely for fi nancial gain through robbery, theft and burglary; such subcultures he argued were more likely to emerge in organised slum areas where established offenders could act as role models to the younger generation.

Conflict – Where the primary form of delinquency was violence; such subcultures were more likely to arise in disorganised areas where access to criminal role models was more restricted and where offending was therefore more to do, at least initially, with establishing social status.

Cultures and subcultures 211

Retreatist – Where much delinquent activity involved drug use, arising out of the ‘double- failure’ to achieve success through legitimate or illegitimate avenues. Drug use is a ‘solution’ to the status dilemma posed by such failure.

Each of these represents a specifi c form of adapta- tion to anomie/strain:

and conformity of many young delinquents. More particularly, Matza and Sykes departed from the assumptions of much strain and subcultural theory in rejecting the idea that delinquent values should necessarily be understood as oppositional to main- stream values.

Rather, the constraints of the dominant value system are merely loosened; delinquent values enable some distance to be created from domi- nant values through the adoption of what they term ‘subterranean values’. Such values include excitement, machismo, toughness and a rejection of the world of work, and they are to be found in all parts of society. Delinquent activity itself is justifi ed through what he terms techniques of neu- tralisation. These are effectively rationalisations or justifi cations. In order to continue with a decision to break the law, individuals need to able to con- vince themselves that what they are doing is not really deviant, is not really wrong. The application of such techniques, and the necessity of doing so, is an illustration of the power of non-delinquent values. They include:

Denial of responsibility (‘It wasn’t my fault’, ‘I wasn’t to blame’).

Denial of injury (‘They were insured anyway’, ‘No one will ever miss it’).

Denial of the victim (‘They were asking for it’, ‘It didn’t affect them’, ‘No-one got hurt’).

Condemnation of the condemners (‘They were just picking on me’, ‘I didn’t do anything that others don’t do’).

Appeal to higher loyalties (‘I was only protecting my family’, ‘I was only obeying orders’).

Critics have taken Matza to task for underplaying offending behaviour: ‘Unfortunately in setting out to remedy theories which he saw as “over-predicting” delinquency, Matza over-corrects to the point at which his own theory under-predicts both its scale and, in particular, its more violent forms’ (Downes and Rock, 2003: 149).

Subcultural theory Cultural or subcultural theories proceed from the basis that behaviour can be understood as a largely rational means of solving problems thrown up by existing social circumstances – and, in this, they share something with strain theory. At the heart of such approaches there lies the comparison of the

Types of adaptation

Conventional goals

Legitimate means

Illegitimate means

Criminal + – +

Retreatist – – –

Confl ict +/– +/– +/–

Source : Cloward and Ohlin (1960).

The criminal subculture is likely to arise, they argued, when individuals facing blocked opportu- nity structures seek – and fi nd – illegitimate means for achieving conventional goals. As Cloward and Ohlin describe it (1960: 171), it arises in circum- stances where there is:

a neighbourhood milieu characterized by close bonds between different age-levels of offend- ers, and between criminal and conventional elements. As a consequence of these integra- tive relationships, a new opportunity structure emerges which provides alternative avenues to success-goals. Hence the pressures generated by restrictions on legitimate access to success-goals are drained off. Social controls over the conduct of the young are effectively exercised, limiting expressive behaviour and constraining the dis- contented to adopt instrumental, if criminalis- tic, styles of life.

David Matza A critique and reworking of strain theory can be found in the work of David Matza. In his own work, and in his joint work with Gresham Sykes (Matza, 1969; Sykes and Matza, 1957; Matza and Sykes, 1961), Matza was critical of strain theory for its over-prediction of delinquency – a straightforward reading of the theory implying that in fact there is far more delinquency than is actually the case. As such, Matza and Sykes shared something of the per- spective of control theorists (see Chapter 12) in that their focus was upon the apparent conventionality

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10 · The Chicago School and cultural criminology212

‘dominant’ cultures and deviant subcultures – these subcultures being conceived as a solution (a delin- quent solution ) to the dilemmas posed by the domi- nant culture. In early Chicago School work the cultures of the criminal area were distinct from main- stream values, and the process by which such values were learned was one of ‘cultural transmission’.

Later writers such Cloward and Ohlin focused more on the internalisation of middle-class val- ues and the reaction formation that occurred as a result of rejection by middle-class society. In later subcultural theory, the rather consensual model of social organisation implied by the idea of a domi- nant culture was replaced with a greater focus on dissensus and confl ict and, particularly in British subcultural theory, in an emphasis on social class. There have been, therefore, effectively two waves of subcultural theory (Young, 1986): the fi rst, an American structural–functionalist wave appearing in the 1950s and 1960s, later followed by a largely British Marxist wave in the late 1970s. As Stan Cohen (1980: iv) noted, despite any differences, the two waves shared a great deal:

Both work with the same ‘problematic’ (to use the fashionable term): growing up in a class soci- ety; both identify the same vulnerable group: the urban male working-class late adolescent; both see delinquency as a collective solution to a structurally imposed problem.

American subcultural theory An early attempt ‘to give a new slant’ to the fi eld (Laub, 1983: 174) was Thorsten Sellin’s (1938) idea of culture confl ict. Sellin, building on Chicago School work, focused on the way in which the nature of local neighbourhoods or communities could lead to the development of social attitudes that confl icted with legal rules and norms. In par- ticular he was interested in what localised norma- tive systems could come into confl ict with more general social normative systems – as expressed in law. Crudely, therefore, it is possible that adherence to local, community norms may have the effect of leading individuals into confl ict with wider social expectations and rules: a form of conformity that leads to crime.

An extension of these ideas was proposed by Wolfgang and Ferracuti (1967) in The Subculture of Violence. Their focus, in particular, was on the most expressive or emotional forms of violence, those conducted in the heat of the moment rather than

activities that were planned and calculated. Earlier, Marvin Wolfgang (1958: 188–189) had argued:

A male is usually expected to defend the name or honour of his mother, the virtue of woman- hood . . . and to accept no derogation about his race (even from a member of his own race), his age, or his masculinity. Quick resort to physical combat as a measure of daring, courage or defence of status appears to be a cultural expression, especially for lower socio-economic class males of both races. When such a culture norm response is elicited from an individual engaged in social interplay with others who harbour the same response mechanism, physical assaults, alterca- tions, and violent domestic quarrels that result in homicide are likely to be common.

Wolfgang and Ferracuti (1967) argued that the dif- ferences between the parent culture and a subculture of violence were only partial, not total. The crucial difference was the reliance, in some circumstances, on violence as a response to these circumstances. This might involve challenges to honour, respect or some other form of challenge, but was expected to be met with physical force rather than some other form of reaction. Thus, one can easily imagine in some communities, slights or perceived threats to a man’s honour or social standing would be likely to prompt a violent response. These circumstances are indicative of a subculture of violence and are often class-related . Violence tends to be viewed as normal and expected, and thus is not perceived as wrong or something which should result in a feeling of shame or guilt.

Needless to say, subcultures of violence are often associated with lower-class/working-class environ- ments. Elijah Anderson in his Code of the Street (1999) argued that competition among the poor for very limited job opportunities, and with plen- tiful illegitimate opportunities, led to the develop- ment of a sense of alienation and despair. This in turn generated a code of the street, which was a set of rules governing public behaviour, at the heart of which is ‘respect’. It is the failure to show respect which lies at the heart of much violence he argues:

Manhood in the inner city means taking the prerogatives of men with respect to strangers, other men and women – being distinguished as a man. It implies physicality and a certain ruth- lessness. Regard and respect are associated with this concept in large part because of its practical application: if others have little or no regard for

Cultures and subcultures 213

a person’s manhood, his very life and those of his loved ones could be in jeopardy . . . For many inner-city youths, manhood and respect are fl ip- sides of the same coin; physical and psychological well-being are inseparable, and both require a sense of control, of being in charge.

(reproduced in Cullen and Agnew, 2006: 158)

Walter B. Miller’s (1958) ethnographic research concentrated on the behaviour and attitudes of male gang members from a relatively poor area near Boston and explored the extent to which such groups displayed and adhered to norms and values that were distinguishable from those of mainstream cultural values. For Miller (1958), there were six dis- tinguishing concerns in such cultures:

1 Trouble – There is a particular preoccupation with ‘getting into trouble’ and the potential consequences of doing so.

2 Toughness – The dominance of female role models within the family in such cultures leads to the valorisation of certain aspects of other aspects of masculinity in other environments, none more so than toughness.

3 Smartness – In the sense of being ‘street smart’ is highly prized, in contrast to being ‘book smart’.

4 Excitement – Daily routines of work can be exceedingly monotonous and are compensated for by the active search for excitement in other arenas.

5 Fate – The future tends to be viewed in fatalistic terms rather than as something that can be manipulated or in any way controlled.

6 Autonomy – Strong resentment of outside interference and intervention is a sign according to Miller of a sense of autonomy in life – albeit one that is undermined by the other focal concerns of such subcultures.

In this view, working-class culture is a ‘generating milieu’ for delinquency. The absence of male role models can lead to the development of exagger- ated masculine styles, and overcrowded conditions push males out on to the street, where gang activity becomes more likely. It will be immediately obvious that one of the important contrasts between sub- cultural theory – at least in this particular form – and strain theory is that, unlike strain theory, it sees lower-class cultural values as being quite distinct from those of the mainstream. In this case crime is not a product of a failure to meet middle-class

expectations, but more a product of conformity to working-class norms.

There are problems, of course, with both posi- tions. Critics have argued that strain theories over- emphasise the importance of middle-class values and, in doing so, adopt a somewhat patronising attitude toward ‘lower’ social classes. On the other hand, whilst subcultural theory largely avoids such faults, some have argued that by contrast one of its shortcomings is that it is based on a stereotyped view of working-class cultures.

Much American subcultural theory has been pre- occupied with gangs or similar organised groupings within which delinquent activity takes place. By contrast, as we will see, British subcultural theory has questioned the extent to which delinquency really takes place within such settings or, at least, has questioned the applicability of such ideas to the British context.

British subcultural theory David Downes (1966) in his landmark study, The Delinquent Solution, noted that British criminology, with its preoccupations with penology, the psy- chology of crime and legal and statistical studies of delinquency, had ‘involved the almost complete neglect of the very questions with which American sociologists preoccupy themselves.’ As David Matza observed in the introduction to the book, ‘Downes was a most un-English criminologist.’ In the late 1950s/early 1960s, infl uenced by American socio- logical criminology, studies such as John Barron Mays’ Growing Up in the City and Terry Morris’s The Criminal Area began to emerge, and they formed the basis of a distinctly British form of sociological criminology which really took off from the late 1960s after the publication of Downes’s work.

Heavily infl uenced by the Chicago School, Mays’ work was based in a poor neighbourhood in Liv- erpool and examined the subculture of the area and its relationship with the culture of the city more generally. Delinquent values were learned, he argued, and much of the behaviour he recorded he interpreted as that of relatively deprived young people seeking to cope with their restricted cir- cumstances. Morris’s study of a Croydon suburb saw this ‘delinquent area’ as the product of hous- ing policies and the social concentration of ‘prob- lem families’ in particular areas. The consequence, borrowing elements of differential association and cultural transmission theory, is the emergence of a delinquent subculture in which many will adopt

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delinquent values but some will remain relatively resistant – largely because of their socio-economic and family circumstances.

Willmott’s (1966) study of adolescent boys in Bethnal Green in east London also explored youth- ful delinquency. Willmott rejected the idea of ‘status frustration’ as being at the heart of much delinquent activity and argued instead that the more serious offending behaviours were partly at least a product of a search for excitement and an

expression of group values and solidarity. Simulta- neously, David Downes was also doing his doctoral research in the East End (in Stepney and Poplar).

In Downes’s view, delinquency is not at heart rebellious, but conformist. The conformity is to working-class values. Consequently, he effectively rejected the idea – so far as the area he was study- ing was concerned – of delinquent subcultures and, rather, saw delinquency as a ‘solution’ to some of the structural problems faced by young men. In this, in part, he was aligning himself with American sociologists such as Matza and Sykes. For Downes, many of the young people he studied dissociated themselves from school and work and emphasised leisure goals:

In the absence of work-orientation and job- satisfaction, and lacking the compensations accruing from alternative areas of non-work, such as home-centredness, political activity and community service, the ‘corner boy’ attaches unusual importance to leisure. There is no rea- son to suppose that the delinquent ‘corner boy’ does not share the more general, technically classless ‘teenage culture’, a culture whose active pursuit depends on freedom from the restraints of adult responsibility, but which refl ects the ‘subterranean values’ of the conventional adult

Two prominent fi gures from British sociological criminology: David Downes ( left ) and Terence Morris ( right ) both of the LSE.

East London, 1960. The site of a number of important studies – notably David Downes’s The Delinquent Solution – forming the basis for the British subcultural tradition.

Cultures and subcultures 215

world. There is some reason to suppose, how- ever, that the working-class ‘corner boy’ both lays greater stress on its leisure goals, and has far less legitimate access to them, than male adoles- cents differently placed in the social structure. This discrepancy is thought to be enough to pro- vide immediate impetus to a great deal of group delinquency, limited in ferocity but diversifi ed in content.

(Downes, 1966: 250)

British subcultural studies really took off in the 1970s and much of the most important work ema- nated from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University. Funded initially with money from Sir Allen Lane of Pen- guin Books, the fi rst director of CCCS was Richard Hoggart, whose book The Uses of Literacy (1957) has been described as one of the two ‘founda- tional texts’ for British (sub)cultural studies – the other being Raymond Williams’s Culture and Society 1780–1950 (1958).

Subculture, for the Birmingham School writ- ers, was viewed as an expression of an ‘imaginary relation’ – something expressed via symbols and feelings. The cultural and political stance of vari- ous youth groupings was therefore ‘read’ by cultural theorists through an examination of dress, music, style and elements of behaviour. In a seminal CCCS article, Phil Cohen (1972: 23) argued that subcul- tures could be considered:

as so many variations on a central theme – the contradiction, at an ideological level, between traditional working-class Puritanism, and the new hedonism of consumption; at an economic level between the future as part of the socially

mobile elite, or as part of the new lumpen. Mods, Parkas, skinheads, crombies, all represent, in their different ways, an attempt to retrieve some of the socially cohesive elements destroyed in their parent culture, and to combine these with elements selected from other class fractions.

Beginning with the Teds in the 1950s, a succes- sion of white working-class subcultures followed with what appeared to be increasing speed. These included ‘mods’ – of various sorts – whose style was ‘sharp but neat and visually understated’ (Hebdige, 1976: 88) and broad enough to encompass sharp suits, parkas, and the seemingly ubiquitous Vespa (Cohen, 1972). In opposition, sometimes literally, always stylistically, were the rockers. Similar to the Teds, in that they originated from lower down the social scale than the mods (Barker and Little, 1964), they were unfashionable, unglamorous, and associ- ated with leather, motor bikes and an aggressive, often violent, masculinity (Willis, 1978).

Perhaps the most starkly aggressive of all sub- cultural styles was the skinheads, who appeared in the late 1960s, but resurfaced in the mid-1970s. The skinheads espoused traditional, even reaction- ary, values and, through their association with football violence and attacks on ethnic minorities and gays, quickly obtained folk devil status. Their racism, defence of territory, opposition to hippie values, their social origins (unskilled working class) and particular construction of style or ‘bricolage’ (Clarke, 1976b) – Doc Marten boots, cropped hair, braces – were seen by subcultural theorists as repre- senting ‘an attempt to recreate through the “mob” the traditional working class community’ (Clarke, 1976a: 99).

British subcultural studies, and especially the ‘Birmingham School’, were preoccupied with readings of ‘style’ such as the scooters and parkas of the mods (1960s) and the cropped hair, braces and Doc Martens of the skinheads (seen here at a National Front rally in London in 1988).

10 · The Chicago School and cultural criminology216

The emergence of a distinctly British school of subcultural theory was in part a response to the perceived shortcomings of anomie theory, but also because North American theory was felt inappli- cable to the British context in a number of ways (Downes and Rock, 1982). As British subcultural theory developed, so its focus moved gradually away from delinquency and increasingly towards leisure and style, the main exceptions being Pat- rick (1973), Parker (1974) and Gill (1977). Parker’s is a study of criminal subculture in which theft from cars provided a profi table adolescent inter- lude before the onset of a more respectable adult life or a more serious and long-term criminal career. Both his and Patrick’s study – in which the focus was on the machismo of the ‘hard man’ – brought insights from labelling theory to bear on the study of subcultures. Parker’s ‘boys’ used theft as a means of dealing with some of the problems they faced, dissociating themselves in part from the values of the dominant social order and, like the delinquents in Downes’s (1966) study, responding within the physical and material conditions which constrained their range of choice and freedom.

Subcultures emerged not just as a response to the problems of material conditions – their class cir- cumstances, schooling and so on. They were also taken to represent a symbolic critique of the domi- nant culture in which ‘style’ was read as a form of resistance. Subcultures, at least from the viewpoint of the more radical commentators of the 1970s, were essentially oppositional rather than subordi- nate. In Phil Cohen’s (1972: 23) terms, the latent function of subculture was to ‘express and resolve, albeit “magically”, the contradictions which appear in the parent culture’.

The solution, however, is largely expressed through style rather than crime. The style of each subculture involves the creation of identities and images built upon objects appropriated from other cultures and eras. It was at this point that the vocabulary of cultural studies met various strands of the sociology of deviance. Discerning ‘the hid- den messages inscribed in code on the glossy sur- faces of style, to trace them out as maps of meaning’ (Hebdige, 1979: 18), became the key task.

Though the bulk of youthful styles in the 1960s were of working-class origin, the last years of the decade also saw the development of a middle-class counterculture which, associated with both per- missiveness and drug use, was guaranteed a hostile reaction from ‘respectable’ society. Brake argues that hippie culture in Britain was made up largely

of students and ex-students and ‘provided a mora- torium for its members of approximately fi ve years in which to consider one’s identity and relationship to the world’ (1985: 95).

Through the late 1970s and into the 1980s, social and economic conditions for many young people became dramatically tougher. The key defi ning features were unemployment and racism, and it was against this background that African- Caribbean cultural resistance burgeoned and that ‘punk’ appeared. As the world of work retreated as a realistic prospect for many, so, it is argued, lifestyles dominated by consumption have come closer to the foreground. This was refl ected in youth culture in the 1980s, which ‘became more of an advertising medium than ever before; it was notable not for opposition, but for its role in sell- ing everything from Levi 501 jeans to spot cream’ (Redhead, 1990: 105).

In such circumstances, ‘respectable fears’ about young people become exacerbated, especially around drug use. The late 1980s and 1990s saw the emergence of dance-based, drug-associated, youth cultural styles, to which the acid house subculture and subsequent rave ‘movement’ or ‘scene’ were central. With its origins in Chicago House music and Euro-Pop (the Balearic Beat), acid house enjoyed a brief moment of approbation in the media before its drug connections led to inevit- able backlash. Acid house parties and, more par- ticularly, the use of ecstasy were the focal point of moral campaigns. Such partying – or ‘hedonism in hard times’ (Redhead, 1993: 4) – was somewhat in contrast with the drabber youth culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Where ‘punk had rejected such obvious pleasure a decade before . . . youth hedonism was now back, with a vengeance. A fort- night’s holiday in the sun became packed into a single weekend – then the next weekend and the next’ (McKay, 1996: 105).

From the 1970s onwards, as structural circum- stances changed and, more particularly, youth unemployment rose, youth cultures fragmented. If anything, this served further to reinforce the view that adolescence was a problematic period in the life course, and that adolescents themselves were a problem. The arrival of spectacular youth cultures also gave rise to a brief fl ourishing of subcultural theory, which, though it has been largely out of favour for a long while, is now seeing something of a revival in elements of what is currently referred to as cultural criminology and which we return to below. In most respects cultural criminology is not

Cultures and subcultures 217

a substantial departure from the types of subcul- tural theory that emerged in America and Britain in the 1950s to the 1970s and has developed in vari- ous ways since then. Rather, it appears more as a (welcome) reassertion of the importance of socio- logically informed criminology at a time when administrative concerns and the new ‘crime sci- ences’ are seeking to impose their less theoretically oriented approaches to the subject.

One of the themes that runs through much of both strain theory and subcultural theory (and reap- pears later in cultural criminology) is excitement. Excitement is related to delinquency in a number of ways: as one of its primary causes or consequences or, relatedly, as a close correlate (delinquency being a by-product of other exciting activities). How- ever, it is very much taken for granted in much strain theory that the search for excitement exists, at least in part, to make up for lost opportunities

elsewhere. However, with the gradual uncovering of middle-class ‘delinquency’ such an explanation becomes trickier. The consequence, as Downes and Rock (2003: 154) point out, was that ‘these theories lost some of their force. Labelling theory assumed greater plausibility’ (see Chapter 11).

Assessing subcultural theory No study of youthful delinquency can now eas- ily proceed without utilising many of the insights of subcultural theory. As numerous commentators have observed, subcultural theorists pointed to the collective nature of much delinquency, drawing our attention towards groups and gangs and away from more individualised notions of deviance. Second, subcultural theorists were insistent that deviance was to be understood in social and politi- cal contexts, not as something which is a product of biology or psychology. Such approaches also point us to the very particular socio-economic circumstances of the working classes and the important role this potentially plays in our under- standing of ‘deviant activity’.

Nevertheless, there have been a number of sub- stantive criticisms aimed at subcultural theory. Heidensohn (1989) lists fi ve major sets of criticism:

Determinism – Subcultural theory has been criticised for its tendency to overemphasise the infl uence of structural and cultural constraints, underplaying the conscious choices made by individuals. This is arguably particularly true of the more Marxist-infl uenced elements of British subcultural theory.

Selectivity – British subcultural theory in particular has been criticised for focusing on the most stylistically outrageous and unusual subcultures whilst ignoring the more mundane and, arguably, conforming youthful styles. This is linked with a later criticism – that of generally ignoring women in such work. Interestingly, it was the feminist subcultural theorists who, later, paid greater attention to more mundane aspects of everyday teenage life, not least through studies of girls’ bedrooms and popular magazines (McRobbie and Garber, 1991).

Conformity – One of the problems with subcultural theory, as Matza and others have pointed out, is that of over-prediction. That is to say that even in the poorest working-class communities, crime is not ever-present in all

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Resistance through Rituals (1975), one of the key publications from the Centre for Cultural Studies in Birmingham – a central concern in the work of the centre was the investigation of youth subcultures.

10 · The Chicago School and cultural criminology218

lives. Not everyone is delinquent or, more particularly, involved in serious delinquency.

Gender – see box.

Anomie – Much subcultural theory focuses on the supposedly anomic circumstances of delinquent lives and yet, as Downes and others show, delinquent youth share much of the value system of the mainstream adult and middle-class world.

One of the most serious criticisms of British subcul- tural theory concerns the issue of imputation – in effect ‘reading off’, or assuming, particular attributes from specifi c ways of living, dressing and behaving. The question is, how reliable are such readings and how do we or can we know? Stan Cohen points to three areas in which this problem arises:

Structure – Cohen is critical of the tendency in such writing to explain the problems of the present by reference to the historical past. He is,

he says (2002: liii–liv) ‘less than convinced that any essentialist version of history – such as the dominant one of a free working class interfered with since the eighteenth century by the bourgeois state apparatus – is either necessary or suffi cient to make sense of delinquency or youth culture today’.

Culture – Meaning is attributed to all manner of artefacts from the important all the way through to the mundane. However, Cohen is critical of the tendency to treat them all as if they were signs of ‘resistance’ when some could just as easily be symbols of conservatism and support. Then there is the question of intent. How do we know what the symbols mean? Here, he says (2002: lix) ‘my feeling is that the symbolic baggage the kids are being asked to carry around is just too heavy, that the interrogations are just a little forced’. Moreover, the analyses offered by the likes of Hebdige and

Subcultures: the feminist critique

According to its feminist critics, the bulk of subcultural theory was blind to gender. Indeed, in the book that came closest to being a manifesto for British subcultural studies, Resistance through Rituals (Hall and Jefferson, 1976), McRobbie and Garber (1976: 209) noted that the

absence of girls from the whole of the literature in this area is quite striking and demands explana- tion. Very little seems to have been written about the role of girls in youth cultural groupings in gen- eral. They are absent from the classic subcultural ethnographic studies, the ‘pop’ histories, personal accounts, or journalistic surveys. When they do appear, it is either in ways which uncritically reinforce the stereotypical image of woman with which we are now so familiar . . . or they are fl eet- ingly and marginally presented.

Why is this, they ask? Is it because girls are not really active or present in youth subcultures or is it a product of a particular form of academic research? Their con- clusion was that because of their position within pub- lic and private worlds, girls tend to be pushed to the periphery of social activities, and much ‘girl culture’ becomes a culture of the bedroom rather than the street (see also Frith, 1983). It is this McRobbie (1980: 40) argues that:

in documenting the temporary fl ights of the Teds, mods or rockers, most subcultural theorists ‘fail[ed]

to show that it is monstrously more diffi cult for women to escape (even temporarily) and that these symbolic fl ights have often been at the expense of women (especially mothers) and girls. The lads’ . . . peer group consciousness and pleasure frequently seem to hinge on a collective disregard for women and sexual exploitation of girls.’

Angela McRobbie

Cultural criminology 219

others are undoubtedly an imaginative way of reading the style, but how can we be sure, he asks, that they are also not imaginary?

Biography – A number of important questions are hardly addressed by subcultural theory. Why, Cohen (2002) asks, is it the case that some individuals exposed to particular pressures behave one way and others, subject to the same pressures, behave in a different manner, as with the problem of structure, so with biography. Why do some conform and others rebel? Subcultural theory is of little help here.

Related to these criticisms outlined by Cohen is a more general methodological and epistemological criticism made by Downes and Rock. In their view the failure to explore the diffi culties of imputa- tion is illustrative of a broader failure to consider the ‘taxing methodological problems involved in exploring, describing and analysing entities so complicated and intangible as “culture” and “subculture”’ (2003: 175). Subcultural theorists, they suggest, have tended to go about their work with only a passing acknowledgement of the soci- ology of knowledge and the niceties of cultural anthropology.

The fi nal line of criticism concerns what Downes and Rock refer to as ‘differential magnifi cation’: the sense that subcultural theory, and those approaches that emphasise class confl ict most particularly, are excessively concerned with subordinate cultures and largely ignore dominant cultures and the devi- ance that is associated with them. ‘In these works, the worlds of teachers, social workers, policemen [ sic ], prison offi cers, employers and even academics are treated with the very disregard for ambiguity, complexity and resistances to ideology that would be (rightly) impugned if applied to working-class or delinquent cultures’ (Downes and Rock, 2003: 174–175).

Cultural criminology Jock Young, who will appear with considerable reg- ularity in the theoretical chapters in this book (see, in particular, Chapters 13 and 14), is one of the prime movers behind the rise of ‘cultural criminol- ogy’. He explained its origins in the following way:

I have become increasingly suspicious of expla- nations of crime which are constituted around notions of opportunities on one side, and lack of controls, on the other . . . I have no doubt that much crime is mundane, instrumental and opportunistic in motivation . . . But an awful lot of crime, from joyriding to murder, from tele- phone kiosk vandalism to rape, involves much more than an instrumental motivation . . . Cul- tural criminology reveals . . . the sensual nature of crime, the adrenalin rushes of edgework – voluntary illicit risk-taking and the dialectic of fear and pleasure.

(Young, 2003: 390)

Whilst its proponents are often at pains to argue that cultural criminology is not ‘oppositional’ in character – that is to say, it doesn’t defi ne itself in opposition to other types of criminology – it has proved quite diffi cult to set out the major param- eters of cultural criminology without engaging in such tactics. Thus, in the quotation above, Jock Young contrasts its interests with the opportunistic, rational-choice theories that he sees as having come to dominate much criminology (see, for example, Chapter 15). Similarly, many writers working under the label of cultural criminology are highly criti- cal of the extent to which much contemporary criminology has become dominated by what they perceive to be a somewhat unthinking use of statis- tics. Thus, Jeff Ferrell, another leading light in this fi eld, argues the following:

The statistics may be dazzling, but time and again the ‘data’ undergirding them is found to derive from simplistic surveys beset by low response rates, from governmental arrest or con- viction records uncritically incorporated – even from ‘convenience samples’ of undergraduate students held captive in introductory criminol- ogy classes. Such methods offer no real engage- ment with the experiential reality of crime and victimization.

(Ferrell, 2010: xxx)

Indeed, to a certain extent cultural criminology is a reaction against what its proponents perceive as

CH13,14

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Review questions

1 What are the three main forms of subculture identifi ed by Cloward and Ohlin?

2 What are the main techniques of neutralisation?

3 In what ways do subcultures offer ‘magical’ solutions to structural problems?

4 What are the main criticisms of subcultural theory?

10 · The Chicago School and cultural criminology220

the ‘lurch back to positivism’ (Hayward and Young, 2004: 261) characterised by the rise of ‘admin- istrative criminology’, the reaction against eth- nographic methods and the push to increase the use of randomised controlled trials and cognate methods favoured by those styling themselves as ‘experimental criminologists’ (see Chapter 36). Indeed, arguably the leading commentators in this particular ‘school’ – Jeff Ferrell, Keith Hayward and Jock Young – have set themselves broadly against the whole of what they call ‘orthodox criminology’ (though it is never entirely clear what that is):

we consider it our duty and our pleasure as criminologists to stand against criminology, in particular to stand against the intellectual arro- gance and assumed acceptability of orthodox criminological method. But where to start? The methodological terrain of contemporary crimi- nology is so barren, its conventional methods so inadequate for addressing the human pathos of crime and control, so wanting in any sense of intellectual elegance and innovation, that the discipline today seems a sort of methodological kakistocracy – and upside-down world where the worst matters the most.

(Ferrell et al., 2015: 187)

So what, you will be wanting to know, are the inno- vative, path-breaking, unorthodox methods of cul- tural criminology? The answer, as offered by Ferrell and colleagues, is sixfold:

Ethnography : ‘an invitation to all researchers to engage an attitude of attentiveness and respect’ (2015: 215).

Instant ethnography : rather than the long-term quasi-anthropological style of much traditional ethnography, this approach weaves ‘fragments and shards of events’ into a new sort of ‘ethnography of experience’ (2015: 216).

Liquid ethnography : as with Ferrell’s own work on graffi ti writers, this is held to be ‘ethnography attuned to the dynamics of destabilized, transitory communities; ethnography immersed in the ongoing interplay of images; and ethnography comfortable with the shifting boundaries between research, research subjects and cultural activism’ (2015: 218).

Autoethnography : ‘researchers’ ethnographic explorations of themselves, their experiences and their emotions’ (2015: 222).

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Ethnographic content analysis : ‘an approach that situates textual analysis within “the communication of meaning”, and conceptualises such analysis as a process of ongoing intellectual give and take’ (2015: 226).

Visual criminology : how, they ask, ‘can there be a viable criminology that is not also a visual criminology?’ (2015: 228), using a variety of approaches, for example from documentary photography, as the basis for understanding our late modern environment and its surfeit of signs, signals and images.

As will be clear, cultural criminology is especially concerned with issues of meaning, of representa- tion and of the contested ways in which crime is framed and socially constructed. At its heart is the assumption that cultural dynamics carry within them the meaning of crime (Ferrell et al ., 2007: 2). As such, this is resonant of elements of interactionist and labelling theory (Chapter 11), which places great emphasis on the situated nature of meaning that characterises all social acts, including criminal acts. Indeed, in an early venture into this fi eld, Jeff Ferrell described it as an attempt to import the insights of cultural studies into criminology (Ferrell, 1995). As Hayward and Young (2004) suggest, cultural criminology seeks to understand both crime and crime control within the context of culture – that is to say, both are viewed as ‘cultural products’, mat- ters that are constructed and reconstructed socially and which carry meaning. Jock Young (2011: 103) again:

Furthermore, to highlight the interaction between [crime and the agencies of control]: the relation- ship and the interaction between constructions upwards and constructions downwards – the continuous generation of meaning around inter- action. Rules created, rules broken, a constant interplay of moral entrepreneurship, moral inno- vation and transgression.

A key question in this context is what is meant by culture ? Ferrell et al. (2015), using a formula- tion taken from Zygmunt Bauman, point to two analytically separable discourses on the notion of culture. In the fi rst, it is associated with free- dom, creativity, inventiveness and the breaking of boundaries. In the second, it is more a tool of rou- tine and continuity, where freedom is more likely to be seen as deviance or rule-breaking. Cultural criminology, they argue, seeks to incorporate both, being situated precisely where ‘norms are imposed

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and threatened, laws enacted and broken, [and] rules negotiated and renegotiated’ (2015: 7). By way of setting out some of the territory of cultural criminology, Ferrell highlights three areas: crime as culture; culture as crime; and the ‘variety of ways in which media dynamics construct the reality of crime and crime control’ (1995: 402–403).

Crime as culture In essence, what he means by this is that a con- siderable amount of criminal behaviour is also sub- cultural behaviour. As a consequence much cultural criminology is concerned, like subcultural theory before it, with style. Ferrell’s argument, though, is that cultural criminology moves beyond its earlier predecessor by bringing a ‘postmodern sensibility’ to such work and acknowledging that in the late modern world deviant and criminal subcultures ‘may now be exploding into universes of symbolic communication that in many ways transcend time and space’ (1995: 403). Ferrell’s own work on hip- hop graffi ti, for example, falls into this category. In addition, cultural criminology, by acknowledging and foregrounding the importance of emotions – building on the work of Jack Katz and others – also departs somewhat from earlier subcultural theory.

Culture as crime Here, a variety of cultural activities may be defi ned as ‘criminogenic’, or simply criminalised through the application of labels and sanctions. Ferrell draws attention to the work of the American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe as one example of an artist who has faced concerted campaigns against their work – much of which sought to defi ne it as subver- sive, pornographic and, consequently, illegal. There are two reasons, he says, why cultural criminology is and should be interested in such matters. First, the targets of such criminalisation – photographers, musicians, writers – are ‘cultural’ in nature. At least as important, however, he argues, is the fact that such criminalisation is itself a cultural process.

One small example: some years ago I visited an art exhibition at the Royal Academy in London; entitled Sensation, it featured works owned by Charles Saatchi, including a great many by then relatively young British artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. Most noteworthy of all, arguably, was a portrait of the Moors murderer, Myra Hindley, painted by Marcus Harvey. The por- trait, made up of hundreds of copies of a child’s handprint, brought out pickets on the fi rst day of

Marcus Harvey’s portrait of Myra Hindley, itself the focus of criminal damage.

the exhibition, and was subsequently attacked by protesters who hurled ink at it. On the day I vis- ited the exhibition, the portrait had been cleaned, was now hung behind a perspex screen, and was protected by two security guards. All visitors to the exhibition were frisked and their bags checked before being allowed in. The fact that even a por- trait of a child killer had to be protected by security guards seemed as clear an illustration of the inter- section of culture and crime as one could want.

Media dynamics of crime and control Above all else, it is perhaps a focus on the media and the mediatised nature of crime that is most central to cultural criminology. This covers a range of issues from the ways in which crime and devi- ance are constructed via the media, the nature of the institutional relationships between the media and criminal justice agencies, and the use of the media in crime control. In recent years, for exam- ple, a number of British newspapers, not least the now discontinued Sunday newspaper the News of

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the World, were at the centre of a controversy that included both hacking into the phones of crime victims and allegations of payments made to police offi cers for inside information (Davies, 2014). As Ferrell (1995: 407) reminds us, ‘in the process of constructing crime and crime control as social con- cerns and political controversies, the media also construct them as entertainment’.

A critique of cultural criminology Cultural criminology is a relatively recent arrival within criminology, but has grown rapidly in terms of the amount of work appearing under this banner and has been widely viewed as a welcome development within criminology. It has not been without its critics, however, and here we look briefl y at one or two of these lines of criticism. First and foremost has been the query – certainly more a query than a criticism at this stage – about what is ‘new’ or ‘different’ about cultural criminol- ogy. It has clear links to interactionist and subcul- tural theories for example, and as Presdee (2004: 281–282) suggests, arguably longer antecedents than that:

Cultural criminology arises, then, from a long tradition of cultural analysis that began in the last century with Durkheim, Parsons and Merton. With Robert Park and the environmental and spatial approaches of the early urban ethnog- raphers. From William Foote Whyte, Cressey, Tannenbaum and Taft to Albert Cohen, Walter Miller, Matza and Becker. From the study of gang culture on the streets of the USA to the analysis of working class rituals of resistance in England’s inner cities. From the Chicago School to the ‘Birmingham School’, and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1960s and 1970s. The work of Phil Cohen, Paul Willis, Stuart Hall, Paul Corrigan and Tony Jefferson; and the related cultural analyses of Dick Hebdige, Geoffrey Pearson, Steve Box, Pat Carlen, Mike Brake, Angela McRobbie, Chris Griffi n and Dick Hobbs – all underpinned and informed, of course, by the theoretical under- standings of Marx, Gramsci and later Bourdieu and Foucault.

The crucial question which remains is how does it differ from, and build upon, such work? Ferrell’s (2007) answer goes as follows:

While drawing on earlier British and American conceptualizations, cultural criminologists . . .

began to integrate into their work the sensibili- ties of postmodernism and deconstruction as well; elaborating on the ‘symbolic’ in symbolic interaction, they began to explore the looping circulation of images, the representational hall of mirrors, that increasingly defi ne the reality of crime and justice . . . In the same way that cultural criminology’s theoretical frames have developed from its cultural, critical, and interac- tionist foundations, its methods have emerged from its roots in naturalistic case study. While cultural criminology incorporates a variety of methods – among them textual, semiotic, and visual analysis – some of the more prominent work in cultural criminology has been character- ized by forms of extreme ethnography. Immers- ing themselves in illicit subcultures, attempting at times to ‘become the subject matter’.

Leaving the question of what is ‘new’ about cul- tural criminology, let us move to somewhat more substantive criticisms that have been made. The box at the end of this chapter gives a fl avour of an exchange between Keith Hayward and Graham Farrell, two criminologists from somewhat dif- ferent perspectives: broadly cultural criminology and situational crime prevention respectively. I draw attention to it here – and you should read the articles if you can – because it illustrates some of the fault lines in contemporary criminology and where, more particularly, cultural criminol- ogy lies. An even more hard-hitting critique of cultural criminology has been offered by Martin O’Brien (2005) in which he makes three particular points:

1 Cultural criminologists, he says, use the notion of ‘culture’ in inconsistent ways. As an illustration he examines Ferrell’s work on graffi ti writers, arguing that a much more nuanced and detailed account is offered of those engaged in graffi ti writing compared with the more one-dimensional treatment of those engaged in seeking to control and limit such activities. There is no analytical or methodological justifi cation for this inconsistency.

2 Linked to this, he argues that the failure to be precise about what is meant by ‘culture’ in cultural criminology leads to both theoretical and methodological inconsistency in the work. As such, therefore, there is much less theoretical clarity in cultural criminology than there is

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in, say, what used to be referred to as the ‘new criminology’ (see Chapter 13).

3 Unlike the ‘new criminology’, or indeed ‘realist criminology’ (see Chapter 14), he argues that cultural criminology has little to say about major social institutions, or indeed the state, and as a consequence its accounts of particular types of activity (dumpster diving, drug taking, graffi ti writing and so on) are more descriptive than

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they are analytical. As such, there is little in it, he argues, that would inform policy or practice in relation to deviant or criminal conduct.

Cultural criminology is undoubtedly making some- thing of a splash these days. To what extent it is ‘new’ may not really matter all that much in the end. To what extent, and in what ways, it is ‘cul- tural’, or, as O’Brien also asks, ‘criminological’, is of greater interest.

Situational crime prevention versus cultural criminology

All too infrequently in my view do criminologists take the gloves off and engage in a full-on exchange of views. I have drawn attention elsewhere in this book to two other examples (see the example of evaluation research in Chapter 37) and a further illustration can be found in an exchange between Keith Hayward and Graham Farrell in the pages of the journal Social Policy and Administration . In the initial article, ‘Situational crime prevention and its discontents’, Hayward took ratio- nal choice-infl uenced theories (RCT) to task for their inability to deal with ‘expressive crimes’. In an equally hard-hitting response, Farrell defends situational crime prevention (SCP) and related approaches against such a charge, and then goes on to offer a critique of cultural criminology. Excerpts from each appear below.

Hayward’s critique This article will argue . . . that, despite considerable suc- cess in combating certain forms of economic/acquisitive criminality (e.g. Ken Pease’s work on preventing repeat burglary victimization) much of this RCT-inspired SCP lacks refl exivity. More specifi cally it has failed to pay suffi cient attention to the array of criticisms of RCT that have emerged from disciplines such as behavioural psychology, political science and sociology that centre around the simple alternative hypothesis that ‘not all actors are economically self-interested’. . . .

Set against the mass of acquisitive/property crimes that are the stock-in-trade of RC theorists are the growing number of crimes containing a high emotional or ‘expressive’ element . . . [and] the situational/RC approach may be a less effective tool against the cha- otic, violent or so-called ‘expressive crimes’ that cause most public distress and community disharmony. . . .

[Whereas, by contrast] Cultural criminology points to the subjective experiences and highly textured socio- cultural situations behind all crimes.

Farrell’s response Expressive crime sits readily within a rational choice framework [he reviews work on joyriding, football hooliganism, graffi ti, happy slapping, and child sex abuse] . . . There is clearly much work to be done in the development of situational responses to these and many other crimes, but it does not follow that the approach and theory are not applicable . . .

Expressive crime appears to be a central concern of Hayward’s cultural criminology. Yet it does not appear to be clearly defi ned, and implies a dichotomy of expressive and instrumental, [yet] this is clearly not the case – many, perhaps most, crimes labelled ‘expressive’ contain at least signifi cant elements of instrumentality . . .

[C]ultural criminology may have a tendency to disre- gard empirical evidence . . . [but it also tends toward] the wholesale dismissal of statistical method . . . It would be a particularly narrow perspective that perceives no role for formulae or statistical policy analysis. . . .

Cultural criminology . . . using Hayward and Young’s own words, [appears] to lack clear aims. It also seems to have no transparent definition of culture, no clear understanding of the concepts of expressive crime or sensation-gathering that it claims as key subject matter, and to offer no original theory of crime pre- vention. Its proponents seem to claim this mix as an advantage. Onlookers may suspect the emperor has no clothes.

Sources: The relevant articles are:

Hayward, K. (2007) ‘Situational crime prevention and its discontents: Rational choice theory versus the “culture of now”’, Social Policy and Administration , 41, 3: 232–250.

Farrell, G. (2010) ‘Situational crime prevention and its discontents: Rational choice and harm reduction versus “cultural criminology”’, Social Policy and Administration , 44, 1: 40–66.

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Further reading

The following pieces provide a good introduction to the Chicago School and subcultural theory: Anderson, E. (1999) ‘The code of the streets’, in Cullen,

F.T. and Agnew, R. (eds) (2006) Criminological Theory Past to Present: Essential readings, 3rd edn, Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury.

Clarke, J. et al. (1976) ‘Subcultures, cultures and class’, in Newburn, T. (ed.) (2009) Key Readings in Criminology, Cullompton: Willan.

Cohen, A. (1955) ‘Delinquent boys: The culture of the gang’ , in Newburn, T. (ed.) (2009) Key Readings in Criminology, Cullompton: Willan.

Cohen, P. (1972) ‘Subcultural confl ict and working-class community’, in Newburn, T. (ed.) (2009) Key Readings in Criminology, Cullompton: Willan.

Cohen, S. (2002) Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 3rd edn, London: Routledge (esp. Introduction to the 3rd edn).

Ferrell, J. (1999) ‘Cultural criminology’, in Newburn, T. (ed.) (2009) Key Readings in Criminology, Cullompton: Willan.

Ferrell, J. (2010) ‘Cultural criminology: The loose can[n] on’, in McLaughlin, E. and Newburn, T. (eds) The Sage Handbook of Criminological Theory, London: Sage.

Ferrell, J., Hayward, K. and Young, J. (2015) Cultural Criminology, London: Sage.

Shaw, C.R. and McKay, H.K. (1942) ‘Juvenile delin- quency and urban areas’, in Newburn, T. (ed.) (2009) Key Readings in Criminology, Cullompton: Willan.

Arguably the two early classic British studies of male delinquency (they still hold up enormously well despite the years that have passed since their initial publica- tion) are: Downes, D. (1966) The Delinquent Solution, London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul. Parker, H. (1974) View from the Boys, London: David and

Charles.

On cultural criminology, there are a number of books and articles referred to above. As an introduction to the approach, the style and the method, my favourite remains Jeff Ferrell’s (2005) Empire of Scrounge (New York: New York University Press) . He’s never less than engaging, and this provocative book will make you look at the ‘rubbish’ in skips in an entirely different light. A more general overview can be found in: Ferrell, J., Hayward, K. and Young, J. (2015) Cultural Criminology, London: Sage.

Review questions

1 In what ways does cultural criminology link with earlier interactionist and subcultural theory?

2 In what ways might culture and crime link? Give examples.

3 Do rational choice and situational crime prevention have anything to offer the study of expressive crimes?

Questions for further discussion

1 In what ways might understanding the ecology of the city be helpful in understanding crime today?

2 What differences are there between differential association and subcultural theory?

3 Is the study of subcultures of any relevance in understanding women’s lives?

4 Does membership of a subculture imply rejection of mainstream social values?

5 What are the main differences between American and British subcultural theory?

6 What is cultural about cultural criminology?

Websites

Some of the history of the Chicago Area Project as well as up-to-date information about its operation can be found at: www.chicagoareaproject.org

There is material on the history of the Chicago Univer- sity Sociology Department at: http://sociology.uchicago. edu/department/history.shtml

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For those interested in cultural criminology there is quite a lot of material on the University of Kent website: http:// blogs.kent.ac.uk/culturalcriminology/

There is a blog to go with Jeff Ferrell’s Empire of Scrounge – although it’s a little of date, it’s worth a quick look: http:// empireofscrounge.blogspot.com/

Carnivalesque fi lms (http://carnivalesquefi lms.com) describe themselves as producing ‘stories with the raw

sensibilities of aesthetics, experience, and sound while framing the variations in between fi ction and nonfi c- tion’ and, arguably, therefore, offer a lot of material that would help you make sense of what a visual criminology might be/consists of.

Crime, Media, Culture is the journal that most usually carries material from a cultural criminology perspective: http://cmc.sagepub.com