Presentation

W&M Chapter 7: Subculture Theories

1. Introduction a. Criminological theories of the 1950s/60s focused on juvenile delinquency. Many

of the theorists set out to explain what they believed to be the most common form of delinquency: gangs.

i. Culture studies at the Chicago School began to be referred to using the new sociological term “subcultures.”

ii. Sociologists and criminologists combined these topics and began studying gang delinquency and theorizing about delinquent subcultures.

iii. The works of the Chicago School were combined with Sutherland and Anomie.

2. The heritage of the theories a. The social heritage

i. 1950s was a prosperous time in the U.S. and lead to a rise in consumerism. We also see a rise in the middle class, and the middle class is seen as “normal.”

ii. Education and the right to education was also emphasized, and college enrollment expanded significantly.

iii. Urbanization creates deteriorated center cities and the first suburbs become popular.

1. The problems of the city are now seen as lower-class issues that middle America was above – the middle class was seen as superior to the lower class.

2. Poverty is seen as an individual level problem and these people were seen as responsible for their own predicaments (i.e., did not work hard enough).

b. The intellectual heritage i. Both the Chicago School and the Mertonian concept of anomie.

ii. Solomon Korbin – found strong ties between political hierarchy in a neighborhood and organized crime.

1. Integrated community – the degree of social control present within a community is dependent on how well the criminal element is organized as well as on the character of it’s relationship with the community’s official leadership. A community that is organized and integrated has greater social control over the behavior of juveniles than a community where integration is lacking. Control exists because organized crime members reside in the community with their families. Thus, they have an interest in controlling and preventing violence in the community. Because they have power and participate in the political arena, organized crime is able to use that political power to have the police keep the streets in their neighborhood safe.

3. Cohen’s subculture of delinquency

a. Cohen’s The Culture of the Gang (1955) was the first attempt at solving the problem of how a delinquent subculture could begin.

b. Cohen found that delinquent behavior was most often found among lower-class males and that gang delinquency was the most common form.

i. Cohen determined that gang subcultures are characterized by behavior that is nonutilitarian, malicious, and negativistic. So, there was no rationale for stealing or doing other crime other than taking a delight in the discomfort of others/knowingly violating middle class values.

1. Research characterized gangs as engaged in various forms of delinquent acts (versatility), interested mainly in the present (short-run hedonism) as opposed to the future, and hostile to outsiders (group autonomy). These factors had to be explained by a theory of delinquent subculture.

c. Cohen believed that all children (all individuals really) seek social status. However, not all children can compete equally for social status.

i. Because of lower-class children’s position in the social structure, they tend to lack both material and symbolic advantages. This becomes most obvious in competitions with children from the middle class.

1. First major status problem facing lower-class children are in the school system. Lower-class children have to compete with middle class children, but they are also evaluated using middle class standards that are different than what they are exposed to in the places in which they live/exist (i.e., schools and teachers use these middle class standards and expect others to be aware/abide by them).

a. Standards include sharing, delaying gratification, setting long-range goals, and respecting other’s property. All of these things intrinsically relate to being brought up with property of one’s own and to having parents who know that hard work now pays off in the future. None of these standards are necessarily obvious or self-evident to lower- class parents and are not transmitted to lower-class children.

i. In this competitive framework, lower-class children lose ground in the search for status, among both other students and teachers. Those who most strongly feel this suffer status-frustration. Cohen speculated a hostile reaction to middle-class values may occur.

d. Because many lower-class children are trapped in this status-frustration, various adaptations to the middle class take place.

i. For some, adjustments to the middle-class standard results in a collective solution to the problem of status. That is, status is achieved in a new way outside of middle class standards – new norms and criteria for achieving

status is created – a new cultural form, a delinquent subculture is created.

1. It is this delinquent subculture that provides the nonutilitarian, malicious, and negativistic character of gang delinquency. Abandoning and inverting the middle-class value system, gang members can achieve status simply by doing those things they do well, such as showing toughness or standing up for themselves. As long as the need for status exists, the delinquent subculture will exist as an available solution for lower-class, male youths.

4. Classification of the theory a. Usually referred to as a strain or structural theory – the source of the delinquent

subculture is strain and the theory focuses on the process by which the subculture is created.

b. Bridging theory – Cohen borrows from strain theory an explanation of social structure and proceeds to describe how delinquent subcultures come about.

c. Consensus – society emphasizes reaching goals in the accepted middle-class way. It is only after frustration develops from an inability to reach status goals that lower class children find a need for alternative means.

d. Sociological positivism e. Major points of the theory

i. Members of society share a common value system that emphasizes certain values over others (in the U.S., the middle-class).

ii. Most of these common values stress goals that result in the gaining of status; therefore, status itself becomes a generally approved goal.

iii. Opportunities to reach these goals are more often available to the middle class than to the lower class.

iv. Social institution, especially schools, reflect middle-class value goals and use them to evaluate those who come in contact with the institution.

v. Because of their limited opportunities, lower-class youth are often evaluated unfavorably by the school system, leading to frustration in their pursuit of status.

vi. Unable to gain status through the use of conventional school opportunities (grades, social standing), lower-class youths rebel (reaction-formation) against middle-class values while still keeping status as a goal.

vii. Over a period of time, lower-class youths collectively create a new value system in opposition to middle-class values. The standards of this new value system are mostly anticonventional and afford the youths opportunities for gaining status.

viii. This “delinquent solution” is passed on through the transmission of values from youth to youth and generation to generation, fostering an ongoing delinquent subculture that provides status for behavior that is negativistic, malicious, and nonutilitarian.

5. Cloward and Ohlin’s Differential Opportunity Theory

a. Both legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures exist and can be used to achieve cultural goals.

i. One’s position in society dictates the access that they have to either legitimate or illegitimate avenues for success (i.e., people who occupy different social positions and statuses have different access to both normative and deviant ways of achieving culturally agreed upon goals).

ii. Cloward and Ohlin argue that the form of delinquent subculture depends on the degree of integration present in the community.

1. In a community without a stable criminal structure, lower-class juveniles would have no greater opportunity to success in life through criminal avenues than they would through conventional means. There would be no criminal “business” to join and to work one’s way up through the ranks, no way to learn properly a criminal trade and no way to become a “professional.”

iii. Cloward and Ohlin suggest that there would be three ideal types of delinquent gang subcultures: criminal, conflict, and retreatist.

1. When communities are fully integrated, gangs act almost as an apprenticeships group for the adult, organized criminal concerns. In this criminal subculture, the primary focus would be on profit- making activities, and violence would be minimal. These subcultural gangs would practice the criminal “trades” under the loose supervision of organized crime.

2. Criminal gangs exist where there is an integration of ages as well as legitimate and illegitimate groups. Young juveniles learn by watching and associating with older youths, who in turn learn from the adults around them.

3. A nonintegrated community would not only lack a well-organized and ongoing illegitimate structure but, according to Korbin, also exercise very weak community control over juveniles. Thus, any gang subculture that would develop in one of these communities would exhibit unrestrained behavior. Primary focus would be on gaining “respect.” Violence, property damage, and unpredictable behavior would become the hallmarks of such gangs. This would be the conflict subculture – these gangs would cause trouble equally for the community’s adult criminal element as well as for law-abiding citizens.

a. A socially disorganized community tends to create a gang subculture that is equally disorganized.

4. In both integrated and nonintegrated communities, there are juveniles who have access to neither opportunity structures. These become retreatist subcultures – their primary focus is on drugs and their gang related activities are designed to bring them money for their own drug use.

a. Double failures are juveniles who cannot achieve sufficient success in either the legitimate or illegitimate world.

i. Two possibilities for their retreat from the other two types of subcultures

1. First, they may simply have internalized prohibitions against violence or other criminal activity.

2. Second, they may have failed to achieve status (or other forms of success) in a criminal or conflict gang.

ii. Not all double failures become drug users, but they are more susceptible than others.

5. In sum, differential opportunity theory extends the anomie theory of Merton and adds the community-based observations of the Chicago School. It also suggests that subcultural patterns determine the form of delinquent behavior.

a. Differential opportunity theory, then, assumes strain in the lower class as a given and attempts to explain the existence of various forms of delinquency as adaptations to strain, based on the stability of the community and the availability of adult role models. Because of this, the theory’s major focus is on the learning mechanisms available to produce the ongoing forms of delinquent subculture.

b. Classification of the theory i. Strain theory. Has elements of both structure and process but leans more

toward structure. ii. Bridging theory, but also macro

iii. Both positivistic and consensus oriented – explains how behavior is developed and transmitted and also assumes there is a primary emphasis on reaching culturally shared goals.

c. Major points of the theory i. Members of society share a common set of values that emphasize the

desirability of certain life goals, especially that of success. ii. There are standard avenues (both legitimate and illegitimate) for

achieving these goals. iii. These two general avenues (opportunity structured) are not equally

available to all groups and classes of a society. iv. Members of the middle and upper classes have primary access to the

legitimate opportunity structure (business, politics), while members of the lower class have primary access to the illegitimate opportunity structure (organized crime).

v. In any urban, lower-class area, the degree of integration of these two opportunity structures determines the social organization of the

community. The less the integration, the more the community is disorganized.

vi. Communities with well-organized and integrated illegal opportunity structures provide learning environments for organized criminal behavior. In such communities, the male delinquent subculture takes on either of two ideal forms that are dependent on the degree of access to the illegitimate structure:

1. When an opportunity to participate successfully in the illegitimate structure is available to young males, the subcultural gang type most commonly found will be a criminal gang. This form of gang serves as a training ground for the form of illegitimate activity found in the community.

2. When opportunities for joining the illegitimate structure are limited as are those for joining the legitimate structure, the most common form of subcultural gang will be a retreatist gang. Here the gang members are basically withdrawn from the community (they are “double failures”), and they solve their problem of access to drugs.

vii. Disorganized communities exert weak social controls and create disorganized gang subcultures. When young males are deprived of both legitimate and criminal opportunities, the common form of gang subculture will be a conflict gang. Such gangs engage in violence and destructive acts against both opportunity structures.

6. Other subculture theories a. Miller’s lower-class focal concerns

i. Based on ethnographic work ii. Miller concluded that middle class values were less important to gang

delinquency than Cohen and others thought. Miller stressed differences in social-class lifestyles to a greater degree than did the consensus model of Cohen and of Cloward and Ohlin.

iii. Miller saw a society composed of different social groups or classes, each with a subculture resembling those of other groups in some respects and differing in others

iv. Focal concerns are the things important to subcultures and require constant attention and care. Behavior related to focal concerns, such as they “trouble” concern in lower-class subculture, can be either valued or disvalued, depending on the situation and the people involved.

v. The lower class have distinctive features that differ significantly from those of the middle and upper classes

1. The legal system and norms in the U.S. adhere more to middle and upper class standards of behavior.

2. Lower class subcultures provide models appropriate for male and female behavior.

3. Criminal behavior in lower-class communities, as in other communities, approximates the general characteristics of noncriminal behavior.

vi. There are focal concerns that underlie and motivate common forms of behavior in the lower class.

1. Most lower-calls crime and delinquency result primarily from efforts to conform to lower-class subcultural standards rather than a deliberate flouting of middle-class standards.

2. Miller described six focal concerns characterizing the subcultures of low-skilled laboring populations in the United States: trouble, toughness, smartness, excitement, fate, and autonomy.

a. Trouble represents a commitment to law violating behavior or “being a problem” to other people.

b. Toughness is Machismo and being brave, fearless, and daring.

c. Characteristics of smartness include being cunning, living by one’s wits, and deceiving and conning others.

d. Excitement means living for thrills, doing dangerous things, and taking risks.

e. Fortune and luck are part of the focal concern of fate. f. Autonomy signifies independence – not having to rely on

others as well as rejecting authority. 3. These concerns play a role in the commissions of activities that

may be legal or illegal, depending on the circumstances. In lower- class subcultures, incentives for engaging in crime are generally stronger, and incentives for avoiding crime are weaker than in the other classes.

4. From miller’s viewpoints, then, the behavior of lower-class gang members is consistent with the special set of concerns, valued qualities, and life goals characteristic of many American lower- class communities.

b. Major points of the theory i. Society is composed of different social classes whose lifestyles or

subcultures have both common and differing features. ii. The subcultures of the lower, middle, and upper classes differ in

significant respects from one another. iii. Because the dominant culture is the middle class, the existence of

different values often brings the lower class into conflict with the dominant culture.

iv. Lower-class values serve to create young male behaviors that are delinquent by middle class standards but are normal and useful in lower class life.

v. Lower-class subcultures place special emphasis on a set of issues or “focal concerns” that influence customary behavior. These include trouble, toughness, smartness, excitement, fate, and autonomy.

vi. Many lower-class males are raised in fatherless homes. Learning behavior and attitudes appropriate to adult male roles thus poses special problems.

vii. Youth ganga provide a context for learning important elements of adult male roles for many lower-class youth. Gangs also provide psychological benefits such as a sense of belonging, opportunities for gaining prestige, and enhanced self-esteem.

viii. Gang crime that seriously victimizes the larger community is in part a by- product of efforts by lower-class youth to attain goals valued within their subcultural milieu.

7. Wolfgang and Ferracuti’s Subculture of Violence a. Members of a subculture hold values different from those of the central society.

Those in the subculture of violence learn a willingness to resort to violence and share a favorable attitude towards the use of violence. This attitude, though possible to hold at any age, is most common in groups ranging from late adolescence to middle age. Persons who commit violent crimes buts are not identified by any link to a subculture are distinctly more pathological and display more guilt and anxiety about their behavior than do members of the subculture.

8. Summary a. Cohen – question of how subculture could develop b. Cloward and Ohlin – the attempt to explain the form a subculture might take.

i. Both Cohen and Cloward and Ohlin assume Merton is correct – certain groups of people were disadvantaged in the great chase for success, and the problem was to explain resulting deviant behavior.

c. Subculture is a culture by itself, with its own lifestyles, values, and concerns – For Miller there was no need to use strain to explain the creation of a set of values in opposition to the conventional ones.

d. Wolfgang and Ferracuti were more interested in outlining what subcultures provide to their members. They assumed subcultures provide definitions for behavior that, once learned, result in their members’ greater willingness to use violence.