Anomie and Strain Theories

Anomie and Strain Theories

The term anomie began to appear in social theories from the works of French theorist Emile Durkheim. It started as a concept that explains the abnormal division of labor. It has become a significant idea in explaining the social consequences of huge, heterogeneous, and urban societies such as the United States. According to Durkheim, self-interest, limitless ambitions, and an insatiable desire for success directs the behavior of human. Therefore, it is essential to constrain human behavior to guarantee healthy coexistence in society. As a result, regulation is necessary to create clarity, security, and order in society. Therefore, for Durkheim, anomie means the breakdown of social order as well as an individual and collective loss

According to Deflem (2015), anomie is a Greek word meaning lack of the law.

Durkheim’s ideas have a significant influence on Robert Merton and strain theory and modern theories about punishment for criminal activities. Merton introduced the anomie theory to the American population for the study of crime and deviance.

Therefore, the initial ideas about anomie were a departure from the early belief that biology was responsible for the criminal behavior of some individuals and not others. Many people believe that Robert Merton’s 1938 article on the subject is the most read piece of literature on the issue. According to Robert Merton, crime was a product of the social order and structure. Therefore, he defines anomie as the total breakdown of social norms (the complete loss of rules).

According to Robert Merton, Anomie is divisible into several categories. The main ones are acceptable goals that a person can actualize them using socially appropriate tools. It is a concept that is divisible into purposes and the means to achieve them that becomes society’s structure. The theory suggests that deviance takes place when the ambitions of a personal conflict with the demands of the community. It also argues that anomic conditions can change as a society sophisticate. According to Robert Merton, there are five methods that people use when dealing with non-equal access to legitimate means to accomplish them. The common standards are the use of conformity, rituals, retreats, innovation, and rebellion.

The American criminologist Albert Cohen discussed the issue of subculture to explain delinquent behavior. After learning about Robert K. Merton’s social structure and Edwin H. Sutherland, Cohen brought them together by studying the culture of gangs in the United States. In his opinion, groups have specific subcultures that they use to bind communities together. Moreover, people with similar social experiences tend to come with the same ideas. He maintained that children from specific backgrounds lack conventional abilities to achieve significant social and economic goals. Therefore, they become delinquent in the hope that they can make the elusive success. Gang members commit more crime to compensate for the lack of conventional chances to attain social status. They expect to gain social accolades by perfecting their skills in being delinquent.

General Strain Theory

General Strain Theoy was developed by Robert Agnew to address the weaknesses of previous theories. It explains that crime is the result of failures to achieve monetary successes or some valued goals through legitimate means. The offender views crime as the only alternative to accomplish regular triumphs in society without using traditional ways. It is explained through types of strains. First, it is a failure to achieve positively valued goals. Secondly, it is the removal of the positively valued stimuli from an individual, and finally, it is the strain of being comfortable in representing the negative stimuli.

The theory relies on the empirical evidence developed by Merton, Cohen, and Cloward and Ohlin. The approach focuses on the individual and their social environment. It follows from the same trend as the social control and differential association theory. All these theories rely on the sociology to discuss the social relationships that cause and motivation to delinquency. The approach insists that one of the issues that cause delinquency among youths that continue into adulthood. In most cases, the strain theory focuses on the relationship where a section of society treats a person in a manner that prevents them from achieving essential life goals. Today, the idea is used in a broader sense to include relations that present the individual with negative stimuli. This is a significant departure from the social control theory that focuses on the absence of essential relationships with institutions and critical people in the lives of a person.

Delinquency is common when adolescents are not attached to parents, schools, and other critical institutions. In most cases, social theories argue that parents and others fail to monitor and effectively sanction deviance. At the same time, an adolescent’s actual or anticipated investment in traditional society is minimal. The adolescent has not internalized conventional beliefs. Therefore, a social learning theory differs from strain and control theory because it focuses on positive relationships with deviant others. In most cases, delinquency results from association with others who differentially reinforce the adolescents’ delinquency model delinquent behavior. Finally, they transmit delinquent values.

Strain theories suggest that adolescents become delinquent because of negative affective states such as anger and related emotions. In most cases, these feelings develop because of negative relationships at home and in the immediate environment. The negative states pressurize adolescents to use illegitimate channels to achieve essential lifetime goals. They also manage the issues that the challenges that they face at home by using illicit drugs. Control theory insists that children decide to participate in crime independent of any external pressure. It asserts that the absence of essential relationships in the lives of an adolescent frees them to engage in criminal activities. In the differential association theory, adolescents’ commit delinquent acts because of group pressure that makes view delinquency behavior as something desirable under particular circumstances.

Types of Strains

A negative relationship is one of the leading examples of strain that exists in society. The conventional approach entails focusing on the way sections of society treat an individual contrary to the expectation of the person and the community. The classic strain theories advanced by Merton in 1938, A. Cohen (1955), and Cloward and Ohlin (1960) focus on the relations that prevent a person from achieving their life goals. A lot of focus goes into considering the challenges that the lower-income earners experience towards achieving economic successes. Although most versions of the strain theory talk about economic empowerment and lack of it as the primary source of delinquent behavior, they also not that youths are concerned with their present circumstances. Children from all backgrounds aspire to get good grades in school, dress in a manner that makes them popular with members of the opposite sex as well as performing well in co-curricular activities.

The negative relationships that a person can face in their lives, causing them to be delinquent is divisible into three categories. First, it entails a person preventing others from achieving the goals they value the most. Secondly, they may threaten to remove the positive in possession of the individual and finally present the person with negative stimuli that are contrary to their vision about life.

The strain may be the disjunction between aspirations and expectations. For example, most strain theories insist that societies encourage people to pursue some ideal goals. However, children from low-income households do not have the financial power to achieve the results they desire. At the same time, society pressurizes them to meet the same standards as their contemporaries from wealthy families. Since they cannot achieve these results using conventional means, the design to use delinquent means to achieve similar results like their counterparts from wealthy families.

Critics of classic strain theories argue that they concentrate on the monetary aspect as a measure of success and ignore many others. For example, they do not consider the presence of delinquencies in middle-income families or explain why youths neglect other ambitions apart from the opportunity to generate material wealth. They also ignore other barriers to succeeding alone from the social status of a person. Finally, they do not explain why it is only a small section of the society that becomes delinquent, yet a large population experiences a lot of difficulties in their lives. Therefore, numerous theorists have tried to revise these theories to incorporate a broader understanding of delinquency as a consequence of strains. One of the leading trends understands youth subcultures that insist on achieving some immediate goals.

The youth subculture theory narrative argues broader issues apart from social strains to explain the need for immediate gratification. Apart from social status, it incorporates intelligence, athletic ability of a person, personality traits, and physical attractiveness. The majority of youths lack these skills during adolescence, and when they are not lucky to have them, they use alternative strategies to thrive in a competitive environment. It goes further to insist that strain comes into existence when a person is unable to achieve ideals that established in the subculture where they are members.

Although the three primary strains are distinct, they also overlap and increase the chance of a person experiencing one or numerous negative emotions. Emotions include depression, fear, disappointment, and anger. However, violence remains one of the most critical emotional reactions for the general strain theory. In most cases, an angry person blames their adversity on others and is a crucial emotion that increases a person’s level of injury. In most cases, it creates a desire for revenge by energizing them for action. It lowers the inhibition to commit crimes because they think they can justify their behaviors. Therefore, anger affects a person in several ways that are conducive to the development of delinquent behavior.

Anger occupies a special place in the general strain theory because it creates the environment for the emergence of delinquent behavior. However, delinquency may occur because of other negative emotions such as despair, among others. In most cases, the experience of negative emotions in the life of an individual creates the desire to correct the mistakes, and one of the possible solutions is to engage in delinquent behavior. It may be the best alternative in protecting positive stimuli and eliminating its negative sister. It may also be an essential tool in achieving socially valued goals.