MERTON’S STRAIN THEORY
Societies have acceptable goals which one has to achieve to be termed as successful. However, how individuals use to achieve societal goals do not receive much attention. Most of the times, there is a lot of strain by individuals and individuals find themselves going too far to achieve goals set out by society. Robert King Merton; an American sociologist, comes up with a theory to try to explain the way society may put pressure on individuals in a bid to achieve specific goals. The pressure put on individuals seems to overlook essential details concerning the means used. A link exists between crime occurrence and the attempt to achieve societal goals since individuals resort to unhealthy adaptation after lacking the means of achieving the set goals. In creating a sense in the relationship between unemployment and crime, the Merton theory explains innovation and ‘retreatism’ as outcomes of the strain imposed by society on individuals.
Innovation, as spelled out in Merton’s theory, happens when an individual uses socially unacceptable means to achieve goals. The consequences for deviating from the societal norms are much less as compared to the benefits enjoyed (Antonaccio, Smith, & Gostjev, 2015, p.108). An individual may, for example, choose to engage in drug trafficking or other forms of crime to gain wealth since society places respect to individuals depending on their level of wealth. “In societies such as our own, then, the pressure of prestige-bearing success tends to eliminate the effective social constraint over means employed to this end…”Merton 681. The socially acceptable wealth creation is through employment, but when pressure is much on an individual who is not employed, criminal activities may appear to be a shortcut to gaining the prestige respected by society.
Similarly, an individual may decide to reject the socially acceptable ways of achieving goals and replacing them with shortcut means. (Merton, 1938, p. 680) “[Lack of adequate resources] suggests that other phases of the social structure besides the extreme emphasis on pecuniary success must be considered if we are to understand the social sources of antisocial behavior.” Individuals decide to choose what they deserve irrespective of the acceptability in society (Agnew, 2017, p.144). The continuous exposure to unnecessary pressure forces individuals to stop caring about the norms of the society and instead replaces the means of achieving goals with individual interests. An individual, for example, will not strain to look for employment which does not seem promising when there exists an opportunity to engage in prostitution and get wealth faster.
According to Merton’s strain theory, it makes sense to associate crime activities to unemployment. The society puts a lot of pressure on individuals to achieve certain goals without caring about the means used to achieve the goals, and this strain leads individuals into deviating from the acceptable societal norms. Some individuals decide to engage in socially unacceptable methods to achieve the societal goals whereas, for others, the means to achieving goals should not be set by the society but should be replaced by the ones acceptable to an individual. The society’s definition of prestige overlooks the details of the means employed to achieve glory, and the consequences of deviation are less severe than the weight put on the resulting success.