Reading assignments of this week (R. Merton’s Social Structure and Anomie; A. Cohen’s The Culture of the Gang; and R. Cloward
and L. E. Ohlin’s Delinquency and
Opportunity) confirmed my sensation that we can always revisit Durkheim, Weber
and Marx[1],
and this visit can indeed be fruitful. It is quite evident the impact of
Durkheim in Merton’s, Cohen’s and Cloward and Ohlin’s works, however when
digging in Cohen’s and Cloward and Ohlin’s approaches, I argue that the
influence of classic works such as the ‘Protestant Ethic’ and the ‘Theory of Alienation’
from Weber and Marx respectively, allow for a more complete understanding of
what delinquency is and how is formed. Nonetheless, each of these three
readings in their own merit contributes to sociologically explain why certain social
groups deviate from the legal apparatus of a given society.[2]
Firstly, Merton’s conceptualization of anomie
expands Durkheim’s in at least two senses: i) it defines more clearly how a
given social actor is bounded by cultural and structural conditions, and
therefore his/her actions can be understood in reference to goals and means and
the social structure—which seems to be social class. Specifically, by analytically
differentiating these two concepts, it is possible to observe how social
actions can be coupled or decoupled. Processes of decoupling can be understood
as deviant or delinquent because they depart from norms or goals, which have
the strongest degree of validity in a given society. ii) Merton’s approach
helps to explain potential mechanisms at the individual level, which in
Durkheim are not clearly unpacked. Durkheim observes that social crisis (either
at the macro or at micro level) can contribute to deviant behaviours, but he
does not offer potential mechanisms that link these two characteristics more
clearly. When comparing his work to Durkheim’s, the typology of individual
adaptation of five modes of adaptation (p.140) can be regarded as his most
resonant contribution. Specifically, because the modes of adaptation describe
different decoupling processes at the individual level, and thus allow observing
different types of deviant acts, which were not foreseen by Durkheim.
Secondly, Cohen’s work takes a very important
element from Weber in order to understand delinquency. Although this is neither
central nor explicit, the use of the ‘Protestant Ethic’, I argue, echoes the
German sociologist in at least two wits. Firstly, by theoretically assuming
that a given cultural set of values embedded in a society affects the formation
of social actions, Cohen establishes the weight of culture in the formation of
delinquent acts. Secondly, the ‘Protestant Ethic’ which is predominant in
middle class families of United States broadly defines what steps need to be
followed in order to be successful. It is important to highlight that this
measurement of success, which can be for instance the so-called American dream,
highly correlates with the idea of achievement in the ‘Protestant Ethic’. Thus,
this ethic provides individuals with both means and goals. Why is it important
to understand this relationship between Weber and Cohen? Because discipline, as
a variable which distinguishes how children are socialized, ultimately shapes
the skills needed to reach the goals regarded as legitimate. Although Cohen starts
his analysis by analytically understanding how social class affects children’s
behaviour, I argue that his conceptualization ultimately attenuates its importance,
because a set of cultural values, which seem to be highly associated with the
class position of a given child, is what explains delinquent acts. Like
Durkheim and Merton, Cohen argues that the problem of individual adjustment is the
main category which identifies deviant actions. Cohen states, specifically,
that the lower the class location of a given child’s family, school, and street
(p.155) the higher the conditions of becoming delinquent or performing
delinquently. Under this social environment children learn values and practices
which are not ultimately effective for reaching awards prized by those social
groups and institutions which dominate the mainstream. This dissociation
creates conditions whereby the children either adopt middle-class standards or
repudiate them altogether. For Cohen the common
core of motivation i.e. ‘status discontent’ is the first step of performing
delinquent acts in working-class’ males. The mechanism ‘repudiation-formation’
allows individuals to perform delinquently and by accessing to groups where he
can be valued, he is likely to reduce his problem of adjustment. This in turn
strengthens the delinquent sub-culture.
While Cloward and Ohlin review elements of the
former authors in order to explain delinquent acts, they implicitly use one
Marxist concept as well, i.e. ‘alienation’. For Marx this concept is associated
to workers and for Cloward and Ohlin to youth who can potentially become
delinquents. In Marx this process implies that workers detached from four
elements: the product they produce; their own working; from themselves; and
from other workers, and therefore they lose connection with the most essential
human process i.e. work. Cloward and Ohlin, on the other hand, point out that
alienation is the “process of withdrawal of attributions of legitimacy from
established social norms” (p.110), and therefore these individuals can easily
detach from those values which society has declared to be the appropriated ones.
In both cases the social system is understood as the force which drags
individuals into states of alienation.
Cloward and Ohlin, like Durkheim, Merton and Cohen,
also understand that a dislocation between the social system and the individual
is likely to produce deviant acts. However, in order to delineate their own
theory of delinquency they depart from Merton and Cohen. Firstly, unlike
Merton, they state that every person occupies a position in the distribution of
both legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures; these are the differential
opportunity structures (p.150). By developing this approach it is possible to
ask “how the relative availability of illegitimate opportunities affects the
resolution of adjustment problems leading to deviant behaviour” (p.151). In
other words, when every person faces adjustment problems they have access to
different sources whose differentiated weights are likely to influence the
direction of their actions. These authors in some measure reject Cohen’s
theoretical explanation of deviance, which identifies the problem of adjustment
of lower-class youth with the middle-class values, because they argue that
lower-class youth, while devaluing lower-class style of life and the
materialistic success–goals of the middle class, is also oriented towards a
definition of success that stresses a change in their economic position. Lastly,
Cloward and Ohlin are the only authors who explicitly tackle the question of
how collective behaviour, in the realm of delinquency, takes place. Specifically,
when individuals associate the failures to the functioning of the system, rather
than to themselves, they are likely to engage in collective adaptations
(p.125). By understanding this process, their theory can also be useful to
social movements because they unpack the conditions which trigger collective
solutions to systemic problems.
[1] As Professor Carmichael
mentioned the revisiting can go to classics such as Hobbes or even to ancient
Greek philosophers, however it seemed to me that the links of these readings with Durkheim, Weber and Marx were clearer.
[2] I am explicitly using the
concept of legal apparatus, instead of legitimate body of practices, because
deviant acts that supposed to be classified as delinquent, ultimately need to affect
norms which are acknowledged in legal codes. In making this distinction I
follow the Philosophy of Law ‘Legal positivism’ defended by Hans Kelsen,
whereby a ‘value’ is different from a legal ‘norm’, because the former is
assessed by moral standards, whereas the latter by legal practices.
