Durkheim Anomie

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Durkheim Anomie

• Anomie
• normlessness, lack of normative regulation
• failure of society to regulate human needs and
  actions
• Micro-level
• Anomie a social-psychological state of
  individuals within a society
• Macro-level
• Anomie a feature of a society

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Durkheim Social solidarity

• Integration social cohesion individuals bound
  to each other
• Regulation social constraint individuals
  bound to norms
• Collective conscience shared consensus of
  beliefs and values

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Pre-industrial vs. Industrial

• Differentiated, dependent social groups
• Diversity of functions
• Forced, highly differentiated division of labor
  (due to stratified class system)
• Organic solidarity
• Diminished collective conscience
• Weakened integration and regulation
• Greater individualism
• Restitutive law

• Isolated, self-sufficient groups
• Uniformity of circumstances
• Spontaneous and minimal division of labor (based
  on merit)
• Mechanical solidarity
• Strong collective conscience
• Strong integration and regulation
• Subordination of individual to the group
• Repressive law

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Durkheim - human nature

• Insatiability
• Humans incapable of regulating aspirations
• Reflection
• Human capacity to always imagine more or better

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Durkheim social control

• Must be external to the individual
• Society provides moral force superior to the
  individual
• Social control attachment to society through
  societal institutions
• roles and role obligations

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Durkheim Suicide

• Egoistic suicide weakening of bonds between
  individuals and society
• Excessive individualism
• Protestants the unmarried the childless
• Anomic suicide - sudden crises (/-), abrupt
  changes in economic or familial life
• Sudden poverty or wealth
• Divorce death of spouse

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Durkheim Crime

• Crime
• Acts that offend the collective conscience
• Acts subject to prescribed punishment
• Criminal law is the strongest form of pressure
  against diversity
• Function of the criminal law/punishment
• Maintain social solidarity
• Reaffirm values of the collective conscience

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Durkheim Crime

• Crime is normal
• A social fact
• Occurs in all societies
• Crime is inevitable
• Inevitable diversity of behavior
• Criminal law changes over time
• Pressure for conformity always some form of
  criminal sanction
• Crime is useful
• Maintains social solidarity
• Necessary for evolution of morality

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Volume of crime

• Durkheim volume of crime tends to increase
• As societies evolve from lower to higher phases
• With rapid social change
• With modernization breakdown of social norms
• Alternatively
• Increases in property crime
• Increased economic inequality
• Increased opportunities to commit crime
• Decreases in violent crime
• Increased sensitization to violence
• Increased internal/external controls on aggression

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Shaw McKay Chicago School context

• Rapid change urbanization, industrialization,
  immigration
• Political battle over restricting immigration
• Progressive reform spirit
• Rejection of Social Darwinism and biological
  determinism
• city was the source of evil

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Concentric zone model(Park Burgess)

• Urban ecology humans competing for space
• City expands radially from CBD
• Spontaneous differentiation of space, population
  and function - zones
• Central Business District (CBD)
• Zone of Transition
• Zone of Workingmens homes
• Residential Zone
• Commuter Zone
• Natural areas small, homogeneous enclaves

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Shaw McKay 1942

• What is the spatial distribution of delinquency
  in the city?
• What are the social characteristics associated
  with high delinquency areas?
• Combined methods urban mapping social
  anthropology fieldwork
• Statistics
• Observation
• Interviews

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Shaw McKay - findings

• Delinquency was highest directly next to the CBD
  steadily declined toward outer areas the lowest
  rate was farthest from the CBD
• distribution was fairly consistent over a 40-year
  period
• Delinquency rates remianed high in the Zone of
  Transition regardless of what immigrant group
  lived there
• Delinquency rate for any group was the same as
  the rate for the overall area
• foreign or native, recent or older immigrant,
  black or white
• Delinquency rates for immigrant children declined
  as they moved out to better areas

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Shaw McKay - findings

• High delinquency rates were correlated with
• Physical deterioration economic segregation
  high population turnover high IMR high rates of
  mental illness TB illiteracy non-intact
  families adult crime
• These characteristics highest at the Zone of
  Transition and declined steadily outward
• Life history data
• Bonds between older and younger unsupervised play
  groups poor relationships with parents parental
  approval of crime

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Social disorganization

• Breakdown of community informal social control
• No social cohesion, solidarity, cooperation,
  community spirit, inability to achieve shared
  values
• Ineffectiveness of conventional institutions
• families, schools, churches, clubs
• Cultural transmission of delinquent values and
  pressures
• Absence of control in families

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Social disorganization delinquency

• Lack of control and supervision of children by
  neighborhood institutions and especially by
  parents
• Formation of unsupervised play groups -
  opportunities for delinquency
• Transmission of delinquent norms and values
• Established delinquent subcultures belonging to
  the area

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Shaw McKay Chicago Area Projects

• Reform optimism mobilize communities
• Reduce unemployment
• Improve housing
• Improve schools
• Strengthen supervision recreation programs
• Improve supervision of youth gangs and adult
  offenders cooperation among local residents,
  schools, police, courts
• Difficult to measure effect on delinquency

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Shaw McKay - evaluation

• Does not account for origin of the criminal
  culture
• Less able to account for crimes of passion acts
  not attached to deviant norms/values
• Attention to understanding crime in its social
  context
• Attention to notion of weakening of controls
• Attention to group nature of delinquency

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Shaw McKay time space

• Concentric Zone Model
• Product of its time and place
• American cities in a particular time
• Post WWII urban ecology
• Urban renewal
• Suburbanization
• Urban deindustrialization
• Gentrification

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Community informal social controlSampson
Groves 1989

• Community supervision of teenage peer groups
• Percentage of residents reporting that disorderly
  teenage peer groups were a very common
  neighborhood problem
• Local friendship networks
• Average number of friends living within a
  fifteen-minute walk of the respondents homes
• Rate of participation in community organizations
• Percentage of residents who had participated in
  meetings the week before the interview

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Sampson Groves findings, conclusion

• Communities characterized by weak friendship
  networks, unsupervised teenage peer groups, and
  low organizational participation, had
  disproportionately high crime victimization rates
• The most significant effect - community
  supervision of teenage peer groups
• Variations in community social disorganization
  mediated the effects of community structural
  characteristics (low SES, residential mobility,
  ethnic heterogeneity and family disruption)

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Sampson - Collective Efficacy 1997

• Combined methods observation (SSO), community
  survey, key interviews, various statistics
• Collective Efficacy
• Shared expectations for social control
• Social cohesion trust
• Organizations voluntary organizations
• Social ties/networks
• Measures of poverty/disadv. immigrant
  concentration residential stability pop.
  density ratio of adults to children
• Victimization survey - violence, burglary, theft
• Police recorded incidents homicide, robbery,
  burglary

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Sampson... Collective Efficacy

• Collective efficacy partially mediated the
  effects of neighborhood concentrated
  disadvantage, immigrant concentration, and
  residential stability on violence
• reduced the size and/or significance of effects
  of negative community characteristics

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Sampson... Collective Efficacy

• Working trust, collective responsibility
• Belong to local organizations aimed at bettering
  the community
• Work together on common neighborhood-wide issues
• Norms of action
• Get along somewhat with one another
• vs. close personal bonds
• Take steps to supervise activities of youth or
  teens taking place in the immediate area

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Social structure anomieMerton (193868)

• Culture consensus
• Societys central values/goals
• Societys institutionalized means for achieving
  them
• Social structure
• Distributes access to means for achieving success
  goals - based on class position.

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How is crime produced?

• Malintegration of goals and means - Anomie
• Excessive cultural emphasis on success goals
• Deemphasis of means
• Explains differences in overall rates of crime
  across societies
• Lack of fit between culture and social structure
  - strain
• Unequal distribution of opportunities/means to
  achieve goals
• Explains differential distribution of crime rates
  by social class in a given society

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Malintegration of goals means

• American society is highly individualized
• Attainment of the American Dream is strongly
  institutionalized
• Legitimate means for achieving it are less
  institutionalized
• Deviance from means is tolerated more than
  deviance from goals
• Use whatever means necessary, most technically
  efficient means

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Unequal distribution of means

• Class stratification of American society
• Unequal access to educational and occupational
  opportunities
• Certain groups especially blocked from
  opportunities
• Lower classes
• racial/ethnic minorities
• women

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Merton - typology of adaptations

• Mode of adaptation Goals Means
• Conformity
• Innovation -
• Ritualism -
• Retreatism - -
• Rebellion

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Merton - typology of adaptations

• Conformity accept conventional goals and
• (limited) legitimate
  means
• Innovation strive for monetary success
• turn to any means even illegal
• Rebellion alienated from goals and means,
• substitute new ones
• Ritualism rejects the goals (gives up)
  over-conforms, avoid risks
• Retreatism reject both cultural success
• goals and conventional
  means, drops out

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Cloward and Ohlin - Strain lower class
delinquent subcultures 1960

• A problem of adjustment for members of the lower
  classes
• A greater gap between aspirations and
  expectations
• A greater sense of frustration associated with
  the gap between aspirations and expectations
• A collective solution to the problem of adjustment

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Cloward and Ohlin

• Blame society
• Sense of injustice
• Unjust deprivation its who you know
• Obvious barriers race, class and gender
• Alienation from an unjust society, withdraw
  legitimacy from social norms
• Form the delinquent subculture with new status
  criteria

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Cloward and Ohlin

• Differential access to learning opportunities
• Criminal subculture
• Easy movement between criminal and conventional
• Well-organized neighborhood network
• Conflict subculture
• Disorganized slum neighborhood
• Violence as alternative means to status
• Retreatist subculture
• Drug use often not solitary
• Double failure legitimate illegitimate worlds

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Cohen Strain and lower class delinquent
subculture 1955

• A problem of adjustment, status deprivation for
  lower class youth
• inability to compete in middle class oriented
  schools
• Status in school
• ascribed characteristics (social class position
  of parents)
• achieved characteristics (the middle class
  measuring rod/Protestant work ethic)

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Cohen value conflict and delinquent subculture

• Group solution to the status problem
• emergent solution, participants convert each
  other
• Rejection of middle-class values, inversion into
  delinquent values
• Attack what middle-class values
• Destruction of property, senseless stealing,
  mindless violence
• Reject the thing that rejects them
• reaction-formation exaggerated overreaction

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Cohen - content of the delinquent subculture

• Non-utilitarian non-rational
• Malicious for the discomfort of others
• Negativistic not really an organized subculture
  with its own value system - values opposite to
  those of the middle class
• Short-run hedonism immediate gratification
• Versatility no specialization
• Group autonomy loyalty, solidarity

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Cohen - solutions to strain

• Delinquent subculture
• Advantage gain status and avoid failure since
  success defined in different terms.
• Disadvantage Crime
• Corner boy most common (some minor delinquency)
• Adv some (high) degree of success in lower class
  terms
• Disadv still a feeling of failure
• College boy least likely
• Adv success in middle-class terms
• Disadv turn back on roots low probability of
  success

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General Strain Theory (GST) Agnew 1992

• Failure to achieve positively valued goals
• Gap between aspirations/expectations actual
  achievement
• Failure due to blocked opportunities
• Failure due to inadequate skills/abilities
• Gap between view of fair outcome actual outcome
  perceive unfair treatment

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GST - Valued goals

• Money
• Lower class with blocked opportunities
• Theft, drug sales, prostitution
• Good grades
• Young people
• Underage drinking, cheating in school
• Status/respect
• Masculine status
• Assault, robbery
• Autonomy
• Youth members of lower class
• Underage drinking/sexual intercourse, stealing
  for financial independence stealing for material
  gain

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GST - Agnew

• Removal of positively valued stimuli
• Loss of someone of great worth
• Loss of an opportunity to engage in something
  valued
• Confrontation with negative stimuli
• Abuse or victimization verbal, sexual, physical
• Negative school, work or family experiences

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GST - Agnew

• Stressful life situations (strain) can be related
  to delinquency
• Strain results in greater likelihood of
  experiencing negative emotions
• Anger, frustration, anxiety, depression
• Pressure for corrective action, crime is one
  possible response
• Noncriminal response is more common
• Cognitive coping strategies
• Behavioral coping strategies

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GST - Response to strain is conditioned
Criminal Non-criminal

• Availability of other goals
• Fear of punishment
• Strong social bonds
• Denial of access to illegal means

• Low self-control
• Delinquent peers
• Blame others for strain
• Anti-social beliefs

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Strain Theory Policy implications

• Open up legitimate opportunities to all
• Education, job training to disadvantaged groups
• Cloward Ohlin - Mobilization for Youth
• (Would this only redistribute crime?)
• GST
• Teach ways to identify and handle strain
• Conflict resolution family counseling,
  school-based programs

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Strain theory - evaluation

• Universal goal of monetary success?
• Relative deprivation
• Gender shapes experience of and response to
  strain
• Males material achievements females
  relational concerns
• Females economic marginalization
• Males externalize response females internalize
  response
• Gender and sexual victimization more likely for
  females
• Attention to structural barriers to success (vs.
  blame the individual for failure)

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Institutional-Anomie TheoryMessner Rosenfeld
1994

• High rates of serious crime in USA
• Social stratification myth of equal opportunity
• Cultural emphasis on monetary success, plus
  relationships among
• Economy
• Polity
• Family
• Education

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Anomie in capitalist societies

• Unregulated goals
• Emphasis on PROFIT
• Unregulated means
• Emphasis on competition, innovation
• Emphasis on technical efficiency (vs. morality)
• Level of anomie depends on institutional balance
  of power (among economy, polity, family
  education)

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Institutional imbalance Economic dominance

• Devaluation of non-economic institutional
  functions and roles
• Accommodation to economic requirements by other
  institutions
• Penetration of economic norms into other
  institutional domains

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Economic dominance weak social control

• Non-economic institutions cannot fulfill their
  distinctive functions
• Non-economic institutions lose their influence
• Behavior falls more in line with anomic
  orientations high levels of crime

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Anomic crime

• Crime for economic gain (instrumental vs.
  expressive motive)
• Petty theft or white collar crime
• Crimes of force (easiest way to achieve goal)
• Predatory street crime such as robbery
• USA guns gun-related violence and homicide for
  economic gain

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Institutional imbalance Political dominance

• Political dominance state has a significant
  role in regulating everyday life
• Corrupt moral climate
• Personal agency is decreased
• Less feeling of responsibility for others
• More cynicism about responsibility for others
• Could explain Scandinavian tax avoidance
  underground economy (a certain type of crime)

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Decommodification crime Messner Rosenfeld
1997

• Hypothesis Highly decommodified policies (broad
  and generous social welfare and insurance
  programs) lower rates of homicide
• Reasoning Institutional balance of power is
  less likely to be dominated by market economy,
  more likely to reflect norms of collective
  support and mutual obligation

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Institutional-Anomie theory

• Interplay of economy and other social
  institutions
• Japan prominent role of family
• Ireland organized religion
• Links between welfare state and cultural values
  that inhibit violence
• Implications for reduced welfare spending
• Unintended social consequences (crime)

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