Subcultural theory
Encyclopedia
In criminology
, subcultural theory emerged from the work of the Chicago School
on gangs and developed through the symbolic interactionism school
into a set of theories arguing that certain groups or subcultures in society have values and attitudes that are conducive to crime and violence. The primary focus is on juvenile delinquency
because theorists believe that if this pattern of offending can be understood and controlled, it will break the transition from teenage offender into habitual criminal. Some of the theories are functionalist assuming that criminal activity is motivated by economic needs, while others posit a social class
rationale for deviance
.
, customs and values which both guide behaviour and act as a framework from which behaviour is judged by the majority. It is transmitted socially rather than biologically. A subculture is a distinctive culture within a culture, so its norms and values differ from the majority culture but do not necessarily represent a culture deemed deviant by the majority. A subculture is distinguished from a counterculture which operates in direct opposition to the majority culture. Cultural Transmission Theory and Social Disorganization Theory posit that, in the poorest zones of a city, certain forms of behavior become the cultural norm transmitted from one generation to the next, as part of the normal socialization
process. Successful criminals are role models for the young, demonstrating both the possibilities of success through crime, and its normality. See Shaw (1930) who describes the social pressure to engage in criminality. Subcultural Theory proposes that those living in an urban setting are able to find ways of creating a sense of community despite the prevailing alienation and anonymity. The cultural structure is dominated by the majority norms, which forces individuals to form communities in new and different ways. More recently, Fischer (1995) proposed that the size, population, and heterogeneity of cities actually strengthens social groups, and encourages the formation of subcultures, which are much more diverse in nature compared to the general culture. Fischer defines a subculture as, "...a large set of people who share a defining trait, associate with one another, are members of institutions associated with their defining trait, adhere to a distinct set of values, share a set of cultural tools and take part in a common way of life" (Fischer: 544). In less densely populated and less diverse environments, the creation of such subcultures would be nearly impossible. But ethnic minorities, professionals, the artistic avant-garde, displaced agricultural families, etc. come to live in cities and their lifestyles come to typify cities.
(1927: 46) studied gangs in a systematic way, analyzing gang activity and behavior. He defined gangs by the process they go through to form a group:
Thrasher maintained that gangs originate naturally during the adolescent years from spontaneous play groups which get into various kinds of mischief. They become gangs when they excite disapproval and opposition, thus acquiring a more definite group-consciousness. Like Durkheim
and Merton
, Thrasher described how the environment can be conducive to delinquent behavior, that gang subcultures arose in the cracks, or "interstices," of urban neglect combined with the inner cracks of identity that occur in the turbulent years of adolescence. Shaw (1930) also described delinquency as a group activity which was transmitted from older to younger boys with the streets and jails of Chicago as their classrooms. Thrasher confirmed the work of the others in the School, finding the most gangs in the zone of transition with the highest incidence of single-parent families, unemployment, multiple family dwellings, welfare cases, and low levels of education. These were the slums, the ghetto, and the barrios and he found evidence of at least 1,313 gangs with an estimated 25,000 members who found a different way to acquire an identity and status. The gangs became a youth's reference group where main values, beliefs, and goals were formed and, in a sense, also became a family, offering a sense of belonging and self-esteem.
, one of the key trope
s was the concept of disorganization which contributed to the emergence of an underclass. Analysts have viewed the ghetto as symptomatic of poverty and disorganization, measuring the extent to which it diverges from middle-class values, representing it as a place of disorder, anomie
and immorality. As the first African-American chair at Chicago, E. Franklin Frazier
(1931) stressed the marital disruption, decadence, destitution, crime, and vice into which "Negroes" inevitably sank when migrating into the urban environment, using family structures as the determining feature of disorganization. Two subcultural issues have emerged:
Finally, Frazier discussed the question of whether the African American population was "over-churched" as a distinctive social structure. He identified five attributes of black families from a matriarchal perspective including strong achievement orientation, strong work orientation, flexible family roles, strong kinship bonds, and strong religious orientation which potentially introduced a gender bias into the subculture.
(1955) did not look at the economically oriented career criminal, but looked at the delinquency subculture, focusing on gang delinquency among working class youth in slum areas which developed a distinctive culture as a response to their perceived lack of economic and social opportunity within U.S. society. He was a student of Edwin Sutherland
(Differential Association Theory
and Social Transmission Theory) and Merton's (Strain Theory
). The features of this subculture were:
Cohen (1958) explained this in terms similar to Strain Theory, (i.e. as a form of rebellion) in that education taught the young to strive for social status through academic achievement but, when most of the working class failed, this promoted "status frustration" or reaction formation, inverting middle-class values to strike back at the system that had let them down. Middle class values stress independence, success, academic achievement, delayed gratification, control of aggression, and respect for property. Lower class parents encourage different values in their children (i.e. different socialization
). In lower class families ambition and planning must give way to pressing issues of the moment. They depend more on others, and have more of a group orientation, “watching each others backs”.
and Lloyd Ohlin
made reference to R. K. Merton's Strain Theory, while taking a further step in how the Subculture was 'Parallel' in their opportunities: the Criminal subculture had the same rules and level. It was, henceforth, a 'Illegitimate Opportunity Structure', which is parallel, yet still a polarization of the legitimate.
Cloward and Ohlin suggested that the route to delinquency involved one of three subcultures:
s looked back to the more traditional working class community. Each generation tries to find employment or adapts to unemployment. But the 1920s had very different economic circumstances to later decades. Cohen argued that youth develop a cultural style as a means of coping with their particular circumstances and of resisting the dominant values of society. This casts working class youth as the standard bearers of class struggle. There is little in real terms that youth can do to change society, but resistance offers subjective satisfaction which can be shown through style: the clothes, haircuts, music and language of the different youth cultures. Cohen argued that these styles are not meaningless, but are deeply layered in meaning. This is an application of Marxist Subcultural Theory which synthesised the structuralism
of Marxism with the Labelling Theory
. The approach matched that of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University (see Crow: 1997). This approach places emphasis on the contents of youth culture and on the differences produced by class background. The assumption is that a capitalist society attempts to achieve hegemony
by using the cultural values of society for their own benefit. The domination of the adults is enforced through the system of mortgages, credit cards, and family commitments, and they are seduced into accepting the relative security of capitalism. But the youth are relatively free of long term commitment or responsibility for a family and, with many unemployed, the youth are the weakest point in the structure of hegemony.
Criminology
Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the individual and in society...
, subcultural theory emerged from the work of the Chicago School
Chicago school (sociology)
In sociology and later criminology, the Chicago School was the first major body of works emerging during the 1920s and 1930s specialising in urban sociology, and the research into the urban environment by combining theory and ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, now applied elsewhere...
on gangs and developed through the symbolic interactionism school
Symbolic interactionism
Symbolic Interaction, also known as interactionism, is a sociological theory that places emphasis on micro-scale social interaction to provide subjective meaning in human behavior, the social process and pragmatism.-History:...
into a set of theories arguing that certain groups or subcultures in society have values and attitudes that are conducive to crime and violence. The primary focus is on juvenile delinquency
Juvenile delinquency
Juvenile delinquency is participation in illegal behavior by minors who fall under a statutory age limit. Most legal systems prescribe specific procedures for dealing with juveniles, such as juvenile detention centers. There are a multitude of different theories on the causes of crime, most if not...
because theorists believe that if this pattern of offending can be understood and controlled, it will break the transition from teenage offender into habitual criminal. Some of the theories are functionalist assuming that criminal activity is motivated by economic needs, while others posit a social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
rationale for deviance
Deviant Behavior
Deviant Behavior is an interdisciplinary journal which focuses on social deviance, including criminal, sexual, and narcotic behaviors.The journal is published by Taylor and Francis, Inc., and was ranked 41st out of 46 psychology journals and 46th out of 90 sociology journals in 2004 by the...
.
Definitions
Culture represents the normsNorm (sociology)
Social norms are the accepted behaviors within a society or group. This sociological and social psychological term has been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit...
, customs and values which both guide behaviour and act as a framework from which behaviour is judged by the majority. It is transmitted socially rather than biologically. A subculture is a distinctive culture within a culture, so its norms and values differ from the majority culture but do not necessarily represent a culture deemed deviant by the majority. A subculture is distinguished from a counterculture which operates in direct opposition to the majority culture. Cultural Transmission Theory and Social Disorganization Theory posit that, in the poorest zones of a city, certain forms of behavior become the cultural norm transmitted from one generation to the next, as part of the normal socialization
Socialization
Socialization is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and educationalists to refer to the process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies...
process. Successful criminals are role models for the young, demonstrating both the possibilities of success through crime, and its normality. See Shaw (1930) who describes the social pressure to engage in criminality. Subcultural Theory proposes that those living in an urban setting are able to find ways of creating a sense of community despite the prevailing alienation and anonymity. The cultural structure is dominated by the majority norms, which forces individuals to form communities in new and different ways. More recently, Fischer (1995) proposed that the size, population, and heterogeneity of cities actually strengthens social groups, and encourages the formation of subcultures, which are much more diverse in nature compared to the general culture. Fischer defines a subculture as, "...a large set of people who share a defining trait, associate with one another, are members of institutions associated with their defining trait, adhere to a distinct set of values, share a set of cultural tools and take part in a common way of life" (Fischer: 544). In less densely populated and less diverse environments, the creation of such subcultures would be nearly impossible. But ethnic minorities, professionals, the artistic avant-garde, displaced agricultural families, etc. come to live in cities and their lifestyles come to typify cities.
Frederic M. Thrasher
Frederic M. ThrasherFrederic Thrasher
Frederic Milton Thrasher was a sociologist at the University of Chicago. He was a colleague of Robert E. Park and was one of the most prominent members of the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s....
(1927: 46) studied gangs in a systematic way, analyzing gang activity and behavior. He defined gangs by the process they go through to form a group:
- "The gang is an interstitial group originally formed spontaneously, and then integrated through conflict. It is characterized by the following types of behavior: meeting face to face, milling, movement through space as a unit, conflict, and planning. The result of this collective behavior is the development of tradition, unreflective internal structure, esprit de corps, solidarity, morale, group awareness, and attachment to a local territory."
Thrasher maintained that gangs originate naturally during the adolescent years from spontaneous play groups which get into various kinds of mischief. They become gangs when they excite disapproval and opposition, thus acquiring a more definite group-consciousness. Like Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...
and Merton
Robert K. Merton
Robert King Merton was a distinguished American sociologist. He spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University, where he attained the rank of University Professor...
, Thrasher described how the environment can be conducive to delinquent behavior, that gang subcultures arose in the cracks, or "interstices," of urban neglect combined with the inner cracks of identity that occur in the turbulent years of adolescence. Shaw (1930) also described delinquency as a group activity which was transmitted from older to younger boys with the streets and jails of Chicago as their classrooms. Thrasher confirmed the work of the others in the School, finding the most gangs in the zone of transition with the highest incidence of single-parent families, unemployment, multiple family dwellings, welfare cases, and low levels of education. These were the slums, the ghetto, and the barrios and he found evidence of at least 1,313 gangs with an estimated 25,000 members who found a different way to acquire an identity and status. The gangs became a youth's reference group where main values, beliefs, and goals were formed and, in a sense, also became a family, offering a sense of belonging and self-esteem.
E. Franklin Frazier
In the earliest stages of the Chicago School and their investigation of human ecologyEcology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
, one of the key trope
Trope (philosophy)
The term "trope" is both a term which denotes figurative and metaphorical language and one which has been used in various technical senses. The term trope derives from the Greek τρόπος , "a turn, a change", related to the root of the verb τρέπειν , "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change"; this...
s was the concept of disorganization which contributed to the emergence of an underclass. Analysts have viewed the ghetto as symptomatic of poverty and disorganization, measuring the extent to which it diverges from middle-class values, representing it as a place of disorder, anomie
Anomie
Anomie is a term meaning "without Law" to describe a lack of social norms; "normlessness". It describes the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and their community ties, with fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. It was popularized by French...
and immorality. As the first African-American chair at Chicago, E. Franklin Frazier
E. Franklin Frazier
Edward Franklin Frazier , was an American sociologist. His 1932 Ph.D. dissertation The Negro Family in Chicago, later released as a book The Negro Family in the United States in 1939, analyzed the cultural and historical forces that influenced the development of the African American family from the...
(1931) stressed the marital disruption, decadence, destitution, crime, and vice into which "Negroes" inevitably sank when migrating into the urban environment, using family structures as the determining feature of disorganization. Two subcultural issues have emerged:
- Frazier (1932) was interested to determine whether any West African customs survived in the U.S. According to the Creolists, the U.S. slave population and their descendants did not share a common culture and their customs, religious beliefs, dialects, and social structures varied too greatly to influence ethnic and cultural cohesiveness. Frazier who was of an extremely conservative creolist persuasion expounded that all cultural remnants of the indigenous culture had been destroyed in the melee of slavery and, in effect, the West African heritage had little or nothing to do with the present African American population in the U.S. Others of a revisionist persuasion, emphasized a continuity in African history and argued that there is a layering of cultures representing the diaspora populations in the New World.
- Frazier (1957) continued the discussion on social distance and what he terms the "common moral order", chronicling the growing social classSocial classSocial classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
distinctions between moneyed African-Americans who mimic whites, and their less fortunate brethren. Frazier (1932) had noted in his history of slavery that where human relationships were established between masters and slaves, both were less likely to engage in cruelty toward each other. It is also known that debtor slaves were as a rule treated with more consideration than were foreign slaves obtained by capture and trade. This system of protective patronage continued in the relationship between white culture and the new black bourgeoisie.
Finally, Frazier discussed the question of whether the African American population was "over-churched" as a distinctive social structure. He identified five attributes of black families from a matriarchal perspective including strong achievement orientation, strong work orientation, flexible family roles, strong kinship bonds, and strong religious orientation which potentially introduced a gender bias into the subculture.
Albert K. Cohen
Albert K. CohenAlbert K. Cohen
Albert K. Cohen is a prominent American criminologist. He is known for his Subcultural Theory of delinquent urban gangs, including his influential book Delinquent Boys: Culture of the Gang. He has served as Vice President of the American Society of Criminology, and in 1993 he received the...
(1955) did not look at the economically oriented career criminal, but looked at the delinquency subculture, focusing on gang delinquency among working class youth in slum areas which developed a distinctive culture as a response to their perceived lack of economic and social opportunity within U.S. society. He was a student of Edwin Sutherland
Edwin Sutherland
Edwin H. Sutherland was an American sociologist. He is considered as one of the most influential criminologists of the twentieth century...
(Differential Association Theory
Differential association
In criminology, Differential Association is a theory developed by Edwin Sutherland proposing that through interaction with others, individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques, and motives for criminal behavior....
and Social Transmission Theory) and Merton's (Strain Theory
Strain theory (sociology)
In criminology, the strain theory states that social structures within society may pressure citizens to commit crime. Following on the work of Émile Durkheim, Strain Theories have been advanced by Robert King Merton , Albert K. Cohen , Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin , Robert Agnew , and Steven...
). The features of this subculture were:
- anti-utilitarian: in many cases, there was no profit motive in thefts or other crimes. The main intention was to foster peer bonding through sharing the experience of breaking the laws.
- collective reaction formation: the gang inverted the values of the majority culture, deliberately pursuing the mirror image of the American Dream.
- malice: many acts of vandalism and property damage were motivated by spite, contempt, and personal intention to injure.
- short-termism: the gang lived for the moment, looking for instant gratification.
- group autonomy: everything was aimed at consolidating group loyalty.
Cohen (1958) explained this in terms similar to Strain Theory, (i.e. as a form of rebellion) in that education taught the young to strive for social status through academic achievement but, when most of the working class failed, this promoted "status frustration" or reaction formation, inverting middle-class values to strike back at the system that had let them down. Middle class values stress independence, success, academic achievement, delayed gratification, control of aggression, and respect for property. Lower class parents encourage different values in their children (i.e. different socialization
Socialization
Socialization is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and educationalists to refer to the process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies...
). In lower class families ambition and planning must give way to pressing issues of the moment. They depend more on others, and have more of a group orientation, “watching each others backs”.
Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin
Richard ClowardRichard Cloward
Richard Andrew Cloward was an American sociologist and an activist. He influenced the Strain theory of criminal behavior and the concept of anomie, and was a primary motivator for the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 known as "Motor Voter"...
and Lloyd Ohlin
Lloyd Ohlin
Lloyd Edgar Ohlin was an American sociologist and criminologist who taught at Harvard Law School, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago over his career where he studied the causes and effects of crime and punishment, especially as it related to youthful offenders and delinquents.Ohlin...
made reference to R. K. Merton's Strain Theory, while taking a further step in how the Subculture was 'Parallel' in their opportunities: the Criminal subculture had the same rules and level. It was, henceforth, a 'Illegitimate Opportunity Structure', which is parallel, yet still a polarization of the legitimate.
Cloward and Ohlin suggested that the route to delinquency involved one of three subcultures:
- Criminal: this represents Merton's 'innovators' in his Anomie Theory in which adolescents use crime for material gain. This subculture usually forms in areas where there is an established organization of adult crime that provides an "illegitimate opportunity structure" for youths to learn the "tricks of the trade".
- Conflict: this represents Merton's 'rebels' in his Anomie Theory, when an illegitimate opportunity structure is not available, delinquents often form conflicting gangs out of frustration at the lack of any available opportunity structures.
- Retreatist: this represents Merton's 'retreatists' in his Anomie Theory, this involves drug use and hustling, behaviour generally found among the "double failures" - those that cannot find acceptance in either legitimate groups or the two other subcultures.
Walter Miller
Miller (1958, 1959) agreed with Cohen that there was a delinquency subculture, but argued that it arose entirely from the lower class way of life. There was a clear distinction in values between the two social classes. Whereas the middle class is achievement and social goal oriented, Miller thought that lower class parents were more concerned with ensuring that their children stayed out of trouble, e.g. sons avoiding fights and daughters avoiding pregnancy. Boys were expected to be tough and street-smart which gave them an incentive to join a gang. Given that their ordinary lives were boring, the excitement of crime was a welcome relief, bringing a sense of autonomy by denying the social controls imposed by the state. For the middle class, the most important institutions are family, work, and (for the child) school. For the lower class another institution plays a crucial role – the same sex peer group or gang is more important than family, work or school because it offers a sense of belonging, and a way to achieve status that they cannot easily achieve in mainstream society. Thus, delinquency was not a reaction against middle class values but rather a means of living up to their own cultural expectations for toughness and smartness. Indeed, the gang only recruited the most “able” members, so membership of a gang confirmed high status. Most delinquency is non violent and while thefts are more common than any kind of assault, they are, relatively rare. violence when it does occur is a response to apparent insults or rejection by specific people, not a random outpouring of senseless aggression.David Matza
David Matza (1964) argued that, rather than being committed to delinquency, young people drifted between conventional and unconventional behavior. The initial socialization did introduce an understanding of social expectations and a sense of guilt if those expectations were not met, but that individuals developed techniques of neutralization to avoid feeling guilty. To some extent, society also helped to neutralize the guilt by blaming the parents for failing properly to supervise their children. Matza also argued that the search for excitement was classless. It was simply that working class youth had fewer opportunities for legitimate activities. Nevertheless, deviancy can be fun for everyone. There is a certain excitement in exercising free will and breaking rules knowing that there is little chance of being caught. This implies a degree of rational choice within structural constraints. The offenders are individuals who feel powerless. They are tired of being pushed around and simply feel like defying the system. If they are caught and come before a court, they appear victimized among their peer group and gain status.P. Cohen
Phil Cohen (1972) studied the youth of East London in the early 1970s. He examined the immediate and the wider context to determine how two different youth subcultures reacted to the changes occurring in their community. He suggested that the Mod reaction was to the new ideology of affluence. They wanted to show that they had money and knew how to spend it. In contrast, skinheadSkinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...
s looked back to the more traditional working class community. Each generation tries to find employment or adapts to unemployment. But the 1920s had very different economic circumstances to later decades. Cohen argued that youth develop a cultural style as a means of coping with their particular circumstances and of resisting the dominant values of society. This casts working class youth as the standard bearers of class struggle. There is little in real terms that youth can do to change society, but resistance offers subjective satisfaction which can be shown through style: the clothes, haircuts, music and language of the different youth cultures. Cohen argued that these styles are not meaningless, but are deeply layered in meaning. This is an application of Marxist Subcultural Theory which synthesised the structuralism
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
of Marxism with the Labelling Theory
Labeling theory
Labeling theory is closely related to interactionist and social construction theories. Labeling theory was developed by sociologists during the 1960's. Howard Saul Becker's book entitled Outsiders was extremely influential in the development of this theory and its rise to popularity...
. The approach matched that of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University (see Crow: 1997). This approach places emphasis on the contents of youth culture and on the differences produced by class background. The assumption is that a capitalist society attempts to achieve hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
by using the cultural values of society for their own benefit. The domination of the adults is enforced through the system of mortgages, credit cards, and family commitments, and they are seduced into accepting the relative security of capitalism. But the youth are relatively free of long term commitment or responsibility for a family and, with many unemployed, the youth are the weakest point in the structure of hegemony.