Functionalism – Merton's Strain Theory
STRAIN THEORY:
People engage in deviant behaviour as they’re unable to achieve socially approved goals by legitimate means (resulting in strain). Merton adapted Durkheim’s concept of anomie.
His explanation combines two elements:
Structural factors – society’s unequal opportunity structure.
Cultural factors – the strong emphasis on success goals and the weaker emphasis on using legitimate means to achieve them.
For Merton, deviance is the result of a strain between two things:
The goals that a culture encourages individuals to achieve.
What the institutional structure of society allows them to achieve legitimately.
THE AMERICAN DREAM:
Americans are supposed to achieve this by ‘legitimate means’ which are self-discipline, study, educational qualifications and hard work in a career.
The American dream portrays American society as a meritocratic society, where there are opportunities for all.
How the reality is much different, as there are many disadvantaged groups who are denied opportunities to achieve legitimately. Poverty, inadequate schooling and discrimination in the job market may block opportunities for many ethnic minorities and lower classes.
Merton calls the pressure between the goals and legitimate means to achieve them as the strain to anomie.
This pressure is further increased by the fact that American culture puts more emphasis on achieving success at any price.
DEVIANT ADAPTATIONS TO STRAIN:
Conformity: accept the mainstream goals and achieve them with legitimate means.
Innovation: accept the mainstream goals but reject legitimate means.
Ritualism: reject the mainstream goals but go along with legitimate means.
Retreatism: reject both mainstream goals and the legitimate means.
Rebellion: reject both mainstream goals and legitimate means and replace them with new ones.
DEVIANT ADAPTATIONS DEFINITIONS:
Conformity: Individuals accept the culturally approved goals and strive to achieve them legitimately. This is most likely among middle-class individuals who have good opportunities to achieve, but Merton sees it as the typical response of most Americans.
Innovation: Individuals accept the goal of money success but use ‘new’ legitimate means such as theft or fraud to achieve it. As we have seen, those at the lower end of the class structure are under greatest pressure to innovate.
Ritualism: Individuals give up on trying to achieve these goals, but have internalised the legitimate means and so they follow the rules for their own sake. This is typical of lower-middle class office workers in dead-end, routine jobs.
Retreatism: Individuals reject both the goals and the legitimate means and become dropouts. Merton includes ‘psychotics, outcasts, vagrants, tramps, chronic drunkards and drug addicts’ as examples.
Rebellion: Individuals reject the existing society’s goals and means, but they replace them with new ones in a desire to bring about revolutionary change and create a new kind of society. Rebels include political radicals and counter-cultures such as hippies.
ADVANTAGES OF STRAIN THEORY:
Shows how both normal and deviant behaviour can arise from the same mainstream goals. Both conformists and innovators are pursuing money success – one legitimately, and one illegitimately.
Explains the patterns shown in official crime statistics:
Most crime is property crime, because American society values material wealth so highly.
Lower-class crime rates are higher because they have least opportunity to obtain wealth legitimately.
It explains how deviance results from individuals adapting to the strain to anomie.
CRITICISMS OF STRAIN THEORY:
It takes official crime statistics at face value. These over-represent working-class crime, so Merton sees crime as a working-class phenomenon. It’s also too deterministic: the working-class experience the most strain, yet they don’t all deviate.
Marxists argue that it ignores the power of the ruling class to make and enforce the laws in ways that criminalise the poor but not the rich.
It assumes there’s a value consensus – that everyone strives for ‘money success’ – and ignore the possibility that many may not share this goal.
It only accounts for utilitarian crime for monetary gain, and not crimes of violence, vandalism, etc. It’s also hard to see how it could account for state crimes such as genocide and torture.
Ignores the role of group deviance, such as delinquent subcultures.