Causal Sociological Theories
Spring 2012
Origins of Social Causation
• Émile Durkheim (1890s)
• Social Facts
– Treat social facts as things
– Explain social facts with social facts
• Regulation and integration and suicide
Durkheim’s Types of Suicide
Integration
Regulation
Too Strong
ALTRUISTIC*
e.g., jumping on grenade
FATALISTIC*
e.g., honorific, ritualistic suicide
such as hari-kari (SP?)
Too Weak
EGOISTIC
"excessive individualism," "cult
of the individual,"
"goallessness,"
Protestant»Catholic
unmarried»married
childless»parents
ANOMIC
Sudden loss of sense of social
regulation, e.g.:economic
disasters and surges in prosperity
• **TAKEAWAY: social environment, social
world, surroundings as cause
Place Matters
• The Chicago School
– William Isaac Thomas and Florian Znaniecki: attitudes/values
form in process of interaction with situation
– Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess: cities as environments, urban
zones, natural areas
– Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay: mapping delinquency matched
natural areas over time even though different groups —
delinquency not group characteristic but zone
– Social Disorganization : in some areas, family, neighborhood,
local institutions do not provide the necessary guidance,
socialization, feedback, etc. necessary to avoid delinquency
• Superseded by other theories, but big contemporary focus
on neighborhoods, importance of local institutions,
community policing, etc.
Subcultural Theories
• Premise: Deviant behavior just as much a
learned behavior as conforming behavior
• Challenge: Need to explain process by which
place matters
Cohen’s Subculture Theory[1
• Main book: Delinquent Boys (1955)
• Predominance of non-purposive, gang related behavior, often malicious,
irrational, deliberately hurtful.
• This symbolic acting out reflects Status Frustration = conflict between
achieved status and middle class values presented in school and the
ascribed status and real obstacles they see in their family life.
• Status frustration leads to reaction formation that involves substituting a
set of "gang" values for those of middle class society. In place of
mainstream norms that say one is supposed to have ambition, take
responsibility, focus on achievement, delay gratification, be rational, use
time constructively, respect property, we find rejection of ambition,
excuse making, rejection of school, pleasure seeking, destructive behavior,
and hanging out. These things are seen by Cohen as a rejection of middle
class culture and replacement with a coherent set of values and practices.
• Although superceded by theories that took a more nuanced view, these
ideas survive in contemporary views of "gangsta" and "ghetto" culture.
Lower Class Culture as a Deviance Generating Milieu
• Miller, Walter B. (see annotation)
• Pushed beyond taking middle class culture as norm for
culture per se
• What it takes to survive/thrive in some contexts may
be at odds with "middle class culture"
–
–
–
–
–
"trouble" is an everyday category
toughness, street smarts as survival skills
search for excitement/thrills
fatalism: what happens beyond my control
desire for autonomy - resentment of rules/authority
• Big focus on peer group as reference group — cf.
Merton and others.
Sutherland’s Theory of Differential Association
• Focus shifts more to how than why
• Behavior and attitude learned in interaction in
groups
• We learn techniques, values, attitudes,
rationalizations, etc.
• One becomes delinquent if the balance of what
one is exposed to is in that direction
• Both conforming and non-conforming behavior
generated by same needs/desires
Strain Theories
• Society puts people in a bind — you should
want X but you can't have X. Psychologically,
it's about wants/desires again, but values
recognized as "universal" with addition of
unequal distribution of access or means of
achieving them.
Merton’s Strain Theory
Adaptation
Conformity
Innovation
Ritualism
Cultural
Goals
Accept
Accept
Reject
Institutionalized
Means
Examples
Accept
Reject
Robber barons, "smarts," wheeling/dealing,
tolerance for rogues, much white collar crime,
organized crime. Expect among lower class?
Accept
Is it deviant? Giving up. "I'm not sticking my head
out?" "Don't aim high and you won't be
disappointed." Expect among lower middle class?
Retreatism
Reject
Reject
Probably least common. Psychotics, autists, pariahs,
outcasts, vagrants, tramps, drug addicts. Failure
leads to giving up on the goals as well as the means.
Dropping out.
Rebellion
Replace
Replace
Reject status quo and actively attempt to set up
alternative goals and means.
Merton’s Theory of Anomie
• Robert K. Merton - major figure in 20th c
American sociology
Agnew’s General Strain Theory (GST)
• Merton said what you want is "normal" but you can't
get it legitimately so you break the rules
• Agnew says situation/environment might be
intolerable and what we see is attempt to escape.
• Argument starts with fact that as explanation of lower
class deviance doesn't work so well and for other
classes even less
• So, revise with short-term-ness of young folks' goals
• But still all based in idea that "blockage" happens with
respect to pursuit of goals. Change focus to painavoidance. Situation is aversive but one cannot escape.
• Cf. contemporary work on bullying.
Cloward and Ohlin’s Differential
Opportunity Theory (c. 1960)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Building on Merton but taking "means" (both legit and illegit) as variables.
One needs access to a criminal means — it's not just automatically a fall back if legit means not
available
Three possible outcomes
Access to legit means blocked but illegit means available : criminal subculture (normal criminal
behavior)
No access to local criminal culture - leads to gang violence as release for anger/frustration - conflict
subculture
Some will, in the face of double failure go in the direction of retreatist subculture — dropping out,
drugs, etc.
Cloward, co-founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization, big force behind "motor voter"
Wrote "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" with Frances Piven in The Nation in
1966. It advocated ending poverty by pushing federal government to implement guaranteed
minimum income. Some right wing activists treat this article as a founding document in the liberal
effort to ruin America.
Ohlin worked for Mobilization for Youth in the 1950s. It was forerunner of War on Poverty programs
of the 1960s.
GIST: Delinquency not product of youth who are bad, but rather a product of poverty.
Matza: Delinquency and Drift
• Rejects ideas that (1) individuals are
"committed" to delinquent life style or (2)
forced into it by structural forces.
• Rather, it's a biographical process of decisions
and choices
• If there are "subcultural norms" they permit
deviation from dominant norms more than
require it
Sykes and Matza "techniques of neutralization"
Delinquents do not have different values.
Have styles of thinking that blunt voice of social norms
Deviants able to redefine behavior so it fits with social values
Techniques are extensions of patterns of thought already expressed in society.
Bending rules is a normal social behavior that we find all across the social system.
denial of responsibility
denial of injury
denial of victim
condemnation of the condemners
appeal to higher loyalties