Explaining Deviance: The Sociological Theories
Chapter Fifty-Four
Syllabus topic 2.1, "Crime and Social Deviance". MU's label is two words wide and this is what is inside it.
Pages 245 to 249 of 451
In one line
Sociology explains deviance not by what is wrong with the deviant but by what the society does: the goals it sets, the company it keeps, the controls it maintains and the labels it applies.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: the sociological explanations of deviance are the strain or anomie theory of Merton, which locates the cause in the gap between culturally prescribed goals and the legitimate means available to reach them; differential association, which holds that criminal behaviour is learned in intimate groups like any other; subcultural theory, which explains persistent deviance by the norms of groups that reward it; control theory, which reverses the question and asks why most people conform; labelling theory, which locates deviance in the reaction rather than the act; and the conflict explanation, which asks whose interests the definition of crime serves.
Why the sociological question differs from the others
Biological and psychological accounts look inside the offender: physique, heredity, personality, upbringing. Sociology looks at the offender's position in a social structure. The decisive evidence for the sociological approach is that rates vary systematically between groups, places and periods while human biology does not, and that white-collar crime, from [Crime and Social Deviance], is committed by people whose individual characteristics are the opposite of every profile built from prison populations.
1. Strain or anomie theory: Merton
The mechanism. Every society holds out culturally approved goals, and prescribes legitimate means of reaching them. Where the goals are urged on everybody but the means are not equally available, the people denied the means are under strain, and deviance is the adaptation.
Merton set out five adaptations, and reproducing all five with their two columns is what earns the marks.
| Adaptation | Cultural goals | Institutionalised means | Who |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conformity | Accepts | Accepts | Most people, most of the time |
| Innovation | Accepts | Rejects | Reaches the approved goal by illegitimate means: theft, fraud, corruption |
| Ritualism | Rejects, or scales down | Accepts | Abandons the goal but clings to the rules: the official who follows procedure to no purpose |
| Retreatism | Rejects | Rejects | Drops out: vagrancy, addiction |
| Rebellion | Replaces | Replaces | Substitutes new goals and new means: the revolutionary, the reform movement |
In India the theory has obvious application: an education system that urges professional success on everyone while the positions are few, and the resulting pressures, are strain in Merton's sense.
Criticism. It assumes a single set of goals shared across a society, which is doubtful in a plural one. It explains acquisitive crime well and expressive violence badly. It does not explain why one person under strain innovates and another retreats. And it cannot explain white-collar crime, where the means are amply available.
Explaining Deviance: The Sociological Theories
2. Differential association: Sutherland
The mechanism. Criminal behaviour is learned, in interaction within intimate personal groups, exactly as any other behaviour is learned. What is learned is both technique and, more importantly, the definitions favourable or unfavourable to breaking the law. A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favourable to violation over definitions unfavourable to it.
Why it was important. It made crime a normal product of ordinary learning rather than a symptom of pathology, and it explains white-collar crime as easily as street crime, since a person learns in an office as readily as on a street corner.
Criticism. It is hard to test, because the excess of definitions cannot be measured. It does not explain the first offender in a group, or crimes committed by people with no criminal associates, or why two people in the same associations diverge.
3. Subcultural theory
The mechanism. Deviance is conformity to the norms of a group whose norms differ from the wider society's. Albert Cohen argued that boys denied status by the school's standards develop an alternative set of values in which the behaviour the school condemns confers standing, so the delinquency is not a failure to be socialised but a successful socialisation into a different set of expectations. Cloward and Ohlin added that illegitimate opportunities are themselves unequally distributed, so which kind of deviance appears depends on what illegitimate opportunity is available.
Criticism. It may overstate how distinct such subcultures are; it was built on studies of young men and generalises poorly; and it does not explain deviance by people fully inside the dominant culture.
4. Control theory: Hirschi
The mechanism. The question is inverted. Given the advantages of deviance, why does anyone conform? The answer is that most people are bound to conventional society by a social bond, and deviance follows when the bond weakens.
Hirschi's four elements are examinable as a set: attachment to others whose opinion matters; commitment to conventional activities in which the person has invested and would lose by deviating; involvement in conventional activity, which simply occupies time; and belief in the legitimacy of the rules.
Why it is useful to a lawyer. It predicts that the deterrent value of punishment depends on how much a person has to lose, so identical sanctions do not deter identically. A person with employment, a family and standing is restrained by all four elements before any sanction is considered; a person with none of them is restrained only by the sanction.
Criticism. It explains minor delinquency better than serious crime; it does not explain crime by the well-attached, which is again white-collar crime; and it takes conventional norms as given rather than asking whose they are.
Explaining Deviance: The Sociological Theories
5. Labelling theory
The mechanism. The most distinctively sociological explanation, and an application of [Symbolic Interactionism]. Becker's formulation is the one to quote in substance: social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and applying those rules to particular people. Deviance is therefore not a quality of the act but a consequence of the application of rules and sanctions to an offender.
Lemert's primary and secondary deviance is the mechanism by which the label bites. Primary deviance is the initial act, casual, and not incorporated into the person's self-conception. Once the person is publicly identified and treated as a deviant, the label becomes a master status in the sense of [Status and Role]: it dominates how others see them, closes off conventional opportunities, and pushes them toward others similarly labelled. Secondary deviance is the behaviour that follows from that treatment, and it is the point at which deviance becomes a way of life.
The self-fulfilling prophecy completes it, and the Thomas theorem is its engine: the person defined as a criminal is treated as one, and the treatment produces what it assumed.
For a law student this is the most important theory in the module. It bears directly on the criminal record, on the effect of an arrest that does not lead to conviction, on the treatment of children in conflict with law, and on why the reporting restrictions in juvenile legislation exist at all. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 restricts disclosure of the identity of a child in conflict with law and provides for records to be destroyed, and the sociological justification for those provisions is precisely this theory.
Criticism. It does not explain primary deviance, that is, why the person acted in the first place, which is a serious gap. It can appear to deny the reality of harm to victims. It makes the deviant too passive, as though the label simply happens to them. And some deviance, serious violence, is not created by labelling in any useful sense.
6. The conflict explanation
The mechanism. The question is who has the power to define conduct as criminal. The criminal law reflects the interests of dominant groups; enforcement is selective; and the same conduct is treated differently by the standing of who does it. This is [The Conflict Perspective] applied.
Criticism. It explains the definition of crime better than its commission; it struggles with offences universally condemned; and in strong forms it becomes unfalsifiable.
The theories compared
| Theory | Central question | Cause of deviance | Leading name |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strain | Why do people break rules? | Gap between goals and legitimate means | Merton |
| Differential association | How is it acquired? | Learned in intimate groups | Sutherland |
| Subcultural | Why does it persist? | Conformity to a group with different norms | Cohen; Cloward and Ohlin |
| Control | Why does anyone conform? | Weak bond to conventional society | Hirschi |
| Labelling | Who is a deviant? | The reaction and the label, not the act | Becker; Lemert |
| Conflict | Whose rules? | Definitions serving dominant interests | Marx, and after him Quinney |
Explaining Deviance: The Sociological Theories
A worked example
A seventeen-year-old in a Mumbai suburb is caught taking a phone from a shop.
Strain: he has absorbed the goal of the possessions his classmates display and has no legitimate means of obtaining them. Merton's innovation.
Differential association: he learned both how to do it and that it is not really wrong from three older boys he spends his evenings with.
Subcultural: within that group, doing it confers standing, so he is conforming, not rebelling.
Control: he left school, his father works away, he has no job to lose and no adult whose disapproval weighs. All four bonds are weak.
Labelling: the shopkeeper's complaint, the police station, the entry in a record. If he is now treated as a thief by school, employer and neighbours, secondary deviance follows, and this is where the law can make things worse rather than better.
Conflict: the shopkeeper's stock is protected by a law enforced promptly, while the wage owed to the boy's father is not enforced at all.
Every one of the six is partly true, and the best examination answer says so and then says which explains what: strain and subculture explain why it happened, control explains why it happened to him rather than his neighbour, labelling explains what happens next, and conflict explains why the machinery moved for this offence and not another.
Quick revision
- Merton's strain: goals against means; five adaptations, conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion.
- Sutherland's differential association: crime is learned in intimate groups; an excess of definitions favourable to violation. Explains white-collar crime.
- Subcultural (Cohen; Cloward and Ohlin): deviance is conformity to a group with different norms; illegitimate opportunity is itself unequally available.
- Hirschi's control theory: why conform? The social bond: attachment, commitment, involvement, belief. Predicts that identical sanctions do not deter identically.
- Labelling (Becker, Lemert): deviance is in the reaction, not the act; primary and secondary deviance; the label becomes a master status; self-fulfilling prophecy. Justifies the identity and record provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act 2015.
- Conflict: who has the power to define conduct as criminal, and against whom is it enforced.
- Labelling's great gap: it does not explain primary deviance.
Test yourself
1. Set out Merton's strain theory and its five adaptations. Society urges culturally approved goals on everyone while distributing the legitimate means of reaching them unequally, and those denied the means experience strain to which deviance is an adaptation. Conformity accepts both goals and means. Innovation accepts the goals and rejects the means, producing acquisitive crime. Ritualism abandons the goals while clinging to the rules. Retreatism rejects both and drops out. Rebellion replaces both with new goals and new means.
Explaining Deviance: The Sociological Theories
2. State differential association and say what it explains that strain does not. Sutherland's proposition that criminal behaviour is learned in interaction within intimate personal groups, and that what is learned is chiefly definitions favourable or unfavourable to violating the law, a person offending where the favourable definitions are in excess. It explains white-collar crime, which strain theory cannot, since offenders of high status have ample legitimate means and yet learn favourable definitions in their occupational circles.
3. Give Hirschi's four elements of the social bond and one legal consequence. Attachment to persons whose opinion matters; commitment to conventional activities in which the person has invested and would forfeit by deviating; involvement in conventional activity, which occupies time; and belief in the legitimacy of the rules. The legal consequence is that identical punishments do not deter identically: a person with employment, family and standing is restrained by all four before any sanction operates, while a person with none is restrained only by the sanction.
4. Explain labelling theory, with primary and secondary deviance. Becker's proposition that social groups create deviance by making rules and applying them to particular persons, so deviance is a consequence of the application of rules rather than a quality of the act. Lemert distinguishes primary deviance, the initial act which does not alter the person's self-conception, from secondary deviance, the behaviour that follows from being publicly labelled and treated as a deviant: the label becomes a master status, closes conventional opportunities and pushes the person toward others similarly labelled.
5. What is the principal weakness of labelling theory? That it does not explain primary deviance at all. It gives a powerful account of what happens after a person is identified and labelled, but no account of why they committed the original act, which is the question the other theories address. It is also criticised for making the deviant appear passive, for seeming to minimise harm to victims, and for fitting minor deviance far better than serious violence.
The rest of this subject
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