The Criminological Use of Culture and Subculture Understanding Criminology 2

The Criminological Use of
Culture and Subculture
Understanding Criminology
2nd November 2006
Lecture Outline
• Subculture: Definitions and Typology
• Gangs and the variety of adaptations to
strain
• Social Class and Subculture
• Drift Theory
Culture and Subculture
• Adaptations of Strain
theory, with an
awareness of the
diversity of deviant
forms
• Initial focus on gangs
and youth delinquency
Subculture: Definitions
• A relatively small grouping that develops
distinctive norms, values and beliefs.
Subcultures provide members with a range
of personal resources (e.g. status, capital,
excitement) that have often been denied by
mainstream society / culture
• Subcultural Theory: aim to identify the
cause and expressive nature of subcultures
Typology
• Reactive / Oppositional Subcultures
– The subcultural form is a direct reaction against
mainstream culture
- Most directly influenced by strain theory
- Independent Subcultures
- Subcultures develop their own values and
norms of behaviour independently of
mainstream culture
William Whyte: Street Corner
Society
• Easier for a “slum” resident to achieve
monetary success in a racket, than by
conventional means
• Role models: college boys v. corner boys
• Gang activities highly organised
• Pioneering participant observation based
study
• KEY: expressive nature of subcultures
Sutherland’s Differential
Association Theory
• Delinquent practices are ‘culturally transmitted’
from one individual to another
• Cultural conflict: if “definitions” favourable to law
violation outweigh those unfavourable, crime will
occur
• Applied largely to white-collar crime, but has
subsequently been applied to other crime
• KEY: Cultural Transmission
National = Strain / Inequality /
Limited Opportunities
Community = Legitimate and
Illegitimate Opportunities
Albert Cohen:
“Delinquent Boys:The culture of the gang”
• Subculture evolved in response to strain, and a
rejection of ‘middle-class values’
• Education paramount:
– Make children aware of social status
– Key to the constraint of opportunities
• Goal: status, not necessarily monetary success
• An attempt to understand non-economic deviance
• Gangs were a particular form of subcultural
adaptation, characterised by: non-utilitarianism
 malice
 negativism
 hedonism
 versatility
 group loyalty
Richard Cloward and Lloyd
Ohlin
• Focussed on the range that adaptations to
strain could take, incorporating differential
association
• Criminal Gangs
• Conflict Gangs
• Retreatist Gangs
• Returned to Merton’s focus on monetary
success
Evaluation of Strain Influenced
Subcultural Theories
• Fits with
– Over-representation of working class, urban
offenders in gang activity
– A dominant / superior middle class culture
• Possibly fits with
– Gang activity being predominantly male: girls and
young women have alternative sources of status?
• Doesn’t fit with
– Widespread, but petty offending
– British experience
David Downes: a British
Perspective
• In Britain, social class is central to
understanding subcultural adaptation
• Working class youth had a “realistically
low” level of aspiration / fatalism
• Delinquency as a ‘fact’ of life, but not a
‘way’ of life
Downes and Subculture in Britain
• Key cause of delinquency: boredom and the
importance of leisure
• little opportunity for excitement (akin to strain)
• leisure became the location for excitement and
expression of
- toughness, daring, panache
• Links between leisure and delinquency
– proceeds of crime funding leisure
– delinquency is itself exciting
– delinquency is a by-product of certain forms of
excitement
Marxist analysis of sub-culture /
counter-culture
• Phil Cohen
• Economic Decline ->
– family tensions
– fragmented community
– economic insecurity
• Mods: socially mobile
white-collar worker
• Skinheads:
emphasising
masculinity of hard
manual labour
David Matza: Drift and
Neutralization
• Sees subcultural theories are over-predictive
• Drift: a ‘limbo between convention and crime’
preceding delinquency
• Techniques of neutralization demonstrate continued
commitment to mainstream cultural values
• Delinquency represents the exaggeration of
“subterranean”, but not deviant values:
– the pursuit of excitement
– the disdain for routine work
– toughness and masculinity
What is a Cultural of Deviance?
• Pockets of specific activities providing meaning and
resources to the member
– E.g. The Gang
• A widespread loose affinity between relatively informal
groupings
– E.g. Anti-globalisation environmental groups
• A reflection of temporary adolescent rejection of
parental / mainstream values – functional?
• A vital mechanism that acts to support and
reproduce mainstream culture
Summary
• Most cultural theories would expect more
criminality than actually seen
• Matza and Drift theory would not predict much
‘career criminality’
• Cultural Relativism: a danger that criminality is
romanticized: the expressive qualitative nature of
deviance is addressed: rarely the same focus on
mainstream culture or victimisation