Why did Durkheim argue that crime is inevitable, and what two positive functions did he claim it performs?

Durkheim held that not everyone can be equally well socialised and that modern societies contain too great a diversity of subcultures for one collective conscience to bind everyone, so rule-breaking is unavoidable; it achieves boundary maintenance, because punishing offenders unites the community and reaffirms its values, and it permits adaptation and change, because today's deviant challenge to an outdated norm may become tomorrow's morality.

Define the term anomie.

Anomie is a condition of normlessness in which the shared rules governing people's behaviour and expectations become weak or unclear, so that individuals are no longer effectively restrained.

Name Merton's five adaptations to strain, state which produces most utilitarian crime, and give one weakness of the model.

They are conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion, and innovation produces most utilitarian crime because the innovator accepts the goal of wealth but uses illegitimate means; its weakness is that it treats deviance as an individual response and cannot account for group delinquency or for crimes that bring no material gain.

What did Cohen mean by status frustration?

Cohen argued that working-class boys are judged against a middle-class measuring rod in school and find themselves at the bottom of the legitimate status hierarchy, producing a resentment at their failure that he called status frustration.

According to Cohen, how does the delinquent subculture resolve status frustration?

The boys collectively invert mainstream values and create an alternative status hierarchy in which acts the wider society condemns earn respect from peers, which is why much delinquency is malicious and non-utilitarian rather than profitable.

OCR A-Level Sociology H580

Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity

Topic overview Culture, norms, values and cultural relativism Subculture, high culture and popular culture Global and consumer culture, cultural diversity and hybridity Primary and secondary socialisation, the family and peer group Media, religion, education and the workplace as agencies of socialisation Lifelong socialisation and the nature/nurture debate Social control, sanctions and formal agencies of control Informal agencies and theories of social control The concept of identity, ethnicity and nationality Gender, class and sexual identity Age, disability, hybrid and intersecting identities

Families and RelationshipsComponent 01

Topic overview Family types and trends in marriage, divorce and cohabitation Demographic change, family diversity and newer family types Nuclear family ideology, functionalism and the New Right Marxist, feminist and postmodern views and the diversity debate Conjugal roles and the domestic division of labour Power, the dark side of the family and theories of partner roles The child-centred family, views of childhood and its extension Parent-child power, grandparents in an ageing population and feminist views

Youth SubculturesComponent 01

Topic overview Functionalist and neo-Marxist views of youth culture Hebdige, feminist and postmodern views of youth subcultures Class, ethnic and hybrid subcultures and consensus versus conflict Delinquent, criminal, spectacular and anti-school subcultures Gangs, newer deviant subcultures and patterns in youth offending Functionalist, New Right and Marxist explanations of youth deviance Labelling, identity, gender, ethnicity and moral panics in youth deviance

MediaComponent 01

Topic overview Representations of ethnicity and nationality, symbolic annihilation and the male gaze Representations of gender, social class and young people Representations of older people and theories of media representation Direct and indirect media effects models Active audience models, deviance amplification and moral panics

Research Methods and Researching Social Inequalities

Topic overview Positivism, quantitative data and interpretivism Verstehen, qualitative data and validity Reliability, representativeness, generalisability and theory Research topics, aims, hypotheses and primary and secondary data Operationalisation, pilot studies and respondent validation Longitudinal studies, interpreting data and social policy Sampling frames, sampling techniques and choosing a sample Access, gatekeepers and research ethics Questionnaires, structured interviews, statistics, content analysis and observation Unstructured interviews, ethnography and methodological pluralism

Understanding Social Inequalities

Topic overview Stratification, class, poverty, mobility and gender inequality Ethnicity, age, work and health inequalities Functionalist and Marxist explanations of inequality Weberian, feminist and New Right explanations of inequality

Globalisation and the Digital Social World

Topic overview Globalisation, the digital revolution and media convergence Social media, social capital and theoretical views of digital communication Digital identities, the digital divide and social class Gender, age, relationships and cultural impacts of digital communication

Crime and DevianceComponent 03

Topic overview Defining crime and deviance, social control and relativity Social construction of crime and police recorded crime The Crime Survey, victim surveys and self-report studies Crime patterns by social class, gender and age Crime patterns by ethnicity, crime trends and global organised crime Glocal organised crime and green crime Functionalist, strain and subcultural theories of crime Marxist, interactionist and left realist theories of crime Right realism, New Right, feminism and explaining ethnic and age patterns Left-wing crime reduction, social crime prevention and restorative justice Situational crime prevention, zero tolerance and punitive justice

EducationComponent 03

Topic overview Functionalist, Marxist and liberal views of the role of education Social democratic, New Right and feminist views and vocational education Class and ethnic patterns in educational attainment Gender patterns, global educational inequality and intersectionality Inside-school factors: labelling, setting, triage and institutional racism Material and cultural deprivation and cultural capital Explaining gender and ethnic differences and theoretical views of achievement Types of school and education policy since 1988 Ideology, marketisation and equality of opportunity in education policy

Religion, Belief and FaithComponent 03

Topic overview Defining religion, faith and belief, churches and denominations Sects, cults, new religious and new age movements and fundamentalism Measuring religiosity and believing without belonging Functionalist and Marxist views of the role of religion Neo-Marxist, Weberian, feminist, phenomenological and postmodern views of religion Religion, social change and whether religion is positive or negative Class and gender patterns in religiosity Women's changing religiosity and ethnic and age patterns Age cohorts, global religious trends and resurgence Defining secularisation and evidence of religious decline Pro- and anti-secularisation theories Religion and social policy, the golden age critique and global patterns

Crime and Deviance

Functionalist, strain and subcultural theories of crime

2 things to know
Component 03

Overview

Recall questions on Durkheim's view that crime is inevitable and functional, anomie, Merton's strain theory and five adaptations, Albert Cohen's status frustration and delinquent subculture, Cloward and Ohlin's three subcultures, Miller's focal concerns, and Matza's drift and techniques of neutralisation.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

How does Merton's strain theory explain the causes of crime?

Key term

List the focal concerns Miller identified in lower-class culture.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1
Why did Durkheim argue that crime is inevitable, and what two positive functions did he claim it performs?
Model answer
Durkheim held that not everyone can be equally well socialised and that modern societies contain too great a diversity of subcultures for one collective conscience to bind everyone, so rule-breaking is unavoidable; it achieves boundary maintenance, because punishing offenders unites the community and reaffirms its values, and it permits adaptation and change, because today's deviant challenge to an outdated norm may become tomorrow's morality.
2
Define the term anomie.
Model answer
Anomie is a condition of normlessness in which the shared rules governing people's behaviour and expectations become weak or unclear, so that individuals are no longer effectively restrained.
3
How does Merton's strain theory explain the causes of crime?
Model answer
Merton argued that societies encourage everyone to pursue the same success goals, principally material wealth, but distribute the legitimate means of achieving them unequally, and the resulting strain pushes those blocked from success towards deviant routes.
4
Name Merton's five adaptations to strain, state which produces most utilitarian crime, and give one weakness of the model.
Model answer
They are conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion, and innovation produces most utilitarian crime because the innovator accepts the goal of wealth but uses illegitimate means; its weakness is that it treats deviance as an individual response and cannot account for group delinquency or for crimes that bring no material gain.
5
What did Cohen mean by status frustration?
Model answer
Cohen argued that working-class boys are judged against a middle-class measuring rod in school and find themselves at the bottom of the legitimate status hierarchy, producing a resentment at their failure that he called status frustration.
6
According to Cohen, how does the delinquent subculture resolve status frustration?
Model answer
The boys collectively invert mainstream values and create an alternative status hierarchy in which acts the wider society condemns earn respect from peers, which is why much delinquency is malicious and non-utilitarian rather than profitable.

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Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity

Families and Relationships

Youth Subcultures

Media

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Murdock identified sexual, , economic and educational functions.

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AVictims may fear reprisal, or feel shame or economic dependence.

BAbuse in the home has historically been treated as a private matter.

CMany incidents are never reported or recorded.

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Sex refers to the biological category of male or female.

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