Individual and Social Strain

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Individual and Social Strain

• Social Merton Social structure unequally
  distributes means to achieve culturally valued
  goals.
• Individual Agnew Strain is experienced at the
  individual level as anger, stress, frustration,
  anxiety, etc.

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Agnews General Strain Theory
Strain

• Negative emotions
• Anger
• Resentment
• Rage
• Dissatisfaction
• Disappointment

Coping strategies (including crime)
At the individual level, what are possible
sources of negative emotions?
3
Strain as the actual or anticipated failure to
achieve positively valued goals

• Strain as gap between aspirations and
  expectations/actual achievements
• Strain as gap between expectations and actual
  achievements
• Strain as disjunction between just/fair outcomes
  and actual outcomes (equity)

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Strain as the actual or anticipated failure to
achieve positively valued goalsLame clip art
version
Barrier
Positively valued goal
This type of strain Consistent with Merton (and
Cohen)
Person seeking positively valued goal
5
Strain as the actual or anticipated removal of
positively valued stimuli

• Negative emotions stemming from loss of, e.g.,
  parent, friend, material goods, etc.

Positively valued stimulus
Person experiencing loss of positively valued
stimulus
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Strain as the actual or anticipated presentation
of negatively valued stimuli

• Negative emotions stemming from e.g., child
  abuse/neglect, criminal victimization, physical
  punishment, negative relations with
  parents/peersdisgusting scenes, exposure to
  violence, etc.

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Linking strain to delinquency

• Anger as key intervening emotion
• Delinquency may alleviate anger/strain
• delinquency may be used to achieve positively
  valued goals, protect/retrieve positively valued
  stimuli, or terminate/escape negative stimuli
• delinquency may be used to seek revenge
• delinquency may be used to manage/cope with
  negative emotions (e.g., drug use)

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Why Does Strain Lead to Delinquent Adaptations?

• Strain affects valued goals/values/identities
• Availability of individual coping resources
• Availability of social support
• Constraints to delinquent coping
• Costs/benefits of crime in a given situation
• Social control
• Access to illegitimate means
• Disposition to delinquency

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Origin of Conflict/Inequality ModelsSellins
Culture Conflict Model

• Law is variable across time and cultures law is
  the imposition by powerful groups of their
  cultural codes upon the powerless
• The cause of crime some behaviors that are
  encouraged or tolerated in subcultural groups are
  criminalized by the dominant culture

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Sellin (contd)

• The causes of culture conflict
• Growth of civilization social differentiation
  leads to an infinity of social groupings each
  with its own subculture
• Migration of conduct norms rooted in immigration
  to the US
• Conquest

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SutherlandApproach to Theory

• Logical abstraction
• Differentiating levels of analysis
• Analytic induction (deterministic versus
  probabilistic)

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Differential AssociationThe Nine Propositions

• 1. Criminal behavior is learned
• Not inherited

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Differential AssociationThe Nine Propositions

• 1. Criminal behavior is learned
• Not inherited
• 2. Criminal behavior is learned in interaction
  with other persons in a process of communication
• Verbal
• Gestures

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Differential AssociationThe Nine Propositions

• 3. Criminal behavior learned mostly in intimate
  personal groups
• Media not very important

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Differential AssociationThe Nine Propositions

• 3. Criminal behavior learned mostly in intimate
  personal groups
• Media not very important
• 4. Learning includes
• Techniques of committing crime
• The specific direction of motives, drives,
  rationalizations, and attitudes

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Differential AssociationThe Nine Propositions

• 5. The direction of motives and dirves is
  learned from definitions of the legal codes as
  favorable or unfavorable
• In the U.S., definitions are usually mixed,
  resulting in culture conflict

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Differential AssociationThe Nine Propositions

• 6. A person becomes delinquent because of an
  excess of definitions favorable to violation of
  law over definitions unfavorable to violation of
  law
• Principle of differential association

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Differential AssociationThe Nine Propositions

• 7. Differential associations may vary in
  frequency, duration, priority, and intensity
• Frequency how often
• Duration how long and how much time has the
  association occupied
• Priority how early did the association begin
• Intensity how important is the relationship

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Differential AssociationThe Nine Propositions

• 8. The process of learning criminal behavior
  involves all the mechanisms that are involved in
  any other learning

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Differential Social Organization

• Differential social organization the extent to
  which a GROUP is organized in favor of crime or
  against crime

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Sutherland Macro and Micro Theories of
Differential Association
M A C R O M I C R O
Normative culture conflict
Differential social organization
Crime rates
Differential association
Individual crime