SOCIOLOGY 170

Another example of this SUBCULTURE THEORY is ALBERT COHEN.

Cohen was influenced by merton's ANOMIE THEORY and SUBCULTURE
THEORIES, but not satisfied with them.  Anomie theory, he says,
suffers fromthe assumption that rupture (or dis continuity) of
behavior implies that deviance is an ABRUPT change of state, a leap
from a state of strin (or anomie) to a state of deviance. . .for
COHEN,  the history of a deviant act is the history of an INTERACTION
PROCESS.

Cohen--"Culture of the Gang"--Gangs may be the result of STATUS
FRUSTRATION (similar to Merton), in which adolescents collectively
react against standards to which they cannot measure up. . .  THis is
a NEGATION of middle-class culture.

Cohen wanted to expand the theories of social disorganization because
a) he felt that so-called socially-disorganized neighborhoods DID NOT
lack the organization or unity attirbuted to them, and b) the theory
did not account for the ORIGIN of the particular CONTENT of
delinquency.

Cohen was not satisifed with the culture conflict theories which
proposed that delinquency was the outcome of cultural disunity created
by competing norms and values between the dominant and the subcultural
groups

He was also dissatisfied with "illicit means" theory (ie, if people
couldn't get what they wanted through legal means, they would use
ILLICIT MEANS (note--"illicit means" is implied by MERTON)

Not only did these theories fail to acount for the particular content
of delinquency, but they failed also to  account for the
non-utilitarian quality of the delinquent subculture in that many acts
did not always appear to be a means of attaining otherwise
unobtainable goals.

Unlike Shaw and Mckay, who first set out to discover HOW delinquency
was distributed geographically throughout chicago, and then went in to
reconstruct the social conditions associated with high-delinquency
areas, COHEN a) asumed the existence and content of delinquency and b)
located the prmary "delinquency problem" within lower-class
communities.

Cohen suggested that the desire for STATUS ATTAINMENT is
characteristically AMERICAN, and not peculiar to lower class kids.
Lacking material and social resources to compete effectively for
status, lower class males were subjected to STRAIN and had three
options available tothem in their attempts to adjust:

    a) "CORNER BOY LIFE" (most common)--non-delinquent and stable;
(avoided rupture with lower-class adults, and does not represent a
renunciation with attempts to attain upward mobility

    b) "DESERT CORNER BOY LIFE" for college-boy way of life (some
strains with subculture)

   c) ADOPT DELINQUENT RESPONSE that offers a) expression(and
legitimation) of aggression b) a form of status NOT BASED ON MIDDLE
CLASS VALUES (ie, a form of rebellion)--

This is a form of REACTION FORMATION (an oppositional rsonse to the
pious legality of bourgeois existence.. . .  COHEN stresses that
delinquents have ambivalence regarding middle-clas morality.

This reaction formation was stressed as a way of coming to tems with
one's deliqnuent impusles, and leads to an oppositional subculture.

CRITIQUE OF COHEN

Subcultural delinquent may begin with indecision or ambivalence but he
resolves it through commitment to moral negativism

Cohen is ambiguous on two critical points:

a) relation between delinquent and conventional values and b)
proximity between values of delinquents and behavior

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