3.1.4: Subcultural Theories

The dominant culture is the majority group that has its certain norms, values, and preferences that are imposed on everyone else. This culture is forced on everyone as the accepted way to live, behave, and believe whether or not groups who are not represented in this dominant majority agree and even when they contradict what is preferred for smaller, less powerful groups. These other groups have their own subculture, which may not align with the dominant culture.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Second Narrows Graffiti

A subculture is an identifiable subgroup within the larger culture whose values may differ from those present in the dominant group. This could include specific standards of behavior that are learned and passed down from generation to generation, for example. Crime, gangs, violence, and inner-city neighborhoods have been studied in a manner that ties the concept of subculture to criminal and even violent behavior.

Some sociologists stress that poverty and other community conditions give rise to certain subcultures through which adolescents acquire values that promote deviant behavior. One of the first to make this point was Albert K. Cohen (1955), whose status frustration theory says that lower-class boys do poorly in school because schools emphasize middle-class values. School failure reduces their status and self-esteem, which the boys try to counter by joining juvenile gangs. In these groups, a different value system prevails, and boys can regain status and self-esteem by engaging in delinquency. Cohen had nothing to say about girls, as he assumed they cared little about how well they did in school, placing more importance on marriage and family instead, and hence would remain nondelinquent even if they did not do well. Scholars later criticized his disregard for girls and assumptions about them.

Another sociologist, Walter Miller (1958), said poor boys become delinquent because they live amid a lower-class subculture that includes several focal concerns, or values, that help lead to delinquency. These focal concerns include a taste for trouble, toughness, cleverness, and excitement. If boys grow up in a subculture with these values, they are more likely to break the law. Their deviance is a result of their socialization. Critics said Miller exaggerated the differences between the value systems in poor inner-city neighborhoods and wealthier, middle-class communities (Akers & Sellers, 2008).

Cohen and Delinquency Subculture

Albert Cohen’s theory of delinquent subcultures offers a different way of understanding crime from the classical rational-choice theories and Merton’s strain theory. It is a complementary theory that helps explain crimes that are non-utilitarian, malicious and negativistic – that is to say, crime that does not have any rational goal but is done simply for “the hell of it” (Cohen, 1955, p. 25-26). For Cohen, the explanation for juvenile delinquency of this sort is cultural in nature. Juvenile delinquency represents a particular type of subculture. Children learn to become delinquents by being socialized into youth gangs, where they learn the beliefs, values, codes, and tastes of the group (Cohen, 1955).

As with many early criminologists, Cohen saw juvenile delinquency primarily as a working-class, male phenomenon. This is because working-class youth are taught the democratic ideal that everyone can become rich and successful, but in school they encounter a set of distinctly middle-class values against which their behavior is measured. These class-specific values are framed as universal, making it much easier for middle-class youth to achieve recognition in school for behaving correctly. This leads to feelings of inferiority, which last as long as the working-class boys cling to that particular worldview (Cohen, 1955).

The delinquent subculture presents young boys with a new set of values and a means of acquiring status within a different cultural context. These new values are an inversion of the middle-class standards that working-class boys are judged by in school. For example, while the middle-class places value on controlling aggression and respecting property, the culture of the gang legitimates violence and group stealing (Cohen, 1955). While the act of theft may bring material benefits, for Cohen it also reaffirms the cultural cohesion of the group and the status of its members. It is a joint activity that derives its meaning from the common understandings and common loyalties of the group.

For Cohen, the juvenile delinquent is a rogue male (Cohen, 1955, p. 140). What about young females? Do they not also engage in group delinquency? In this area, the theory of delinquent subcultures reflects gender stereotypes of the 1950s. Cohen (1955) argues that females do not get involved with gang activities because their status is determined primarily by their relationship to males, and therefore they do not suffer the same forms of status inferiority as their male counterparts. Because their status is so tied to males, Cohen argues that most female delinquency tends to be sexual delinquency (Cohen, 1955, p. 144). Whether or not this explains the cause of female delinquency, it certainly represented society’s reaction to the behavior of young girls during this period.

Cohen’s theory has been useful for researchers, but it does not explain why most delinquents eventually turn to more conventional, law-abiding pursuits to attain status in adult life. Why would this way of attaining status be particularly attractive to youth? Perhaps, as Bordua (1961) suggests, they are just out there looking for fun. Also, if juvenile delinquency is the result of working-class status frustration, how do we account for the growing phenomenon of middle-class?

Walter B. Miller and Focal Concerns

Focal Concerns theory, posited in 1962, explains the behavior of members of adolescent street corner groups in lower-class communities. The six focal concerns are:

1. Trouble: Seeking to avoid trouble and maintain a good reputation.
2. Toughness: Engaging in physical confrontations and fighting.
3. Smartness: Outsmarting others and gaining something by outwitting or conning them.
4. Excitement: Seeking thrill and excitement in socializing with peers.
5. Fate: Believing that their lives are largely beyond their control, often leading to fatalism.
6. Autonomy: Taking matters into their own hands rather than seeking help.

These concerns are seen as areas or issues that command widespread and persistent attention and a high degree of emotional involvement within the lower-class subculture. Miller's theory suggests that delinquency is part of the learned cultural values rather than an anomic reaction to unattainable goals.

Routine Activities Theory

Routine activities theory sees crime as a function of people’s everyday behavior. For a crime to be committed, there needs to be three elements: a suitable target, a motivated offender, and an absence of guardianship (Cohen & Felson, 1983). This theory claims, for example, that crime will occur when the motivated thief is present near an easy target that is not adequately protected.

One of the most common robbery targets used to be convenience stores. They were seen as easy targets because they always had an amount of cash on hand and for a motivated offender, it was the perfect location to get quickly in and out without getting caught. However, with the help of a convicted person who used to rob convenience stores, store owners learned new strategies and changed into what we see today. Having video cameras filming at all times, a time-locked safe, and even a ruler on the door so that the clerk could give the police a more accurate height estimation were all changes that helped to make the convenience store less of a suitable target because of the creation of guardianship in the store.

Guardianship is measured by the extent to which people during the course of their daily lives protect their property, themselves, and others from crime. Reasons for reduced guardianship have been linked to the fact that because of work and maybe even vacation, our property is often left unguarded. Having a doorbell that also records video can be seen as a significant change in guardianship when it comes to home safety.

Routine activities theory can explain a variety of deviant acts as well as help to understand some changes in crime rates. Osgood et al. (1996) found that in a survey of 18- to 26-year-olds, the time spent in unstructured socializing with peers in the absence of authority figures led to an increase in delinquent behavior, illicit drug and heavy alcohol use, and dangerous driving. A lack of structure creates more time to participate in delinquent behavior, and the presence of peers makes that behavior more rewarding.

Routine activity theory looks at the lifestyle and behavioral patterns of individuals to determine their risk of criminal or delinquent behavior in our society. However, there is criticism of this theory as being a “victim blaming” theory since instead of looking at the motivated offender, the theory can focus on the victim and what the victim could have done differently to avoid being victimized. Everyone has the right to live a non-victimized life, but there are behaviors such as excessive alcohol and drug use, walking in non-populated areas at certain times, and even leaving your home that have been shown to create a suitable target.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, crime fell 23% in the first month of the lockdown and that drop was seen to be directly related to the population’s mobility. Business closures and stay-at-home orders meant that there was a decrease in people who were outside of their homes. During the pandemic’s restrictive times, home burglaries dropped but commercial burglaries and car thefts rose. It could be said that the motivated offenders needed to find a suitable target that wasn’t guarded, so cars and businesses became the focus. Residential burglaries decreased by 24% while non-residential burglaries rose 38%. Since people were not leaving their homes, cars stayed parked for a longer period, and in some cities, the rate of car thefts doubled during the pandemic.

Gangs

Frederic Thrasher, another sociologist from the famed Chicago School, conducted a classic study in 1927 in which he described gangs as coming together spontaneously at first, then becoming integrated through conflict with other gangs and the surrounding community. The gangs had similar features to formal organizations, such as an identity as a group, stability, commitment, exclusivity, and an internal structure with distinct statuses and roles.

Thrasher’s study included 1,313 gangs that each occupied a part of Chicago. He believed that the social conditions in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century encouraged the development of street gangs. An influx of immigrants filled the inner-city neighborhoods, and they created a more culturally diverse population that was subjected to deteriorating housing, poor employment prospects, and a rapid turnover in the population. The conditions created socially disorganized neighborhoods (remember social disorganization theory) with weak and ineffective social institutions and social control mechanisms. It was this lack of social control that Thrasher believed encouraged youth to discover alternative ways to establish social order which was accomplished by forming gangs.

Wolfgang and Ferracuti Violence Subcultures

American criminologist Marvin Wolfgang and Italian criminologist Franco Ferracuti (1982) developed the subculture of violence theory in which they used norms and values as explanatory variables for the origin of violent crime. They implied that norms of behavior are created in social conditions, social classes, and ethnic and racial groups. Wolfgang (1958) conducted a study on homicide in Philadelphia and discovered evidence consistent with his and Ferracuti’s theory. Forty-three percent of the homicide offenders had been arrested previously for crimes against people with about one-fourth of homicide victims having been previously arrested for violent crimes. The conclusion is that there are certain groups in certain areas where there exists a norm that favors the use of violence to deal with conflict and it is seen as normal in these communities.

For some, violence is more common during their youth, but as they become older, they distance themselves from the violence that once may have been common. Reacting to situations with violence is a learned behavior that can be unlearned.

Code of the Streets

In 1990, Elijah Anderson published his findings of a study that looked at Black neighborhoods along Philadelphia’s Germantown Avenue in his book The Code of the Street. In his study, Anderson detailed the aspects of the code of the street, or street culture, which stressed a hyperinflated notion of manhood that centers on the idea of respect. According to Anderson, respect was defined as being treated right or being granted one’s props or the deference an individual deserves.

In the code, a man’s sense of worth is determined by the respect he can command in public. How is this respect gained? Anderson found that since they lived in a subculture that was violent, an individual could not back down from any threat no matter how serious. Also, since economic and social circumstances limited opportunities for legitimate success, many tried to find alternative ways of making money to provide for their families.

One major distinction that Anderson made was between both families and people in the inner-city neighborhoods by dividing them into two different groups: decent families and street families. “Decent families” upheld positive values. Conversely, “street families” were oriented to the values of the streets which involved displays of physical strength and intellectual prowess that demonstrated their ability to take care of themselves and their families.

The code was helpful in achieving success on the streets but was very detrimental when it came to socially accepted (and legal) success. Violence in society does not generally increase opportunities, rather it limits opportunities. This makes for a difficult transition for individuals who wish to leave “the life” but do not have the skills to achieve success in a society where one doesn’t benefit from being street-smart.