Albert Cohen

2 Key excerpts on "Albert Cohen"

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  eBook - ePub

  Theories of Crime

  • Ian Marsh(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Having said that, Merton’s theory does have certain strengths. It explains crime in terms of the structure and culture of society, rather than individual characteristics. As such it is a structural theory of crime which laid the basis for later theorizing based on the notion of subcultures—the idea that certain groups are more predisposed to break the rules of society than others. Such approaches are introduced below.

  Albert Cohen AND SUBCULTURAL THEORIES

  In his widely cited study Delinquent Boys, published in 1955, Albert Cohen provides a different version of strain theory. The influence of Merton is apparent through his focusing on features of contemporary American society that create strains for individuals which eventually lead to delinquent behaviour—in particular the importance of the values which form the ‘American way of life’. However, Cohen questions whether criminal and delinquent behaviour is caused by a desire for material goals. Like Merton, he focuses on the working-class delinquency but argues that a large amount of such behaviour is expressive in character and not centred on acquiring money or goods. Delinquency centred on vandalism or violence is a clear example of such behaviour that is not concerned with material gain.

  Cohen’s argument is that American society is dominated by middle-class values and norms which are passed on through the education system and mass media. He looks to the education system in particular for his explanation of delinquency. Schools emphasize and embody middle-class values and so working-class boys (he focused on males) are ill-equipped to compete with middle-class boys, or ‘college boys’, and to gain status through education. Such working-class boys, or ‘corner boys’ as Cohen called them, suffer status frustration at school and respond by attempting to turn the middle-class value system on its head. Anything the school disapproves of the corner boy will see as good, with delinquency seen as a direct denial of middle-class values. Working-class, corner boys reject the values of the school and form groups which emphasize different, essentially delinquent, values—they form what Cohen defined as a delinquent subculture.

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  eBook - ePub

  Criminology

  A Sociological Introduction

  • Eamonn Carrabine, Alexandra Cox, Pamela Cox, Isabel Crowhurst, Anna Di Ronco, Pete Fussey, Anna Sergi, Nigel South, Darren Thiel, Jackie Turton(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Delinquent Boys (1955) became a classic in the field. In this study, Cohen notes that delinquent boys stole for the hell of it. They engaged in short-run hedonism and in what he called a ‘reaction formation’ to the frustration experienced as part of a class system, especially in school. In contradiction to Merton, they did not steal to gain goods or property. Instead, they gained status among their peers through adopting contrary or subversive, negative values which were the antithesis of the middle-class values taught in middle-class educational worlds.

  Cohen’s study of delinquent boys employed the idea of ‘subculture’ (which was familiar in anthropology but less so in sociology) to describe the way that dominant culture could be borrowed from and reworked (e.g. through expressions of language and fashion) to produce a ‘solution’ to the problems posed by being from the ‘wrong social class’ or the ‘wrong kind of neighbourhood’. Cohen explained how this happened through pioneering the idea that boys become delinquent because of what he termed ‘status frustration’, the process by which people feel thwarted when they aspire to a certain status. In schools especially, Cohen noted that boys from more deprived backgrounds often found school life an alienating and frustrating experience. They were being judged by what Cohen called the ‘middle class measuring rod’. They initially wanted to be successes in the school but found that they had not developed the skills to do this in their family and community life. For example, reading books was alien, and being polite and ‘well-spoken’ hard. Their cultural backgrounds had poorly equipped them for school life. Cohen suggests that in their frustration they inverted the values of the school – achievement, hard work, respect for the sanctity of private property, planning for the future and deferring gratification – and developed instead a contra-culture in which values of non-achievement, playing around, not thinking of the future and instant gratification deliberately become their goals – effectively turning middle-class values upside down. Their delinquent activities were non-utilitarian (they steal ‘for the hell of it’), negativistic (opposing the values of adult society), malicious, versatile and characterised by short-run hedonism and group autonomy.

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