Merton

• Functionalist perspective 
• Social order is based on agreement around social GOALS and approved ways of achieving them (MEANS). 
• Merton argued that deviance results from the culture and structure of society. He starts from the standard functionalist position of value consensus – all members of society hold the same values . 
• However, because members of society have different positions in the social structure, for example in terms of social class, Merton believed that they did not have the same opportunity to realise their shared goals. He also believed that American society was unbalanced because greater importance was attached to success, than to the ways in which that success was achieved. In the search for success by almost any means the danger is that the usual rules governing behaviour in society are abandoned, a situation of anomie results, where ‘anything goes’ in pursuit of wealth and material success. 
• Merton has been criticised for not taking into account power relations in society, for example by failing to consider who makes the laws and who benefits from them. He has also been criticised for his assumption that there is such a thing as a ‘value consensus’ in American society. Furthermore, it has been suggested that his ‘deterministic’ view fails to adequately explain why only some individuals who experience anomie become criminals and that his theory exaggerates working class crime and underestimates middle class, ‘white collar’ crime.
• He described five possible ways in which individuals could respond to success goals in American society:

  1. Conformity
  2. Innovation
  3. Ritualism
  4. Retreatism
  5. Rebellion
• One of the ways an individual could respond to success goals in American society is:

  5 Rebellion: this describes those individuals who reject success goals and the usual means of achieving them, but then replace those that they have rejected with different goals and means. They are deviant because they wish to create a new society, in Merton’s view they are typically members of a ‘rising’ social class who may well attempt to organise a revolution. 
• One of the ways an individual could respond to success goals in American society is:

  4 Retreatism: this describes individuals from any social class position who are deviant because they abandon both success goals and any means of achieving them. They ‘drop out’ of society; this response can be applied to explain the behaviour of social outcasts of all kinds including vagrants and drug addicts. 
• One of the ways an individual could respond to success goals in American society is:

  3 Ritualism: this describes middle class individuals who are deviant because they abandon conventional success goals. They are unable to innovate because they have been strongly socialised to conform, but they have little opportunity for advancement and remain stuck in low paid, low status ‘respectable' jobs where they may exhibit an enthusiasm for rules and petty bureaucracy. 
• One of the ways an individual could respond to success goals in American society is:

  2 Innovation: this describes individuals who are unable to succeed using conventionally accepted routes and turn to deviant means, usually crime. Merton believed that this route was most likely to be taken by individuals who came from the lower levels of society and who are denied the usual routes to success because they are, for example, less likely to gain the necessary educational qualifications. 
• One of the ways an individual could respond to success goals in American society is:

  1 Conformity: this describes individuals who work towards achieving success by conventionally accepted means, eg by gaining educational qualifications which in turn give them access to secure, well paid employment. Other conventional routes to success include talent, hard work and ambition.