Cohen Status Frustration

• Status Frustration

  Cohen focuses on working class boys in school who fail to succeed in middle class environments and end up at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
• •Albert Cohen (1971) agreed that deviance is an issue mainly concerning the lower-class, as they are unable of achieving the ‘American dream’••Cohen critics Merton on the following…•1)Merton believes deviance is due to individual strain to achieve.2)Merton is primarily concerned with utilitarian crime (crime for material gain), and ignores altermatic crime.
• •Cohen argued that working class (young boys in particular) hold the same success goals as the wider society, but due to educational failure and poor employment opportunities cannot reach their goal.•They therefore become stuck at the lowest levels of stratification and feel a sense of frustration (status frustration). He believed this led to the development of an alternative set of views.•Risk taking behaviour such as stealing cars, vandalism and theft did not help them achieve their goals, but helped them to achieve a status amongst their peer groups.•
• Albert Cohen studied why working class boys tend to commit crime. Cohen came up with several ideas and a process as to why this class of boys are deviant including the idea of STATUS FRUSTRATION.
• Individuals form ‘sub-cultures’ with differing values to mainstream society.

  Sub-cultures will ‘invert’ mainstream norms…
• Albert Cohen studied why working class boys tend to commit crime. Cohen came up with several ideas and a process as to why this class of boys are deviant including the idea of STATUS FRUSTRATION.