Crime and Deviance

• Becker defining deviance

  An act only becomes deviant when others define it as such
• Labelling an act as deviant


  1. Who commits the act

  2. When and where it is committed

  3. Who observes the act

  4. Negotiations between actors
• Master status


  The label applied to the individual becomes their defining characteristic
• Individual labelled as deviant


  Rejected from certain social groups, may encourage further deviance, leading to a deviant career
• Acts considered deviant in one place/time/culture but not another


  • Wearing a bikini to the beach vs Wearing a bikini to school
• Carlen's interviews

  In-depth, unstructured
• Carlen's theoretical approach

  Control theory
• Class deal


  Offers respectable working class women consumer goods in return for their wage
• Gender deal


  Offers psychological and material rewards in return for their love and domestic labour
• When class and gender deals are not available

  Criminality becomes a viable alternative
• How women are controlled

  • At home
  • At work
  • In public
• Cohen thinks that everyone learns the same values and goals through socialisation
• Cultural deprivation


  Working-class attitudes to school and education, rather than a structural issue
• Delinquent subculture


  A group with its own norms and values, separate from those of mainstream society
• Status frustration


  Explains why young working-class males are more likely to commit crimes
• Blocked opportunities

  Lead to working class boys turning to delinquent subcultures to gain status
• Merton argued that deviance results from the culture and structure of society
• Value consensus


  All members of society hold the same values
• Anomie


  A situation where 'anything goes' in pursuit of wealth and material success
• Merton's 5 responses to strain/anomie

  • Conformity
  • Innovation
  • Ritualism
  • Retreatism
  • Rebellion
• Merton has been criticised for not taking into account power relations in society
• Merton has been criticised for his assumption of a 'value consensus' in American society
• Merton has been criticised for his 'deterministic' view failing to explain why only some individuals who experience anomie become criminals
• Merton has been criticised for exaggerating working class crime and underestimating middle class, 'white collar' crime
• How many women were in Carlen's study?

  39