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Robert K Merton

Born 1910 – died 2002

Merton and Deviance: Anomie & Strain Theory

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917, pictured left) was a major influence on Merton's thought.

Durkheim's major study of deviance was his detailed and empirical analysis of suicide rates.

Durkheim had insisted that suicide was a social, rather than a natural or psychological phenomenon.

He defined anomic suicide as arising from a state of “normlessness", or lack of “moral regulation“. This was related he maintained to periods of economic and social change.

When the social and economic climate is one in which such aspirations cannot be realised, existing methods of social regulations may break down, resulting in individuals experiencing anomie, which in turn can cause personal breakdown and ultimately, suicide.

Merton elaborated on this central notion of the relationships between "goals" and the "means" to achieve them. He applied the concept of anomie more generally to the study of crime and deviance.

Merton argued that aspirations – goals/desires were socially produced, and that his theory of deviance was not an attempt to explain all deviance, in all societies, but rather to explain the presence and character of crime and deviance in American society.

In short, Merton argued that there was a "strain" or conflict between the "cultural goals" of American society, and the "opportunities", or "means" to achieve these goals in the social structure. The cultural goals of American society were an all pervasive "materialism".

The American dream, promised material success to everyone in society if they worked hard.

The often cited notion of from "log cabin to President", expresses the cultural ideal that anyone who works can be successful.

Merton claimed that "American Dream" promised that anyone could get rich was not in fact the case. He argued that there was an inequality of opportunity in the social structure, preventing the majority of people ever attaining the cultural goal of economic wealth by legitimate (legal) means.

This problem was intensified by an over-emphasis in American society on achieving the goals of economic success, and an under-emphasis on the need for this to be achieved by legitimate means.

The structural fact that America is a stratified society where the vast majority of people have no realistic chance of ever being wealthy is, therefore, in tension with the cultural goal of economic wealth that everyone is socialised into striving for.

In the face of this strain between the "wanting to get rich" and having unrealistic prospects of achieving this goal, people are forced to adapt depending on their circumstances, and will respond in different ways.

Merton identified 5 possible modes of adaption.

Those at the top of the social structure could conform both to the goals of American society, and the legitimate means of achieving them.

Others, primarily sections of the working classes could adapt through innovation, crimes such as robbery and gangsterism, where they conformed to the goals, but used illegal methods of achieving them.

American society encouraged this response by under emphasising the need the importance of legitimate means, and over emphasising the cultural goals.

The third mode of adaption was ritualism, where members of society, typically the lower middle class gave up on the goals, and just went through the ritual of following the legitimate means of achieving them.

A fourth response was retreatism. Here members gave up on the goals and the legitimate means of achieving them, becoming drop outs, down and outs, alcoholics, drug addicts, etc.

A fifth response was rebellion where people rejected the goals of society, and the means of achieving those goals, and aimed to replace them with different goals and different means of achieving those different goals.

Mode of Adaption

Goal Legitimate Means

Conformity + +

Innovation + -

Ritualism - +

Reatreatism - -

Rebellion

For Merton, then, deviance was a "built-in product" of the system.

American society

fetishized (obsession) money as the sign of success, and deflected any criticisms of the social structure back into blaming the unsuccessful victims.

Merton's "anomie-and-opportunity structure" (1938) theory has been a major influence in the sociology of deviance, and is one of the most cited papers in modern sociological research.