Revision summary
Merton: strain between universal success goals and unequal means. Adaptations cluster into subcultures with local morals. Cohen: status frustration and inversion of school values. Cloward and Ohlin: criminal, conflict, retreatist opportunity structures. Indian exam and street economies illustrate. Add gender and labelling to the generator.
Model answer
Introduction
Robert K. Merton started from a strain between culturally approved goals and legitimate means. Deviant subcultures are generated when groups share an adaptation to that strain and build a local moral world around it. Albert Cohen and later Cloward and Ohlin developed the subcultural step that Merton’s typology invited.
Body
Strain as the generator
- American culture, for Merton, stresses success. Legitimate means are unequally distributed by class.
- Anomie here is a mismatch, not Durkheim’s complete normlessness.
- Innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion are adaptations. Conformity is the majority.
From adaptation to subculture
- When innovators or rebels cluster, they teach techniques and justifications. That is a subculture.
- Albert Cohen’s delinquent boys: status frustration in school produces a reactive subculture that inverts middle-class measures.
- Cloward and Ohlin: the form of subculture depends on illegitimate opportunity structures—criminal, conflict, or retreatist.
How generation works, in Merton’s spirit
- Structural exclusion plus a shared success myth produces strain.
- Interaction in neighbourhoods, gangs, or workplaces supplies a solution and a name.
- Neutralisation and a local honour code stabilise deviance as normal for members.
Indian illustrations
- Exam coaching and cheating rings as innovation around educational success goals.
- Extortion economies in some urban pockets as criminal opportunity structures.
- Caste or student groups can be subcultures of conformity as well as of deviance; the generator is still strain plus association.
Limits
- Feminist critique: strain theory was male-street. Girls’ deviance and honour punishments were under-theorised.
- Labelling theory, after Howard Becker, says the audience helps generate the subculture by tagging it.
- Not all subcultures are deviant. Merton’s question is specifically about rule-breaking worlds.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD GOAL[Cultural goals] --> STRAIN[Means gap] STRAIN --> ADAPT[Merton adaptations] ADAPT --> CLUSTER[Shared solution] CLUSTER --> SUB[Deviant subculture] OPP[Illegitimate opportunity] --> SUB
Conclusion
For Merton, deviant subcultures grow when strained actors share adaptations and build a local code, especially where illegitimate means are available. Cohen and Cloward–Ohlin specify the group step. Classed schools and opportunity structures are the engines. Gender and labelling must be added so the generator is not only a boys’ street.
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Next question on this syllabus topic (2019 · Q8(c)). View answer →
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Did Merton write a full subculture theory?
He supplied strain and adaptations. Cohen and Cloward–Ohlin wrote the subcultural generation more fully.
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Are all poor neighbourhoods deviant subcultures?
No. Conformity remains common. Opportunity and association specify who builds a deviant code.
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