Strain, Anomie and Subcultural Theory

Theorists who explain crime and delinquency as a response to strain, the gap between a society's culturally approved goals and the legitimate means available to reach them, beginning with the sociological concept of anomie, a breakdown of social norms under rapid social change, and extending through strain theory's account of how blocked opportunity produces deviance, general strain theory's broader account of strain from negative life events and relationships, and subcultural theory's account of how groups facing blocked opportunity together develop their own delinquent values and gangs. This group gathers the concept's own originators, the strain theorists who built it into a full account of crime, and the subcultural and gang researchers whose ethnographic and qualitative work traces how blocked opportunity plays out in real delinquent groups, and it excludes researchers whose central claim is about neighborhood structure rather than the individual's or group's own response to blocked goals, who belong under Chicago School and Social Disorganization Theory.