Sociology Central

Teaching Notes
Crime and Deviance
4. Functionalist Theories
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Functionalist Theories

In these Notes we’re going to review a number of theories of crime and deviance from a
Structural Functionalist perspective.

In case this sociological perspective is not clear to you, the first part of these Notes is given
over to a brief overview of this perspective. If you are familiar with this perspective, then this
overview will serve as revision material...

The second part of these Notes will provide an overview of some of the basic themes and
theories put forward by writers working within this general perspective to explain crime.

The Functionalist perspective is a form of Structuralist sociology and, as such, we can initially
characterise it as a form of macro sociological theorising. In this respect,
the main theoretical question addressed by sociologists working within the Functionalist
perspective is that of:

How do social systems ("societies") hold together?

In their attempts to provide an answer to this question, Functionalists have initially concentrated
upon two ideas that are closely related to the above:

1. How is order maintained in any society?

2. What are the main sources of stability in any society?

As you might imagine - given that the theoretical emphasis seems to be placed on rather grand
questions about the nature of social systems - Functionalist sociologists are not particularly
concerned with an examination of individual ideas, meanings and interpretations. We will look in
more detail about why this should be the case in a moment. What they do tend to emphasise,
however, is the idea that the basis of social order is to be found in shared values / consensus
(hence this perspective sometimes being referred-to as Consensus Structuralism to
distinguish it from the Conflict Structuralism of writers such as Marx).

When looking at varieties of Functionalist sociology, it is evident that all begin with an elaboration
of two major concepts:

1. Social System: In basic terms, "society" is seen as an organised structure (or framework) of
inter-related parts (called Institutions).

2. Social Structure: This refers to the specific framework around which any society is based (in
effect, social structure refers to the specific ways in which various institutions are related to
one another on a functional basis).

To develop these ideas, I've noted that the concept of social institution is central to this
perspective and an institution can be loosely defined as:
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“A broad pattern of shared, stable, social relationships”.

In this sense, an institution involves large-scale, organised, behaviour patterns that persist over
time. Examples in our society include:

Family,
Work,
Education and
Religion.

When Functionalists study "society", therefore, they look initially at institutional arrangements
and relationships, since these are seen as the basic building-blocks of any society. The way in
which institutions relate to one another determines the structure and basic character of any
society.

Institutional arrangements are also significant in relation to the concept of culture, which can
be defined as a:

“Broad pattern of values and beliefs that both characterise a particular way of life and
which are transmitted from generation to generation”.

The main reason for the significance of the relationship is that people are born into an existing
system of institutional arrangements.

In order to learn how to behave in society, therefore, arrangements have to be made for people
to fit-into existing patterns of behaviour (patterns that are established - and held relatively stable
and constant over time - by institutionalised patterns of behaviour). This process is
socialisation:

Values and beliefs are transmitted to individuals (and internalised - that is, they become an
essential part of an individual's social make-up), through a variety of socialising agencies (the
family, peer group, mass media and so forth). These agencies may be institutions in their own
right (the family for example) or part of an institutional set-up (the police, for example, are part of
a legal institution).

Through the socialising process the basic values of any society are internalised by individuals
and, for this to occur, Functionalists (such as Talcott Parsons, G.P.Murdock and William
Goode) argue that any society is founded, maintained and reproduced on the basis of a broad
value consensus (in this respect, broad levels of agreement over fundamental values, for
example).

From the above it is perhaps easy to see why Functionalist writers are not particularly interested
in the behaviour of individual social actors and the meanings and interpretations they place on
various forms of behaviour:

1. Firstly, society is seen as a set of inter-related and mutually-dependent social structures that
exist prior to any individual - the individual learns how to behave within society and, in this
respect, behaves in ways that are effectively pre-defined by these social structures.

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2. Secondly, because people are, by definition, socialised into a set of existing cultural values
(and they live their lives in accordance with such values), it follows that all human activity /
choice effectively takes place in the context of this institutionally-determined cultural order.

In effect, we can note the following:

The socialisation process - through which cultural values are transmitted to the individual -
places limits upon people's horizons, perception of potential courses of action and so forth.

People deviate from social norms, for example, not because they are irrational, "naturally bad" or
whatever. Deviation occurs because people are placed under various kinds of social pressure
that effectively limit their potential choices of action and it is to an understanding of such ideas
that we need to now turn.

In any analysis of Functionalist theory, the work of Emile Durkheim looms large, mainly because
he tends to be seen as the first sociologist to explicitly attempt the systematic theorising and
empirical study of the social world. That is, he tried to develop theories that explained why
people behaved in certain regular, broadly-predictable ways and, most importantly, he attempted
to test such theories by collecting research data.

Durkheim's work is characterised by its logical elegance and the example of the way in which he
attempts to locate criminal behaviour within an explicitly sociological context is instructive in this
respect.

In relation to crime and deviance, therefore, Durkheim was initially faced with a methodological
problem that stemmed from the way in which he attempted to theorise the general nature of the
social world:

In basic Functionalist terms, if something exists in society it must have a purpose for existing and
hence it must serve some kind of function.

For example, since crime existed it was necessary to explain the functions it performed for the
individual and / or society.

From Durkheim’s point-of-view, in order to understand the function of crime, it is necessary to

look at the way he characterised the nature of two basic types of society - small-scale societies
and large-scale societies

In small-scale societies (such as rural, pre-industrial, societies), social organisation was seen
to be fundamentally based around closely-shared norms and values. In such societies there is
a relatively limited number of social relationships and those that exist tend to be based upon
close, personal, norms and values.

Durkheim argued that since norms and values tend to be the social glue that binds people
together in groups, the combination of informal social controls, restricted geographic mobility
and the like, served as the basis for social order.

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As societies develop and grow, Durkheim argued that the moral ties which bind people together
are weakened because they cannot be continually reinforced by close, personal, contact. Thus,
as societies become more-complex in terms of the multitude of social relationships that exist, a
mechanism to regulate these types of relationships has to be developed - and this mechanism
is, in effect, a legal system.

In this respect, legal systems develop in order to codify moral behaviour and, in so doing,
Durkheim argued, this process lays the groundwork for our understanding of the functions of
both law and crime. These functions can be outlined as follows:

1. Firstly, laws mark the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in any large-
scale society. That is, they represent broad social guide-lines for people's behaviour, in much the
same way that norms represent specific social guide-lines.

2. Secondly, laws are a very public form of boundary marking. Unlike norms, for example, they
are written-down and applicable to everyone in a society. In this respect, the codification of
morals into laws requires public displays that such boundaries exist. Such displays may be
seen to be a function of such agencies as:

ü The mass media - whereby criminal behaviour is publicised.

ü The Courts - wherein the traditions and rituals of the legal system serve to set it apart from
everyday behaviour.

3. Thirdly, criminal behaviour was seen by Durkheim to be the way in which legal boundaries
were tested. He argued that because laws were necessarily social statics (they are slow to
change once adopted), there was the possibility that changes in people's behaviour over time
would fail to be reflected by appropriate changes in the law - unless some mechanism existed to
provide the impetus whereby change could be accommodated.

Criminal behaviour, in effect, represents the dynamic force whereby people are made to
reassess the applicability of various laws. Where laws are out-of-step with general behaviour,
they need to be changed.

A modern example of this idea might be found in the introduction of the Community Charge
("Poll Tax") in Britain in the early 1980’s; because the law was widely disobeyed, the government
was forced to rethink it's attitude to this particular law...

4. Finally, crime has an integrating function, in that public alarm and outrage at criminal acts
serves to draw the law-abiding closer together. This, according to Durkheim, serves to increase
levels of social solidarity (the communal feelings that people have for one another, the sense
of belonging to a coherent social group / society and so forth). In this way, the bonds between
people were seen to be continually reinforced by criminal behaviour.
Although Durkheim was clear about the functional significance of crime, he was also aware of
the fact that too much crime in a society would create problems.

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In this respect, Durkheim saw that too a high a level of criminal behaviour would be potentially
disruptive (or dysfunctional) because it would seriously weaken the moral order in society:

In effect, people would no-longer know what was morally right or morally wrong and so would be
unsure as to where the boundaries of acceptable behaviour lay. This is an argument that we will
return to in a latter Study Pack when we consider Ecological theories of crime and deviance.

In terms of the above, therefore, Durkheim argued that the basis of social order in complex,
industrial, societies was to be found in the relationship between two ideas, namely:

1. The Collective Conscience:

This idea is used to express the way in which collective beliefs, values and so forth
combine to create a kind of "collective sense of consciousness" about various aspects of
the social world within which people exist. In effect, it reflects the idea that "society" is
very much alive - just like a human being is alive - and the conscience of society is
expressed as a kind of "sum total" of the beliefs and values of people who belong to that
society. In effect, the collective conscience represents the will of society as a whole,
just as the individual conscience represents the will of particular individuals.

2. Legal rules:

For Durkheim - as for many Functionalist writers - legal rules represent a form of
objective expression of the collective conscience. In effect, laws develop out of (and
are underpinned by) the collective conscience of a society. In this respect, laws are
basically norms "writ large" - that is, norms of behaviour that don't just apply informally to
specific groups but which, on the contrary, are applied formally to everyone in society.

As we have seen, Durkheim argues that people are shaped by their social experiences (they
experience society as a moral force bearing down upon them) and it follows that if the collective
conscience is weakened (by, for example, too much criminal behaviour), the moral ties that bind
people together are also weakened.

When (or perhaps "if" ) this happens, the concept used by Durkheim to express this weakening
of moral ties was that of anomie:

In a literal sense, this concept can be taken to mean a state of normlessness - a situation in
which no norms of behaviour are in operation.

For Durkheim, therefore, anomie occurred when traditional norms of behaviour were
undermined without being replaced by new norms. In the absence of clear moral guide-lines for
their behaviour, people experience feelings of anxiety, aimlessness, purposelessness,
disorientation and so forth.
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Giddens ("Sociology") describes anomie as a

"Process whereby social norms lose their hold over individual / group behaviour".

Anomie, therefore, was seen by Durkheim to be a very dangerous phenomenon, mainly

because when people no-longer believe in their obligations to others (because they no-longer
have a concept of a collective conscience by which to guide their behaviour), they revert to
self-interest. In effect, they attempt to look after themselves without bothering too much about
how this may affect the lives of others...

Thus, high levels of criminal behaviour weaken the collective conscience and produce
anomie. Since human beings cannot live in a state of true anomie for long, social collapse
occurs, prior to the establishment of some new form of moral order...

Given the distinction between collective conscience and legal rules, briefly explain why
small-scale societies would, according to Durkheim, have no-need for a legal system?

One of the major criticisms of Durkheim's general work in relation to crime has been the idea
that he ignores the way in which power is a significant variable in relation to the way in laws are
created and maintained in any society. Thus, whilst Durkheim argued that the collective
conscience was the objective expression of the values held by everyone in society, Erikson
("Wayward Puritans", 1966) attempted to develop Durkheim's basic ideas about such things as
the boundary setting function of law. He did this by arguing that powerful groups within any
society were able to impose their views upon the majority by a process of ideological
manipulation. Erikson used the example of 17th century Puritanism to illustrate this idea.

In the Puritan religion, the idea developed that "God speaks directly to the individual" and,
therefore, clergy and Church organisation / hierarchies are not needed. This idea effectively
challenged the prevailing (Catholic) orthodoxy whose power was effectively established around
the principle that the word of God required mediation and interpretation through clerics.

Whilst we don't need to go into any great detail here, the Catholic Church played an active role in
the organisation of the State in 17th century Europe and, clearly, the rise of Puritan ideas directly
challenged not only the religious (ideological) power - but also the economic and political
power - of the Catholic Church.

In effect, since the Puritans were teaching that the Catholic Church was not just an irrelevance
but also an obstacle to religious thought and practice they were directly challenging the Church's
authority. Puritan ideas were, therefore, condemned as heresies and Puritans duly persecuted
as heretics...

The Puritan response to persecution was emigration to the "New World" (what is now North
America), whereupon they faced a new challenge to their religion.
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In Europe, the power of the Puritan leadership derived from leading the challenge to established
ideas. In the New World, however, no such established ideas held sway - there was, effectively,
no Catholic Orthodoxy to challenge (and no persecution either). The problem for the Puritan
leadership was basically that by leading their followers out of persecution they had (unknowingly)
removed the basis for their leadership (since, as you will recall, the Puritan Church had no need
of clerics...).

If we look at this in Durkheim's terms, it can be seen that:

1. The collective conscience of Puritan's in Europe expressed the shared values and common
concerns of the Church.

2. In America, however, since the circumstances that gave rise to a Puritan leadership had been
removed, the clear implication is that the collective conscience of the Puritan Church should
have re-established the Church as being one that had no need of a leadership.

As you might suspect, the Puritan leadership did not simply fade away. On the contrary, they
attempted to consolidate their power by attempting to change Puritan beliefs (although God still
spoke directly to individuals - a fundamental tenet of Puritanism that could not be easily changed
- it now began to transpire that a religious leadership was required in order to interpret the will of
God for the masses).

In this way, any challenge to the leadership began to be interpreted as heresy (the work of a
devil who wanted to destroy Puritanism), since it was the leadership who had given themselves
the power to decide which ideas came from God and which came from the Devil.

Thus, as we can see, it is important, when considering the nature of law, crime and deviance in
any society that we do not lose sight of the idea that powerful, vested, interests, may be able to
ideologically capture legal norms and adapt them to their own interests.

It should be noted that Erikson was not attempting to refute Durkheim's basic ideas but merely
to strengthen and extend them by introducing a "refining concept" to the basic theoretical
position.

A further example of this is to be found in the work of Robert Merton, in that he adopted
Durkheim's basic Functionalist position in relation to law and crime and refined the concept of
anomie as a means of attempting to understand the phenomenon of conformity and non-
conformity to social rules at the level of individual / group behaviour.

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As I’ve just noted, the work of Merton in relation to crime and deviance can be loosely
characterised as an attempt to adapt Durkheim's general ideas about anomie to specific social
situations and circumstances.

In this respect, Merton altered the general focus of Durkheim's use of the concept of anomie,
changing it from a condition whereby a state of true normlessness existed (that is, a situation in
which no moral guide-lines for peoples' behaviour existed) to one in which individuals could
experience anomie if they were unable to follow the dominant norms in any society. In this
sense, Merton is arguing that individuals can experience anomie not because normative guide-
lines do not exist, but rather because they are unable (or unwilling) to behave in ways that
conform to such norms.

In his work, (see, in particular, "Social Structure and Anomie", 1938), Merton explored the idea
that, in American society, there existed a disjunction (a "lack-of-fit") between the socially-
produced and encouraged ends or goals for people's behaviour and the means through which
they could achieve these desirable ends. In effect, what Merton was arguing was:

1. People were encouraged, through the socialisation process, to want certain things out of life
(desired ends). In simple terms, they were socialised into the "American Dream" of health,
wealth, personal happiness and so forth.

2. American society was so structured as to effectively ensure that the vast majority of people
could never realistically attain these ends - the means that American society provided - such as
hard work and so forth - were simply not sufficient to ensure that everyone could obtain the
desirable goals they were socialised to want.

In this respect, whilst American society placed a high social value upon "success" in all its forms
(it became a kind of universal goal or value), the means to gaining legitimate success were
effectively closed to all but a few - the vast majority of people would never achieve such goals by
working...

As Merton argued, if people are socialised into both wanting success and needing to be
successful by working - yet they are effectively denied that success through such means,
strains develop in the normative structure of society.

On the one hand, you have people being socialised into actively desiring success (success, in all
its forms and manifestations, is a desirable end in American society).

On the other, you have a large number of potentially very unhappy people when they discover
that the supposed means to such success do not deliver the goods.

In such a situation, anomie occurs because there is a tension between what people have been
socialised to desire and what they are able to achieve through legitimate means. Merton argued
that the disjunction between wanting "success" and the relative lack of legitimate opportunity
for success did not mean that people simply gave-up wanting to be successful. This was not
possible because the whole thrust of their socialisation was geared towards the value of

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success. In a situation whereby people desired success - yet were effectively denied it - he
argued that people would find other, probably less legitimate, means towards desired ends.

Before we look at the way in which Merton characterised a wide range of possible responses to
this anomic situation (the social strain that is caused by wanting something that it is not
possible to get legitimately), it's worth noting that in attempting to explain how people tried to
resolve this "ends and means" problem, Merton was aware that different social groups had
different expectations about the meaning of success.

For someone who has been unemployed for many months, for example, the simple fact of
getting a job may be considered as success - a desired end has been met.

Merton elaborated five basic responses to the anomic situation which he claimed to see in
American society. He classified these types of conformity and deviance in terms of acceptance
and denial of basic ends and means:

Response Means Ends

1. Conformity ü ü
2. Innovation X ü An example of each
category might be as
3. Ritualism ü X
follows:
4. Retreatism X X

5. Rebellion Rejects Rejects

1. Conformity applies to the law-abiding citizen. These people accept both socially-produced
ends and the socially-legitimated means to achieve them.

2. Innovation could apply to entrepreneurs who develop new means to achieve socially-
desired ends as well as those who operate on the margins of criminal / non-criminal means (the
"Arthur Daley" type who cuts-corners, for example). It could equally apply to criminals; those
people who pursue desired ends by illegitimate means.

3. Ritualism might refer to someone who conforms to socially-approved means, but has lost
sight of the ends (or has come to accept that they will never achieve them). This person is likely
to be someone who "goes through the motions" of working whilst secretly knowing that they will
never achieve the most desirable things society has to offer. Such people are likely to be elderly
and they probably enjoy a reasonably comfortable lifestyle.

4. An example of retreatism is someone who "drops-out" of mainstream society. The drug addict
who retreats into a self-contained world, the alcoholic who is unable to hold-down a steady job
and so forth.

5. Political deviance is a good example of the rebellion response, whether this is expressed in
terms of working for a revolutionary group or through political terrorism / freedom-fighting.

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Merton's argument does two significant things, sociologically:

1. It provides a theoretical reason to explain why people conform / deviate (the concept of
anomie and the idea that social strains push people into different forms of behavioural
response to anomie).

2. It outlines a number of different types of potential deviance, based around the particular
experience that the individual has of the social world.

From this second point, we can begin to answer an important question in relation to deviance -
that of why a person chooses to either conform to social norms or to deviate from them. Merton
argues that the answer to such a question lies in the concept of differential socialisation.
Different social classes, social groups, sub-cultural groups and so forth socialise their members
in slightly different ways, depending upon their particular social circumstances. Whilst we do not
need to explore this idea in any great depth, a classic distinction - between working-class and
middle class socialisation - might serve to illustrate the point:

Merton saw the working classes as being heavily involved in criminal behaviour and this
observation was confirmed by Official Statistics about crime. The reason for this, he suggested,
was that the socialisation of this group tends to be less rigid in relation to their acceptance of -
and conformity to - conventional means of gaining desired ends.

This seems to contradict Merton's claim that order is based upon a number of fundamental,
shared, values. However, the response to this is that the working classes, by definition, are the
least successful members of any society. They are the class to whom conventional means to
success have least meaning. In this respect, the experience of working class adults (the fact of
their failure by following conventional means) leads them to socialise their children in ways that
will give them the greatest possible advantage in their adult lives (the greatest possible chance
of achieving desired ends) - and this means adopting illegitimate / deviant means.

Merton argues that, over time, these illegitimate means come to be seen (sub-culturally) as
relatively normal; therefore, the working classes can violate "conventional norms / means" more
easily and with less feelings of guilt etc. In this sense, the socialisation process acts a sub-
cultural channel for deviant behaviour whereby the individual is socialised into deviant norms,
which increases / decreases the likelihood of different forms of adaptation to social strains
(anomie). Whilst this does provide some kind of explanation, there are a number of reasons for
not viewing it as particularly convincing:

1. It assumes that people share similar ends.

2. It sees the socialisation process as being the crucial variable in relation to both conformity /
deviance and the particular form that an individual's deviation takes. There is, for example, little
or no sense of the deviant making a conscious choice.

3. It assumes that the social reality portrayed through Official Statistics on crime is a valid one in
relation to criminals / non-criminals:

It’s by no-means clear that such a clear-cut distinction can be made between criminals and non-
criminals (a point that we will develop further when we consider Interactionist theories).
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In this section on basic varieties of Functionalist strain theories of crime and deviance we have
seen that such writers make a distinction between two related aspects of human behaviour:

1. Structural determinism:

"Society" determines the range of ends / goals available to its members through the
general process of socialisation.

2. Voluntarism:

This involves individual choices as to whether or not to pursue these goals, the means by
which they are pursued and so forth.

Such "choice", however, will be conditioned or "determined" by the individual's social

circumstances. Thus, it might appear that an individual will only turn towards illegitimate
means if they are denied adequate access to legitimate means. In this respect, "choice"
does not mean "free will", since all choices available in society are conditioned by the
individual's cultural background, socialisation and so forth.

Social order, from this viewpoint is based upon a fundamental value consensus that specifies
such things as desirable social ends and the legitimate means towards their realisation. Social
control, on the other hand, is maintained through the primary / secondary socialisation process in
combination with legal constraints upon behaviour. The latter have both a symbolic significance
(insofar as they function as boundary markers) and a real significance (insofar as law-breaking
invites a possible - known - response from legal agents such as the police and judiciary).

In methodological terms, the reality of crime is measured in terms of Official Statistics (which
represent what Durkheim termed "social facts").

Although such statistics do not always represent a "true", or necessarily valid, picture of
crime, strain theorists argue that they represent "dominant cultural concerns" about crime.
This is an idea that we will look at a bit more closely in relation to "Neo-Functionalist /
Conservative" theories of crime which have drawn explicitly on this type of rationalisation.

In this respect, crime is seen as being concentrated at the lower end of the class structure
(amongst the working class) precisely because it is here that we find the greatest disjunction (or
"lack of fit") between socially-approved ends and means. However, since crime statistics don't
tell us very much about either "hidden" forms of crime (crimes that are committed but for which
no-one is arrested, for example) or the "crimes of the powerful" (who may be in a position to
resist the process of criminalization in some way), strain theories do not tend to address these
theoretical problems.

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The main methodological problem with this kind of theorising (for the technically-minded it
involves the use of an "inductive positivist" logic) might be outlined as follows:

a. Criminal behaviour in society is measured through official definitions of crime and crime
statistics. This leads to:

b. The analysis of those social groups who are most-likely (according the statistics) to be
involved in crime (basically, the working class and men in particular). This lead to:

c. The development of a theory that "explains the factual observations that can be made about
crime". In this instance, Merton looked at "differential / faulty socialisation", for example.

Whilst this is clearly a logical form of analysis, it is built upon a fundamental assumption, namely
that official statistics are an accurate representation of criminal behaviour. If this assumption can
be shown to be false, then where does this leave the theory that has been developed to "explain
criminal behaviour"?

What are the implications for this kind of theorising if we could show that official
statistics are not an accurate representation of criminal behaviour?

In terms of explaining crime / deviance, strain theories:

1. Recognise that social structures exert some form of social pressure that constrains the
actions of individuals.

2. Recognise that people make choices about how to behave. However, these choices are made
in a social context that reflects both socialisation, the cultural context of behaviour and so forth.

Finally, we can highlight a couple of problems involved in this theoretical perspective:

1. Durkheim doesn't explain the causes of criminal behaviour, in the sense that we are given few
clues as to why some people - but not others - engage in criminal behaviour. Secondly, the
assumption that official statistics are a useful indicator of criminal activity tends to gloss over the
fact that if we do not know the true extent of criminal behaviour in society, how is it possible to
construct a theory that explains criminal behaviour?

2. In Merton's case, the use of anomie may (or may not) adequately explain various forms of
crime directed towards economic ends (we can, for example, understand why people who
desperately want something are prepared to steal for it if they cannot achieve it legitimately), it
doesn't seem to have much application in relation to non-economic crimes such as:

Murder
Football hooliganism
Joyriding, etc.

In addition, neither Durkheim nor Merton tell us very much about why some activities are
criminalised, but not others. We are, in effect, given very little indication about how and why
definitions of crime arise in society - and, possibly, whether or not the interests of particular
groups are served / denied by the creation of legal norms.
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Emile Durkheim- Suicide: A Study In Sociology, 1897; The Rules of Sociological Method, 1895

Robert Merton- Social Structure and Anomie, 1938.

Anomie (the breakdown of normative guide-lines)

Social Integration (The extent to which people are "bonded" into the rules, norms, beliefs and so
forth of the society in which they live).

Differential Socialisation.

Social Order is based on:

1. The functional dependence of institutions in society.

2. Shared norms and values (the "social glue" that binds people together, such that their
relationships become functionally dependent).

Social Control based on:

1. Functional dependence at both the institutional and individual level (people need to co-operate
in order for society to function).

2. Individual social relationships: Behaviour is controlled by relatively informal norms and values
that develop out of the mutual need to create and maintain dependent social relationships.

3. Legal systems: In large-scale societies the legal system develops as a functional necessity to
regulate relationships that cannot be adequately maintained by the operation of informal norms
(mainly because instrumental nature of most relationships mean that moral ties are much
weaker).

People conform to social norms because:

1. They are socialised into the norms and values of a society.

2. Institutional arrangements in society create pressure towards social conformity (the need to
earn a living, for example, creates institutional pressure to work).

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Functionalist Theories

Functionalist theory argues social behaviour is a consequence of how society (as a social
structure) pressurises people. In effect, people are born into an existing society and are taught
the rules and relationships governing social behaviour. Social behaviour, therefore, is explained
by changes in the social structures that produce consequent changes in human behaviour.

For Durkheim:

Non-conformity to social norms occurs when the social structure comes under pressure (or
strain). For example:

Rapid technological change in any society (such as that which occurred during the Industrial
Revolution in 18th - 19th century Britain) changes the way in which institutions relate to one
another. This process of change produces new norms of behaviour, new values and so forth.
Inevitably, people socialised into the "old" normative arrangements take time to adapt or re-
orientate themselves to new conditions - there is effectively a "time lag" during which people
have to be re-socialised in order to develop new norms / values that fit with structural changes.
During such periods, "normative confusion" (anomie is likely to occur.

Thus, strain at the institutional (structural) level of society leads to a weakening of the Collective
Conscience and, as a consequence, increased levels of crime / deviance.

For Merton:

Begins with the basic Functionalist idea that people are socialised into accepting the values of
the society in which they live. Where a society socialises people into the value of pursuing such
things as wealth as a desirable social goal - but fails to provide the means by which everyone
can successfully attain this goal, social strains occur.

Thus, if everyone is socialised into wanting wealth - but society fails to provide sufficient
legitimate routes to its attainment - people will devise alternative (mainly illegal) means to attain
the goals they have been socialised to want.

Again, this is a structural explanation of human behaviour:

a. Society socialises its members to value something.

b. Although everyone wants such things, society may not be able to provide sufficient means for
everyone to achieve them.

c. People are propelled by the desire for valued things and so attempt to devise alternative
means (some successful, some not).

The strain aspect of the above is in the disjunction between:

n Socialisation of individuals to value things (ends).

n Inability of society to provide socially-acceptable means.

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Functionalist Theories
Anomie occurs because , although something like the pursuit of wealth represents a social norm,
some people are not given clear moral guide-lines concerning how they are to achieve this goal.
When socially-accepted norms concerning how to achieve wealth fail (for example, an individual
becomes unemployed), the individual experience anomie.

Since an anomic situation cannot, by definition, last for long, the individual may attempt to
resolve it by developing new normative guide-lines relating to the achievement of the desired
goal (by turning to crime, for example). On the other hand, they may devise alternative means
(such as suicide, drug-abuse and so forth) to negate the ends they are unable to achieve.

Strain theorists have not been particularly concerned to explore the relationship between power,
deviance and social control. Whilst power relationships are recognised (socialisation, for
example, involves power), for Durkheim in particular people's behaviour was held in check by the
development of the "collective conscience" that arose naturally from the fact of collective
behaviour. In addition, the emphasis upon value consensus meant that the ability of various
groups to impose their values, norms, interests and so forth upon others is not really considered.
Erikson, as we have seen, did attempt to introduce some notion of power, but in general:

1. Where power exists it represents the expression of functional prerequisites ("needs") at the
level of social institutions.

For example, in order for the institution of work to exist in an industrialised society this institution
needs workers who are educated; this involves the development of an educational system over
which the former must exercise some form of powerful influence.

2. The relationship between institutions in society is based upon functional dependence,

therefore various checks and balances exist to ensure that institutional relationships do not
deteriorate to the point where an institution can no-longer function.

In this respect, power is an important concept, but not one that is central to the Functionalist
understanding of either the way in which society exists and develops or the relationship between
social conformity and non-conformity (deviance).

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