How, according to Merton, are deviant subcultures generated?. (UPSC CSE Mains 2019 - Sociology, Paper 1)
Merton in his theory of deviance indicates that deviants are not a cub-cultural group. Rather people manifest deviant behaviour in different spheres of social life. A mismatch between cultural prescriptive means and socially prescriptive goals give way to deviant behaviour. He finds out that deviant behaviour persists in society because it has not outlived its function therefore sociology should not be concerned about deviance as a pathological problem rather one should study the latent and manifest orientations of deviance.
Merton considers that anomie is not a product of rapid social change. Rather it is a form of behaviour manifested by the people when they are suffering from social strain. Therefore anomie theory is also known as social strain theory. The strain is the product of mismatch between culturally prescriptive means and socially prescriptive goals. When people experience social strain, they channelize there strains in different ways in order to manifest different forms of anomic behaviour. At different points of time. These forms of deviant behaviours are functional, dysfunctional and non-functional.
This chronic discrepancy between cultural promises and structural realities not only undermines social support for institutional norms but also promotes violations of those norms. Merton presents an analytical typology, shown in the following table, of individual adaptations to the discrepancy between culture and social structure.
|
TYPE OF ADAPTATION
|
CULTURAL GOAL
|
INSTITUTIONALIZED MEANS
|
|
1. Conformity
|
+
|
+
|
|
2. Innovation
|
+
|
–
|
|
3. Ritualism
|
–
|
+
|
|
4. Retreatism
|
–
|
–
|
|
5. Rebellion
|
+/-
|
+/-
|
Note: (+) signifies acceptance; (–) signifies rejection; and (+/-) signifies rejection of prevailing goal or means and substitution of new goal or means.
These adaptations describe the kinds of social roles people adopt in response to cultural and structural pressures. Having identified the modes of individual adaptations, Merton defines anomie as: “a breakdown in the cultural structure, occurring particularly when there is an n acute disjunction between the cultural norms and goals and the socially structured capacities of members of the group to act in accordance with them.” In this conception cultural values may help to produce behaviour which is at odds with mandates of the values themselves.
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