Describe Albert K. Cohen's middle-class measuring rod theory and the debate centered on including his theory in the context of subcultural theories

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer:
• Subcultural theory
• Focuses on lower-class delinquent gangs
• Asserts lower class delinquent boys have adopted values that differs from middle class
• Cohen says the purpose of a gang is to oppose conformity because their learning experience of lower-class males leaves them ill prepared to compete in a world gauged by a middle-class measuring rod.
• Deficiencies of lower-class youth are most noticeable in the classroom, where working-class youth are frequently overshadowed and belittled by their middle-class counterparts.
• Cohen theorizes turning to membership in a delinquent gang is a normal adaptation to status frustration resulting from clashing cultures.
• Cohen cites the middle-class measuring rod of the school system as the turning point when lower-class boys stop accepting middle-class values.
• Cohen lists aggression, toughness, and hedonism as important.
• Debate on whether his theory stands alone as a cultural accounting of crime or is more of an extension and synthesis of previously established theories
o Proposed the answer to this debate lies in examining his writings, but also his academic background
o Interests were molded by Merton and Sutherland's interests of strain and differential association theories
o Due to these influences, his work is sometimes omitted from reviews of subculture literature and suggested to focus on internal social conditions of subcultures, culminating in a strain theory dependent on social structural forces, instead of a more appropriate focus on the essence of a subculture, ideas.
o Sometimes discussed in the context of strain rather than subculture
o Still remains a founding pioneer of subcultural theory