Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 33

Merton (1938, 1949) developed (traditional) strain theory (TST) drawing on Durkheim’s anomie (state of normlessness) theory. A refreshing departure from biological determinism, Merton premised that strain and frustration occur when individuals are taught the same cultural goals with unequal access to attain these shared goals (e.g., owning a home, acquiring a college education). Among the criticisms of TST, the most important applicable to gender and race is that TST measures strains primarily in terms of class inequalities, comparing the strains of the working class to the middle class, and then only of boys. Approaches that focus on poverty as an explanation for criminal behavior, while preferable to biological explanations, frequently ignore that women are usually disproportionately impoverished compared with men, yet they commit far less crime (Faith, 1993, p. 107).

In his book Delinquent Boys, A. K. Cohen (1955) adapted Merton’s TST to explain U.S. delinquent gangs among working-class boys. In Cohen’s analysis, boys have broad and varied goals and ambitions, whereas girls’ narrow ambitions center around males: dating, dancing, attractiveness, and, generally, acquiring a boyfriend or husband. Thus, men “are the rational doers and achievers” in U.S. culture, while girls and women exist solely to be the helpmates and companions of men (Naffine, 1987). Cohen (1955) also used racist code-speak in equating “aspects of ethnic backgrounds as examples of ‘subcultures’ but does not fully employ the concepts associated with racial inequality to examine boys’ delinquency” (K. J. Cook, 2016, p. 337).

A strength of A. K. Cohen’s (1955) work is addressing the construction of gender for boys, in that his work vividly depicts the role of masculinity in boys’ delinquency, and he is likely the first theorist to pay attention to the construction of masculinity (he drew on Freud to do so). In contrast, however, he devoted only four pages of his book to girl delinquents, portraying them as boring and only capable of expressing their delinquency through sexual promiscuity (Mann, 1984; Naffine, 1987). In Cohen’s prime, and still today, the term promiscuity is rarely if ever applied to boys and men, and Cohen joined the disturbing positivists’ tendency to inextricably link girls’ criminality and sexuality, while ignoring or implicitly applauding the identical sexual conduct of boys. In short, Cohen believed that boys have the “real” strains of employment and income in their lives, whereas girls’ only strain is to date and marry well. Cohen was so confident of the accuracy of this stance on girls that he saw no need to confirm his hypothesis through data collection. R. R. Morris (1964), the first scholar to apply strain theory to girls (also applying it to boys), viewed girls as more dimensional than did her predecessors: Girls were not interested just in husband hunting but were also concerned with other affective relationships, such as with family members. Morris found that relative to boys, girls, delinquent and not, were faced with less subcultural support and more disapproval for delinquency than boys, and she purported this might explain girls’ lower delinquency rates.

It is instructive that studies in the late 1960s and 1970s found that girls’ efforts to find mates were not related to their delinquency rates (Sandhu & Allen, 1969) and that the patterns of boys’ and girls’ delinquent behavior were quite similar, except that boys’ rates were higher (Naffine, 1987, p. 18). Research on gender differences in the role of youth subcultures (often measured as gangs) tends to confirm that boys’ subcultures are more prone to delinquency than girls’ subcultures (Esbensen & Huizinga, 1993; Joe & Chesney-Lind, 1995; Lerman, 1968; Morash, 1983, 1986; R. R. Morris, 1964, 1965; Rahav, 1984). Notably, research testing traditional strain theory has occurred rarely since the end of the 1990s. Overall, these research findings have been inconsistent regarding whether the strain of “blocked opportunity” is more, less, or equally related to boys’ and girls’ delinquency rates. Some studies claimed that strain similarly influenced girls’ and boys’ delinquency (Cernkovich & Giordano, 1979; Figueira-McDonough & Selo, 1980; D. A. Smith, 1979); others found it more relevant in predicting girls’ than boys’ delinquency (Datesman, Scarpitti, & Stephenson, 1975; J. O. Segrave & Hastad, 1983); and one found that strain is more influential in predicting boys’ than girls’ delinquency (R. L. Simons, Miller, & Aigner, 1980). Yet another study reported that TST variables were related in the opposite direction as expected for white females but in the expected direction for African American females (G. D. Hill & Crawford, 1990). Overall, the findings are quite mixed regarding whether strain, as it is traditionally defined (as blocked opportunities), affects boys’ and girls’ delinquency similarly or differently. Notably, gang studies in the 1980s and 1990s largely rebuff Cohen’s gendered contention, finding that girls’, like boys’, gang membership, is driven to fulfill identities in environments plagued by classism, racism, and sexism (e.g., Campbell, 1987; Joe & Chesney-Lind, 1995). With the development of general strain theory, traditional strain theory has been far less tested in recent decades.