In 1938 Robert Merton wrote a paper examining society and anomie, and how it pressures of culture and means cause anomie which led to deviant behaviour – it was titled Social Structure and Anomie. This essay shall summarise the main arguments and look at the evidence used. It will also highlight anything which is missing and finally will evaluate any counterarguments.
Merton raised many arguments. First, the 'American Dream' pressures. This was the view that hard work would be rewarded economically and socially (Burke, 2009). Merton identified the ways that pressure was put on via cultural goals and institutional means. (Merton, 1938), from these limitations, those who could not achieve them turned to deviant acts because of the pressures which created anomie. (Taylor et al., 1973, p. 93) writes "For merton, American Society places a large emphasis on the goals but does not make the means universal". Merton's created four typologies of deviance which were the ways individuals adapt to blockages of the social structure (Lanier and Henry, 2010). They were innovation, retreatism, rebellion and ritualism. Innovation was the acceptances of goals and elimination of means. Bruke (2009) states this is someone who wants to achieve the standard goals but because of roadblocks the opportunities of attaining these socially approved means results in innovative routes. Lohman's example of Chicago showed low income and lack of opportunity meant achievement was slim. However, they are able to achieve it from crime (Merton, 1938). The next adaption which had an importance was retreatism. This group rejected both goals and means. Merton suggested they were 'in the society but not of it' (Merton, 1938). This adaption is important to the argument of the pressures as this adaption occurs when the individual has realised the value that comes with the achievement of the goals and means. However, they realise and accept that the means are not available to them and turn to drugs etc.
Another of Merton's arguments was regretting biological reasons to explain deviant behaviour. Merton writes "some social structures put pressure upon certain people in society to engage in deviant ways." (Merton, 1938, p. 672). Merton brings in the social side to show that actually society is largely the reason to why people are deviant. Because of society anomie is brought into these individuals due to the pressure society brings on. Merton also argued that the desires of goals are not natural via biological, but in fact created by cultural influences, such as America will large emphasis of wealth and success like owning a home (Lanier and Henry, 2010), all this relates to the American Dream. Cultural reasons are the problem for deviance not largely biological.
Throughout Merton makes numerous different points to back up his arguments, he does this using previous theorist research, but this main source is Official Crime Statistics. Merton does not include actual data, but he uses it to give emphasis to the points he makes around deviance and crime within working class people. This has had controversial views. For some statistics are good as they give a fairly accurate representation of crime levels as they come from the police, with means the data can be seen as reliable. However, on the other hand it has been criticised by certain criminologists such as Cicourel (2017), who stated that the mostly the people represented in crime figures are those from working class families because these are the areas that police focus on, because the chance of delinquency is sure to take place in the polices eyes. However, they do not give an accurate representation of middle-class crime as it has been seen that those from middle-class backgrounds are far less likely to get picked up by the police because they will not be patrolling that area. For this reason, the main port of evidence which Merton uses for his theory can be seen as flawed, along with his representations from theorists as they are simply just someone else representation on the topic.
Within Social Structure and Anomie, there are several missing issues and also lack of evidence in areas. This can be seen when Merton is discussing the accumulation of wealth it is stated that the emphasis on the symbols in society work differentially depending on which society it is in (Merton, 1938) and the way in which they are achieved is different he compares this to two groups. However, he failed to back this up with any evidence such as crime rates of one group which attains them conventionally compared to a group with many issues from its social structure which results in the attainment being unconventional. Merton, also fails to mention anything about women in this theory. Burke (2009), wrote that he did not try to apply his typology to woman and when looking at it, it looks like it cannot be used for them. The reason for its importance is that it is not just men who commit deviant acts, it is also woman as they are told to achieve certain things, although it can be argued that the cultural goals and institutional means are different for woman, it still takes place and Merton failed to mention this. Leonard said the main goal for woman around this time was to "achieve a successful relationship with others not the attainment of material wealth" (Burke, 2009, p. 124). Their aim was not to gain wealth themselves but to get into a relationship with someone who had already obtained it. With Merton's writing there has been numerous counterarguments surrounding it.
There are numerous counterarguments towards Merton's work, and it has been seen as the one which has received the most amount of criticism (Downes and Rock, 2003). One argument came from Lindesmith and Gagnon who criticised the limitations of his theory, they noted that when he categorised the character of addiction which went into retreatism (Downes et al., 2016), he was able to identify certain groups which fell into the category of addiction however, he failed to clearly state the forms which come from anomie and the ones which actually lead to anomie, from this it can be said that these people do not flow into anomie because they actually do have skills in society, they are able to fight against the controlling measures which are brought upon them. Another counterargument which Merton faced was that there was evidence to show that deviance is more widely within groups in society than Merton allowed in his theory, this is in relation to those who break the law in the well-off classes, these individuals do not have anything blocking their passage to opportunities (Taylor et al., 1973). This can be seen in Merton's writing, he puts too much emphasis on the working-class and not enough on the bourgeoisie and how they get into deviant behaviour. He also fails to show the reasons why these individuals participate in these sorts of acts because Merton sates for this to happen is the result of anomie, which clearly is not the case here.
In conclusion, Merton's paper went into depths in certain areas. However, he failed to mention serval key issues such as women and did not back up main points. It has also seen that his work received numerous counterarguments from others around what he states, and it was more his own attempt at a strain theory of society.