Strain Theory
Definition
Merton's 1938 theory that crime results from a structural gap between culturally valued goals and the legitimate means available to achieve them. Individuals in that gap may adopt deviant adaptations, including pursuing the goals through illegal means.
- Author
- Robert Merton
- Published
- 1938
- Core claim
- Gap between goals and legitimate means
- Outcome
- Deviant adaptations, including crime
Common questions
What are Merton's named adaptations to strain?+
Conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion. Innovation, accepting the goal but rejecting legitimate means, is the adaptation most directly linked to property and financial crime.
How does this differ from Agnew's general strain theory?+
Merton located strain in one structural gap, between cultural goals and legitimate means. Agnew's later general strain theory broadened the source of strain to any negatively valued experience, making it applicable across social classes rather than mainly to the disadvantaged.
Related terms
- Atavism
- Lombroso's concept that born criminals were evolutionary throwbacks to a more primitive human type, identifiable by physical stigmata. The concept is scientifically...
- Classical School
- The eighteenth-century intellectual tradition in criminology, associated with Beccaria and Bentham, that treats offenders as rational actors and argues for proportionate, certain,...
- Labelling Theory
- The perspective, associated with Becker and Lemert, that deviance is not a property of the act but a consequence of the social...
- Positivist School
- The nineteenth-century tradition, associated with Lombroso, Ferri, and Garofalo, that rejected free will and sought causes of crime in measurable biological, psychological,...
- Social Disorganisation
- The condition of a neighbourhood in which social institutions have weakened to the point where they can no longer effectively regulate behaviour...