Sutherland’s Differential Association and its nine propositions
Edwin Sutherland’s theory of Differential Association evolved from the Chicago School of sociology, which observed that crime occurred more frequently in areas lacking social organization and institutions of social control (Gomme, 37). Crime was usually explained by multiple factors – such as social class, age, race, and urban or rural location. Sutherland developed his theory of Differential Association in order to explain how these factors were related to crime (Cullen & Agnew, 122). It had been observed that once high rates of crime were established in a geographical region, the pattern reoccurred, with “new generations of inhabitants sustaining the pattern” (Gomme, 37). Sutherland was thus interested in explaining how such a cross-generational transmission of delinquent values occurred (Lilly et al., 42). In his theory of Differential Association, he posited that criminal behaviour is a result of a process of socialization, during which criminal “definitions” are not only transmitted culturally (Gomme, 37), but are actually learned through social interactions with intimate groups (Winfree & Abadinsky, 193). The theory is outlined in nine propositions.
Robert Merton’s personal adaptations to anomie (aka “strain theory”)
Like many sociologists and criminologists, Robert Merton was interested in explaining the root of social deviance; however, unlike most theorists, who posited that crime and deviance arise from individual causes (such as a biological “defect”) (Cullen & Agnew, 171), Merton argued that certain groups participate in criminal behaviour because they are“responding normally to the social situation in which they find themselves” (Tierney, 95-6). His theory of the five personal adaptations to anomie, also known as “strain theory”, arose from the earlier sociological theory of anomie developed by Emile Durkheim (Gomme, 49). Anomie is a sort of psychological “state of confusion” in which an individual observes a conflict between the prescribed and commonplace social goals and the culturally-acceptable, “legitimate” ways to pursue those goals (Gomme, 48).