Rejection leads to Merton’s Strain Theory

Robert Merton was Influenced by Durkheim’s concept of anomie which is the disjunction between legitimate goals and the socially approved means to success. With this he developed the Strain theory which explains that people feel strain when they are exposed to cultural goals they are unable to obtain because they do not have the means to do so. This often leads people to use deviance as an adaptive, problem-solving behavior in response to problems involving frustrating and undesirable social circumstances. Within the Strain theory, comes four subgroups or adaptions on how different people deal with strain. The first type is the conformist, who accepts the cultural goals of society but also accepts the institutionalized means of reaching those goals. Then there’s the Ritualist, this type of person accepts society’s means but doesn’t accept the concept of being successful and just does it because everybody does it. Third adaptation is the innovator, who accepts the goals of society but reaches those goals in not socially accepted ways. Next are your Retreatist whom both reject the means and the goals, but they are also the rarest type out of all. Lastly are the rebels, these type of people also reject the means and the goals but are different from the Retreatist in that they make up new goals and means for themselves.

This scene that I’m using comes from the movie named “Accepted”. In this film, the main character Bartleby, is a high school senior who starts off as a ritualist because of his father. His father went to a good college to get a degree and is now expecting Bartleby to go to college. So Bartleby applies to college because it is the normal thing to do and to make his father happy. However, he gets rejected from every single college he applied to. So in order to satisfy his strict college graduate father, he lied to him by telling him that he got accepted to a college named South Harmon Institute of Technology. His father seems skeptical from this and asks for proof of this college so Bartleby creates his own fake college with an actual building and “students” he gathered that were also rejected from other schools. As the movie progresses, Bartleby begins to be more of an innovator as he starts learning in his fake college that is important to follow one’s own passions so he creates his own way of success by actually establishing the college under his direction but got there not the way normal people do.

Anyways, I choose this particular scene from the movie because of how the parents reacted to the fact that Bartleby didn’t want to go college (not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t get accepted). Therefore his parents, in particular his dad, goes off saying that society has rules and that he has to go to college because that is the way society works. You go to college to get a degree in order to get a good job so you can have a successful life. This clip shows the reason why Bartleby was “strained” and did the stuff he did in the movie, because his father was pressuring him to go to college and get in to receive an education. To make his dad happy, he commits a deviant act of lying to his parents and creates a fake college where he never got permission to used the building to be a campus and lied to all the students, that they were going to a real school to learn.

-Anna Arevalo

Sex, Drugs, Money- Empire

In the show Empire the father of 3 talented boys owns his very own record label. He always strives to make sure his image and his “Empire” is never tainted. He signs only artists who he thinks will contribute the most money to his label. The father, Lucious, finds out he has ALS and has under 3 years to live, and his main goal is to make sure that his record label is the best label in the world and that nobody will ever be able to tear it down. The way that he started the Empire would be seen as unconventional by society. Lucious and his wife, Cookie, started the label by selling drugs and saving up all the money they earned. They sold drugs for a very long time and once they had enough money, they built Empire.

According to Merton, Lucious and his wife would be seen as innovators because they achieved fame through an unconventional way. Merton believed that much of criminal behaviour could be categorized as “innovative”. Innovators are people who continue to embrace monetary and material success as a worthy goal but who turn to crime or deviance upon realization that their social status or experience limits access to legitimate means for success. A drug dealer, who – like most conformists – desires wealth and social status, yet attempts to achieve such ambitions through illegal activity. Innovators, however, are not necessarily violent or serious offenders: people who lie about the work experience or educational background on a resume or in an interview would also fall into this category.

THE GREAT GATSBY, WEALTHY BUSINESSMAN OR CRIMINAL?

There are many theorists that try to explain and understand how a person becomes deviant. One of these theorists is Robert Merton, who developed the Social Strain Theory. This Social Strain Theory explains that individuals are faced with a choice of five methods of adaptation, which are: Conformity, Innovation, Ritualism, Retreatism, and Rebellion. This post is going to focus on the Innovator, which according to Merton, this person accepts the social goals of becoming wealthy and successful to gain financial security, but rejects the social acceptably means, turning into crime to gain money and power.

In the movie The Great Gatsby, the audience gets to see a wealthy man, who throws big parties, has a huge house, expensive cars and just about anything money can buy. Gatsby was rich, he tied money with success, he wanted to be wealthy in order to gain social status and be able to marry the love of his life, Daisy. Although there is no scene in which it is explicitly showed that Gatsby earned his money through illegitimate means, it is well implied that he was part of the organized crime and the bootlegging business during the prohibition era in the 1920s, especially during this fight scene with Tom, who accuses him of being involved with Meyer Wolfsheim, a prominent figure in the organized crime.

Using Merton’s theory of social strain, Gatsby was an innovator. He accepted the social goals of becoming wealthy and successful, whether it was to gain social status, to be able to get the attention of Daisy, the love of his life, or both. But he rejected the socially accepted means, which are work hard and earn money legitimately. Gatsby turned to the mob and was part of the organized crime during the prohibition era, selling alcohol, laundering money and using pharmacies as a front for his business.

This is a good example of Merton’s Theory, and the Innovator typology, as according to Merton, this person uses unconventional means in order to achieve cultural approved goals. Basically an innovator finds or creates his or her own way to obtain or achieve this goals, but in the majority of the time, these means are socially unacceptable or deviant.

-Neftaly Eguia

Defying the Social Norms: Merton’s Theory of Deviance/Strain

The clips you just saw demonstrated an example of Merton’s Theory of Deviance/Strain. This theory is a template for acting appropriately within society, to not violate society’s norms. The gentleman in the clip, the one whom was trying to retrieve his TV was demonstrating an act of deviance (he was cutting in line). He was not conforming to the values that society has. From the five examples that Merton developed, the gentleman is demonstrating the actions of an innovator. He accepts the cultural goals, which in this case is to go to the pawnshop and pay for the TV he pawned, yet he does not accept the means to achieve them, which is to stand in line with the rest of the customers until he is called on.