Preliminary test of theory of grounded culture and gang delinquency

Abstract

The idea of subculture as an explanation of delinquency has taken two different forks. One fork is reflected in the work of Albert Cohen (1955), Cloward and Ohlin (1960), and Walter Miller (1958). In this view, a delinquent subculture is a world view that essentially incorporates values in opposition to conventional (middle class) ones generating delinquent patterns of behavior. It is the oppositional nature of the values that leads to oppositional behavior in the form of, often non utilitarian, delinquent behavior. The other fork is that of the control theorists, most particularly, David Matza. For Matza ( 1964), a subculture of delinquency is not characterized by oppositional values but rather by conventional ones. The conventional values, though, have a particular twist due to subterranean convergence. The deviant traditions in the subculture provide a surplus of negations of the offense (in a neo-classical sense) that allow the subculture delinquent to maintain conventional values while at the same time behaving in a way that breaks the conventions in the form of
delinquency.