Cohen's Deliquent Subcultures

• Combining Mertonian Anomie with social learning.
• Lower-income youth have blocked opportunities to success.
• Problem of middle-class measuring rods.
  • Parents, teachers and bosses (middle-class figures) that they can't seem to be validated by.
  • They can't seem to achieve the standards for success by the top dogs.
  • Anomie Theory
  • Thus, they change the goals and or means to get the goals.
• Via Strain Theory
  • They rebel or form their own subculture, etc.
• Delinquent subcultures are formed to oppose middle-class values.