chapter I
Preface An Unsolved Problem
in Juvenile Delinquency
to enumerate all those on whose work I have built or who, through criticism and suggestion, have influenced the conception or the writing of this book would be impossible. I must, however, acknowledge my special indebtedness to the late Edwin H. Sutherland of Indiana University and to Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bales of Harvard University. For her generous assistance in the typing of the manuscript, I wish to express my gratitude to Mrs. Jean Beckhorn.
the expression, "the delinquent subculture," may be new to some readers of this volume. The idea for which it stands, however, is a commonplace of folk—as well as scientific—thinking. When Mrs. Jones says: "My Johnny is really a good boy but got to running around with the wrong bunch and got into trouble," she is making a set of assumptions which, when spelled out more explicitly, constitute the foundations of an important school of thought in the scientific study of juvenile delinquency. She is affirming that delinquency is neither an inborn disposition nor something the child has contrived by himself; that children learn to become delinquents by becoming members of groups in which delinquent conduct is already established and "the thing to do"; and that a child need not be "different" from other children, that he need not
[11]
[12 ] An Unsolved Problem in Juvenile Delinquency
have any twists or defects of personality or intelligence in order to become a delinquent.
In the language of contemporary sociology, she is saying that juvenile delinquency is a subculture. The concept "culture" is familiar enough to the modern layman, ft refers to knowledge, beliefs, values, codes, tastes and prejudices that are traditional in social groups and that are acquired by participation in such groups. Our American language, political habits, sex mores, taste for hamburger and cokes and aversion to horse meat are parts of American culture. We take for granted that the contrasting ways of Hindus, Chinese and Navahos are for the most part a matter of indoctrination into a different culture. But the notion of culture is not limited to the distinctive ways of life of such large-scale national and tribal societies. Every society is internally differentiated into numerous sub-groups, each with ways of thinking and doing that are in some respects peculiarly its own, that one can acquire only by participating in these sub-groups and that one can scarcely help acquiring if he is a full-fledged participants These cultures within cultures are "subcultures "\ Thus, within American society we find regional differences in speech, cookery, folklore, games, politics and dress. Within each age group there flourish subcultures not shared by its juniors or elders. The rules of marbles and jackstones live on, long after you and X have forgotten them, in the minds of new generations of children. Then there are subcultures within subcultures, There is the subculture of a factory and of a shop with the factory; the subculture of a university and of a fraternity within the university; the subcul-
An Unsolved Problem in Juvenile Delinquency [ 13 ]
ture of a neighborhood and of a family, clique or gang within the neighborhood. All these subcultures have this in common: they are acquired only by interaction with those who already share and embody, in their belief and action, the culture pattern.
When we speak of a delinquent subculture, we speak of a way of life that has somehow become traditional among certain groups in American society. These groups are the boys' gangs that flourish most conspicuously in the "delinquency neighborhoods" of our larger American cities. The members of these gangs grow up, some to become law-abiding citizens and others to graduate to more professional and adult forms of criminality, but the delinquent tradition is kept alive by the age-groups that succeed them. This book is an attempt to answer some important questions about this delinquent subculture. The pages which follow will prepare the ground for the formulation of these questions.
A large and growing number of students of juvenile delinquency, systematically developing the implications of Mrs. Jones' explanation of Johnny's "trouble," believes that the only important difference between the delinquent and the non-delinquent is the degree of exposure to this delinquent culture pattern. They hold that the delinquent is not distinguished by any special stigmata, physical or psychological. Some delinquents are bright, some are slow; some are seriously frustrated, some are not; some have grave mental conflicts and some do not. And the same is true of non-delinquents. Delinquency, according to this view, is not an expression or contrivance of a par-
[ 14 ] An Unsolved Problem in Juvenile Delinquency
ticular kind of personality; it may be imposed upon any land of personality if circumstances favor intimate association with delinquent models. The process of becoming a delinquent is the same as the process of becoming, let us say, a Boy Scout. The difference lies only in the cultural pattern with which the child associates.1
In describing this "cultural-transmission" theory of juvenile delinquency we have already suggested the main features of its principal rival. Mrs. Jones' neighbor may be of a different mind about Johnny's delinquency. "That kid's just never been trained to act like a human being! If I let my kid run wild like Johnny, if I never laid down the law to him, he'd be the same way. Any kid will steal and raise cane if you don't teach him right from wrong and if you let him get away with anything." Or her explanation may run like this: "He never had a chance. The way he's been tossed from pillar to post! The way his folks have always fought with one another and the way they've both beat on him! The one thing he's never had is a little real love. What do you expect of a boy when his own people treat him like dirt and the whole family is all mixed up?"
Again, if we spell out the assumptions underlying these two "explanations," we find that they are two variants of a whole class of theories which we may call "psychogenic." These are the theories which are favored by psychiatrists, especially those of a psychoanalytic persuasion. These theories have in common the idea that delinquency is a result of some attribute of the personality of the child, an attribute which the non-delinquent child does not possess or does not possess in the same degree. One type of
An Unsolved Problem in Juvenile Delinquency [ 15 ]
psychogenic theory holds that every human being is endowed with a fund of inborn or instinctual anti-social impulses, commonly called the Id. Most people, in the course of growing up, acquire a capacity for circumspection or prudence, commonly called the Ego. They also incorporate into their own personalities, as conscience or Superego, the moral code of their society. The Ego and Superego together normally suffice to hold the Id in check. The delinquent and the criminal differ from the normal, law-abiding person in the possession of unusually imperious Id drives or faulty Ego or Superego development, resulting in the eruption of the Id into illegal acts. This imperfect mastery of the Id may be a result of faulty training or parental neglect. Here we recognize the substance of our neighbor lady's first explanation: Johnny's Ego and Superego, through the failure of his family to train and discipline him, are too weak to restrain his bumptious Id.3 Another type of psychogenic theory does not assume that the impulse to delinquency is itself inborn. Rather, it views delinquency as a symptom of, or a method of coping with, some underlying problem of adjustment. The delinquent differs from the non-delinquent in that he has frustrations, deprivations, insecurities, anxieties, guilt feelings or mental conflicts which differ in kind or degree from those of non-delinquent children. The delinquency is often thought of as related to the underlying problem of adjustment as a fever is related to the underlying infection. Our neighbor lady's second explanation is a folksy version of this mental conflict variant of psychogenic theory: as a result of a disturbed family situation, Johnny
[ 16 ] An Unsolved Problem in Juvenile Delinquency
is "mixed up," he has psychological problems, and these problems find their expression through delinquency.3
Psychogenic theories of both classes recognize the importance of the child's social environment in producing the character structure or the problem of adjustment, but give it relatively little weight in determining the particular manner in which it finds expression. For the first class of psychogenic theories, the Id is already there at birth in all people. It does not become criminal through experience. It is criminal from the very start and never changes. What is acquired through experience is the shell of inhibition. For the second class, delinquency as a symptom or mode of adjustment is contrived or "hit upon" by the child himself, perhaps through one or more of the familiar "mechanisms" of substitution, regression, displacement, compensation, rationalization and projection. If other children exhibit the same behavior it is because they have independently contrived the same solution.
We have been discussing kinds of theories. It does not follow that all students of juvenile delinquency embrace one or another of them as an explanation for all delinquency. On the contrary, most students give at least passing acknowledgment to more than one kind of causal process. Thus, many psychoanalysts, the people most strongly wedded to psychogenic theories, recognize the existence of a kind of delinquent who is not just giving expression to his Id or working out a problem of adjustment but who has internalized a "delinquent Superego." That is, he has internalized the moral code of his group and is acting in accordance with that code, but it happens
An Unsolved Problem in Juvenile Delinquency [ 17 ]
to be a delinquent code. It is fairly typical of psychoanalytical writers, however, that they formally concede, so to speak, the existence of this sort of thing but thereafter, in their actual ease studies, pay little attention to it.4 At the same time most sociologists, who are generally disposed to favor a cultural-transmission theory, feel that there are some delinquents whose delinquency cannot be explained in cultural-transmission terms. Many of these sociologists, however, are reluctant to flirt with psychogenic alternatives, particularly those of the more extreme psychoanalytical kind.
It may be that we are confronted with a false dichotomy, that we are not really forced to choose between two conflicting theories. There is the possibility of two or more "types" of juvenile delinquents, each the result of a different kind of etiology or causal process: one, let us say, predominantly subcultural and another predominantly psychogenic.3 There is the possibility of subcultural and psychogenic "factors" simultaneously but independently at work in the same personality, each providing a separate and distinct "push" in the direction of delinquency, like two shoulders to the same wheel. However, we are especially interested in a third possibility, namely, that in the majority of cases psychogenic and subcultural factors blend in a single causal process, as pollen and a particular bodily constitution work together to produce hay fever. If this is so, then the task of theory is to determine the ways in which the two kinds of factors mesh or interact. We will have a good deal to say about this as our inquiry unfolds.
[ 18 ] An Unsolved Problem in Juvenile Delinquency
In the present state of our knowledge, there is room for question and disagreement about the proportion of all juvenile delinquency which depends, in some way, upon participation in the delinquent subculture; about the relationship between cultural-transmission and psychogenic factors; and about the nature of the culture-transmission process itself, that is, about just how persons take over a new subculture. There seems to be no question, however, but that there is a delinquent subculture, and that it is a normal, integral and deeply-rooted feature of the social life of the modern American city.
Now we come to a curious gap in delinquency theory. Note the part that the existence of the delinquent subculture plays in the cultural-transmission theories. It is treated as a datum, that is, as something which already exists in the environment of the child. The problem with which these theories are concerned is to explain how that subculture is taken over by the child. Now we may ask: Why is there such a subculture? Wiry is it "there" to be "taken over"? Why does it have the particular content that it does and why is it distributed as it is within our social system? Why does it arise and persist, as it does, in such dependable fashion in certain neighborhoods of our American cities? Why does it not "diffuse" to other areas and to other classes of our population? Similar questions can be asked about any subculture: the values and argot of the professional dance band musician, social class differences in religious beliefs and practice, the distinctive subcultures of college campuses. Any subculture calls for explanation in its own right. It is never a random growth. It has its
An Unsolved Problem in Juvenile Delinquency [ 19 ]
characteristic niche in our social structure; elsewhere it does not "catch on." It has its characteristic flavor, qualities, style. Why these and not others?
With respect to the delinquent subculture, these questions are of more than theoretical or speculative interest alone. Social control of juvenile delinquency is a major practical problem of every sizable American community. No such efforts at control have thus far proved spectacularly successful. While knowledge does not guarantee power, it is improbable that we will achieve striking successes at control without some understanding of the sources and sustenance of this subculture in our midst. The problem has not, to be sure, been completely ignored but there has been remarkably little effort to account for the delinquent subculture itself. That is the task of this book. A by-product of our inquiries will be a new perspective on the issue of psychogenic versus cultural-transmission theories of delinquency.
[ 24 ] facts the Theory Must Fit
prominently in the literature of juvenile delinquency. Compare it to a generalized picture of a pear, in which the distinctively pearlike features are accentuated. Many pears will look very like our picture; others will only approximate it. However, if our picture is truly drawn, it will give us a good idea of the shape which distinguishes pears in general from other fruits. This is the kind of validity which we claim for our portrait of the delinquent subculture.
THE CONTENT OF THE DELINQUENT SUBCULTURE
the common expression, "juvenile crime," has unfortunate and misleading connotations. It suggests that we have two kinds of criminals, young and old, but only one kind of crime. It suggests that crime has its meanings and its motives which are much the same for young and old; that the young differ from the old as the apprentice and the master differ at the same trade; that we distinguish the young from the old only because the young are less "set in their ways," less "confirmed" in the same criminal habits, more amenable to treatment and more deserving, because of their tender age, of special consideration.
The problem of the relationship between juvenile delinquency and adult crime has many facets. To what extent are the offenses of children and adults distributed among the same legal categories, "burglary," "larceny," "vehicle-taking," and so forth? To what extent, even when the offenses are legally identical, do these acts have the same meaning for children and adults? To what extent are the
Facts the Tlieory Must Fit [ 251
careers of adult criminals continuations of careers of juvenile delinquency? We cannot solve these problems here, but we want to emphasize the danger of making facile and unproven assumptions. If we assume that "crime is crime," that child and adult criminals are practitioners of the same trade, and if our assumptions are false, then the road to error is wide and clear. Easily and unconsciously, we may impute a whole host of notions concerning the nature of crime and its causes, derived from our knowledge and fancies about adult crime, to a large realm of behavior to which these notions are irrelevant, It is better to make no such assumptions; it is better to look at juvenile delinquency with a fresh eye and try to explain what we see.
v* What we see when we look at the delinquent subculture (and we must not even assume that this describes all juvenile crime) is that it is non-utilitarian, malicious and negativistic. •
We usually assume that when people steal things, they steal because they want them. They may want them because they can eat them, wear them or otherwise use them; or because they can sell them; or even—if we are given to a psychoanalytic turn of mind—because on some deep symbolic level they substitute or stand for something unconsciously desired but forbidden. All of these explanations have this in common, that they assume that the stealing is a means to an end, namely, the possession of some object of value, and that it is, in this sense, rational and "utilitarian." However, the fact cannot be blinked-and this fact is of crucial importance in defining our problem
[ 26 ] Facts the Theory Must FU
—that much gang stealing has no such motivation at all. Even where the value of the object stolen is itself a motivating consideration, the stolen sweets are often sweeter than those acquired by more legitimate and prosaic means. In homelier language, stealing "for the hell of it" and apart from considerations of gain and profit is a valued activity to which attaches glory, prowess and profound satisfaction. There is no accounting in rational and utilitarian terms for the effort expended and the danger run in stealing things which are often discarded, destroyed or casually given away. A group of boys enters a store where each takes a hat, a ball or a light bulb. They then move on to another store where these things are covertly exchanged for like articles. Then they move on to other stores to continue the game indefinitely. They steal a basket of peaches, desultorily munch on a few of them and leave the rest to spoil. They steal clothes they cannot wear and toys they will not use. Unquestionably, most delinquents are from the more "needy" and "underprivileged" classes, and unquestionably many things are stolen because they are intrinsically valued. However, a humane and compassionate regard for their economic disabilities should not blind us to the fact that stealing is not merely an alternative means to the acquisition of objects otherwise difficult of attainment.1
Can we then account for this stealing by simply describing it as another form of recreation, play or sport? Surely it is that, but why is this form of play so attractive to some and so unappealing to others? Mountain climbing, chess, pinball, number pools and bingo are also different kindjs
Facts the Theory Must Fit [ 27 ]
of recreation. Each of us, child or adult, can choose from a host of alternative means for satisfying our common "need" for recreation. But every choice expresses a preference, and every preference reflects something about the chooser or his circumstances that endows the object of his choice with some special quality or virtue. The choice is not self-explanatory nor is it arbitrary or random. Each form of recreation is distributed in a characteristic way among the age, sex and social class sectors of our population. The explanation of these distributions and of the way they change is often puzzling, sometimes fascinating and rarely platitudinous.
By the same logic, it is an imperfect answer to our problem to say: "Stealing is but another way of satisfying the universal desire for status." Nothing is more obvious from numberless case histories of subcultural delinquents that they steal to achieve recognition and to avoid isolation or opprobrium. This is an important insight and part of the foundation on which we shall build. But the question still haunts us: "Why is stealing a claim to status in one group and a degrading blot in another?"
If stealing itself is not motivated by rational, utilitarian considerations, still less are the manifold other activities which constitute the delinquent's repertoire. Throughout there is a kind of malice apparent, an enjoyment in the discomfiture of others, a delight in the defiance of taboos itself. Thrasher quotes one gang delinquent:
We did all kinds of dirty tricks for fun. We'd see a sign, "Please keep the streets clean," but we'd tear it down and say, "We don't feel like keeping it clean." One day we put a can of
[ 28 ] Facts the Theory Must Fit
glue in the engine of a man s car. We would always tear tilings down. That would make us laugh and feel good, to have so many jokes.* '
The gang exhibits this gratuitous hostility toward non-gang peers as well as adults. Apart from its more dramatic manifestations in the form of gang wars, there is keen delight in terrorizing "good" children, in driving them from playgrounds and gyms for which the gang itself may have little use, and in general in making themselves obnoxious to the virtuous. The same spirit is evident in playing hookey and in misbehavior in school. The teacher and her rules are not merely something onerous to be evaded. They are to be flouted. There is an element of active spite and malice, contempt and ridicule, challenge and defiance, exquisitely symbolized, in an incident described to the writer by Mr. Henry D. McKay, of defecating on the teacher s desk.3
All this suggests also the intention of our term "nega-tivistic." The delinquent subculture is not only a set of rules, a design for living which is different from or indifferent to or even in conflict with the norms of the "respectable" adult society. It would appear at least plausible that it is defined by its "negative polarity" to those norms. That is, the delinquent subculture takes its norms from the larger culture but turns them upside down. -The delinquent's conduct is right, by the standards of his subculture, precisely because it is wrong by the norms of the larger culture.^|"Malicious" and "negativistic" are foreign to the delinquent's vocabulary but he will often assure us,
*Frederic M. Thrasher, The Gang (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936), pp. 94-95.
Facts the Theory Must Fit [ 29 ]
] sometimes ruefully, sometimes with a touch of glee or
p even pride, that he is "just plain mean."
i In describing what might be called the "spirit" of the
delinquent culture, we have suggested also its versatility. Of the "antisocial" activities of the delinquent gangs, stealing, of course, looms largest. Stealing itself can be, and for the gang usually is, a diversified occupation. It may steal milk, bottles, candy, fruit, pencils, sports equipment and cars; it may steal from drunks, homes, stores, schools and filling stations. No gang runs the whole gamut but neither is it likely to "specialize" as do many adult criminal gangs
I and "solitary" delinquents. More to our point, however, is
' the fact that stealing tends to go hand-in-hand with "other
property offenses," "malicious mischief," "vandalism," "trespass," and truancy. This quality of versatility and the fusion of versatility and malice are manifest in the following quotation:
.i We would get some milk bottles in front of the grocery
store and break them in somebody's hallway. Then we would break windows or get some garbage cans and throw them down someone's front stairs. After doing all this dirty work and running through alleys and yards, we'd go over to a grocery store. There, some of the boys would hide in a hallway while I
! would get a basket of grapes. When the man came after me,
why the boys would jump out of their places and each grab a basket of grapes.*
Dozens of young offenders, after relating to the writer this delinquent episode and that, have summarized: "I
\ *CIifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay, Social Factors in Juvenile !"... Delinquency, Vol. II of National Commission on Law Observance and > Enforcement, Report on the Causes of Crime (Washington: U. S. Gov't ernment Printing Office, 1931), p. 18.
[ 30 ] Facts the Theory Must Fit
guess we was just ornery." A generalized, diversified, protean "orneriness," not this or that specialized delinquent pursuit seems best to describe the vocation of the delinquent gang*
Another characteristic of the subculture of the delinquent gang is short-run hedonism. There is little interest in long-run goals, in planning activities and budgeting time, or in activities involving knowledge and skills to be acquired only through practice, deliberation and study. The members of the gang typically congregate, with no specific activity in mind, at some street corner, candy store or other regular rendezvous. They "hang around," "rough-housing" "chewing the fat," and "waiting for something to turn up." They may respond impulsively to somebody's suggestion to play ball, go swimming, engage in some sort of mischief, or do something else that offers excitement. They do not take kindly to organized and supervised recreation, which subjects them to a regime of schedules and impersonal rules. They are impatient, impetuous and out for "fun," with little heed to the remoter gains and costs. It is to be noted that this short-run hedonism is not inherently delinquent and indeed it would be a serious error to think of the delinquent gang as dedicated solely to the cultivation of juvenile crime. Even in the most seriously delinquent gang only a small fraction of the "fun" is specifically and intrinsically delinquent. Furthermore, short-run hedonism is not characteristic of delinquent groups alone, On the contrary, it is common throughout the social class from which delinquents characteristically come. However, in the delinquent gang it reaches its finest
Facts the Theory Must Fit [ 31 j
flower. It is the fabric, as it were, of which delinquency is the most brilliant and spectacular thread.5
Another characteristic not peculiar to the delinquent gang but a conspicuous ingredient of its culture is an emphasis on group autonomy, or intolerance of restraint except from the informal pressures within the group itself. Relations with gang members tend to be intensely solidary and imperious. Relations with other groups tend to be indifferent, hostile or rebellious. Gang members are unusually resistant to the efforts of home, school and other agencies to regulate, not only their delinquent activities, but any activities carried on within the group, and to efforts to compete with the gang for the time and other resources of its members. It may be argued that the resistance of gang members to the authority of the home may not be a result of their membership in gangs but that membership in gangs, on the contrary, is a result of ineffective family supervision, the breakdown of parental authority and the hostility of the child toward the parents; in short, that the delinquent gang recruits members who have already achieved autonomy. Certainly a previous breakdown in family controls facilitates recruitment into delinquent gangs. But we are not speaking of the autonomy, the emancipation of individuals. It is not the individual delinquent but the gang that is autonomous. For many of our subcultural delinquents the claims of the home are very real and very compelling. The point is that the gang is a separate, distinct and often irresistible focus of attraction, loyalty and solidarity. The claims of the home versus the claims of the gang may present a real
[ 32 ] Facts the Theory Must Fit
dilemma, and in such cases the breakdown of family controls is as much a casualty as a cause of gang membership.6
SOME ATTEMPTS AT EXPLANATION
the literature on juvenile delinquency has seldom come to grips with the problem of accounting for the content and spirit of the delinquent subculture. To say that this content is "traditional" in certain areas and is "handed down" from generation to generation is but to state the problem rather than to offer a solution. Neither does the "social disorganization" theory7 come to grips with the facts. This theory holds that the delinquent culture flourishes in the "interstitial areas" of our great cities. These are formerly "good" residential areas which have been invaded by industry and commerce, are no longer residentially attractive, and are inhabited by a heterogeneous, economically depressed and highly mobile population with no permanent stake in the community. These people lack the solidarity, the community spirit, the motivation and the residential stability necessary for organization, on a neighborhood basis, for the effective control of delinquency. To this argument we may make two answers. First, recent research has revealed that many, if not most, such "interstitial" and "slum" areas are by m> means lacking in social organization. To the observer who has lived in them, many such areas are anything but the picture of chaos and heterogeneity which we find drawn in the older literature. We find, on the contrary, a vast and ramifying network of informal associations among like-minded people, not a horde of anonymous families and
Facts the Theory Must Fit [ 33 ]
individuals, strangers to one another and rudely jostling one another in the struggle for existence. The social organization of the slum may lack the spirit and the objectives of organization in the "better" neighborhoods, but the slum is not necessarily a jungle. In the "delinquency area" as elsewhere, there is an awareness of community, an involvement of the individual in the lives and doings of the neighborhood, a concern about his reputation among his neighbors. The organization which exists may indeed not be adequate for the effective control of delinquency and for the solution of other social problems, but the qualities and defects of organization are not to be confused with the absence of organization.8 However, granting the absence of community pressures and concerted action for the repression of delinquency, we are confronted by a second deficiency in this argument. It is wholly negative. It accounts for the presence of delinquency by the absence of effective constraints. If one is disposed to be delinquent, the absence of constraint will facilitate the expression of these impulses. It will not, however, account for the presence of these impulses. The social disorganization argument leaves open the question of the origin of the impulse, of the peculiar content and spirit of the delinquent subculture.
^Another theory which has enjoyed some vogue is the "culture conflict" theory.?'According to this view, these areas of high mobility and motley composition are lacking in cultural unityjThe diverse ethnic and racial stocks have diverse and incongruent standards and codes, and these standards and codes are in turn inconsistent with those of
I
[ 58 ] A General Theory of Subcultures
in holding something dear or in despising some good that others cherish, whether it be a style of art, a political belief, a vocational aspiration, or a way of making money not only suffers a loss of status; he is not likely to hold to his belief s with much conviction. His belief s will be uncertain, vacillating, unstable. If others do not question us, on the other hand, we are not likely to question ourselves. For any given individual, of course, some groups are more effective than others as authorities for defining the validity or plausibility of his beliefs. These are his "reference groups." For all of us, however, faith and reason alike are curiously prone to lead to conclusions already current in our reference groups. It is hard to convince ourselves that in cheating, joining the Christian Science Church, voting Republican or falsifying our age to buy beer we are doing the right thing if our reference groups are agreed that these things are wrong, stupid or ridiculous.1
We see then why, both on the levels of overt action and of the supporting frame of reference, there are powerful incentives not to deviate from the ways established in our groups. Should our problems be not capable of solution in ways acceptable to our groups and should they be sufficiently pressing, we are not so likely to strike out on our own as we are to shop around for a group with a different subculture, with a frame of reference we find more congenial. One fascinating aspect of the social process is the continual realignment of groups, the migration of individuals from one group to another in the unconscious quest for a social milieu favorable to the resolution of their problems of adjustment.
A General Theory of Subcultures [ 59 ]
HOW SUBCULTURAL SOLUTIONS ARISE
now we confront a dilemma and a paradox. We have seen how difficult it is for the individual to cut loose from the culture models in his milieu, how his dependence upon his fellows compels him to seek conformity and to avoid innovation. But these models and precedents which we call the surrounding culture are ways in which other people think and other people act, and these other people are likewise constrained by models in their milieux. These models themselves, however, continually change. How is it possible for cultural innovations to emerge while each of the participants in the culture is so powerfully motivated to conform to what is already established? This is the central theoretical problem of this book.
The crucial condition for the emergence of new cultural forms is the existence, in effective interaction with one another, of a number of actors tcith similar problems of adr justment. These may be the entire membership of a group or only certain members, similarly circumstanced, within the group. Among the conceivable solutions to their problems may be one which is not yet embodied in action and which does not therefore exist as a cultural model. This solution, except for the fact that is does not already carry the social criteria of validity and promise the social rewards of consensus, might well answer more neatly to the problems of this group and appeal to its members more effectively than any of the solutions already institutionalized. For each participant, this solution would be adjustive and adequately motivated provided that he could anticipate a simultaneous and corresponding transformation in the
[ 60 ] A General Theory of Subcultures
frames of reference of his fellows. Each would welcome a sign from the others that a new departure in this direction would receive approval and support. But how does one know whether a gesture toward innovation will strike a responsive and sympathetic chord in others or whether it will elicit hostility, ridicule and punishment? Potential concurrence is always problematical and innovation or the impulse to innovate a stimulus for anxiety.
The paradox is resolved when the innovation is broached in such a manner as to elicit from others reactions suggesting their receptivity; and when, at the same time, the innovation occurs by increments so small, tentative and ambiguous as to permit the actor to retreat, if the signs be unfavorable, without having become identified with an unpopular position. Perhaps all social actions have, in addition to their instrumental, communicative and expressive functions, this quality of being exploratory gestures. For the actor with problems of adjustment which cannot be resolved within the frame of reference of the established culture, each response of the other to what the actor says and does is a clue to the directions in which change may proceed further in a way congenial to the other and to the direction in which change will lack social support. And if the probing gesture is motivated by tensions common to other participants it is likely to initiate a process of mutual exploration and joint elaboration of a new solution. My exploratory gesture functions as a cue to you; your exploratory gesture as a cue to me. By a casual, semi-serious, noncommittal or tangential remark I may stick my neck out just a little way, but I will quickly withdraw it unless you,
A General Theory of Subcultures [ 61 ]
by some sign of affirmation, stick yours out. I will permit myself to become progressively committed but only as others, by some visible sign, become likewise committed. The final product, to which we are jointly committed, is likely to be a compromise formation of all the participants to what we may call a cultural process, a formation perhaps unanticipated by any of them. Each actor may contribute something directly to the growing product, but he may also contribute indirectly by encouraging others to advance, inducing them to retreat, and suggesting new avenues to be explored. The product cannot be ascribed to any one of the participants; it is a real "emergent" on a group level.
We may think of this process as one of mutual conversion. The important thing to remember is that we do not first convert ourselves and then others. The acceptability of an idea to oneself depends upon its acceptability to others. Converting the other is part of the process of converting oneself.
A simple but dramatic illustration may help. We all know that soldiers sometimes develop physical complaints with no underlying organic pathology. We know that these complaints, which the soldier himself is convinced are real, are solutions to problems. They enable the soldier to escape from a hazardous situation without f eeling guilty or to displace his anxiety, whose true cause he is reluctant to acknowledge even to himself, upon something which is generally acknowledged to be a legitimate occasion for anxiety. Edward A. Strecker describes an episode of "mass psychoneurosis" in World War I. In a period of eight
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days, on a certain sector of the front, about 500 "gas casualties" reported for medical aid. There had been some desultory gas shelling but never of serious proportions.
Either following the explosion of a gas shell, or even without this preliminary, a soldier would give the alarm of "gas" to those in his vicinity. They would put on their masks, hut in the course of a few hours a large percentage of this group would begin to drift into the dressing stations, complaining of indefinite symptoms, It was obvious upon examination that they were not really gassed.*
Strecker tells us that these symptoms were utilized as "a route to escape from an undesirable situation." What he does not tell us, but what seems extremely probable, is that for many and probably most of the soldiers, this route to escape was available only because hundreds of other soldiers were "in the same boat" and in continual communicative interaction before, during and after the shelling. One soldier might be ripe for this delusion but if his buddies are not similarly ripe he will have a hard time persuading them that he has been gassed, and if they persist in not being gassed he will have a hard time persuading himself. If all are ripe, they may, in a relatively short time, collectively fabricate a false but unshakeable belief that all have been gassed. It is most unlikely that these 500 soldiers would have been able to "describe all the details with convincing earnestness and generally some dramatic quality of expression" if they had not been able to communicate with one another and develop a common vocabulary
*Edward A. Strecker, Beyond the Clinical Frontier (New York: W.' W. Norton and Company, 1940), pp. 77-78.
A General Theory of Subcultures [ 63 ]
for interpreting whatever subjective states they did experience.
\The literature on crowd behavior is another source of evidence of the ability of a propitious interaction situation to generate, in a short time, collective although necessarily ephemeral and unstable solutions to like problems. ^Students are agreed that the groundwork for violent and destructive mob behavior includes the prior existence of unresolved tensions and a period of "milling" during which a set of common sentiments is elaborated and reinforced. It is incorrect to assume, however, that a certain magic in numbers simply serves to lift the moral inhibitions to the expression of already established destructive urges. Kimball Young observes:
Almost all commentators have noted that individuals engaged in mass action, be it attack or panic flight, show an amazing lack of what are, under calmer conditions, considered proper morals. There is a release of moral inhibitions, social taboos are off, and the crowd enjoys a sense of freedom and unrestraint.*
He goes on to add, however:
Certainly those engaged in a pogrom, a lynching or a race riot have a great upsurge of moral feelings, the sense of righting some wrong... Though the acts performed may be viewed in retrospect as immoral, and may later induce a sense of shame, remorse and guilt, at the time they seem completely justified.t
It is true that ordinary moral restraints often cease to operate under mob conditions. These conditions do not, however, produce a suspension of all morality, a blind and amoral outburst of primitive passions. The action of
*Kimball Young, Social Psychology (2nd ed.; New York: F. S. Crofts and Company, 1946), p. 398.
Vhid., p. 399.
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each member of the mob is in accordance with a collective solution which has been worked out during the brief history of the mob itself. This solution includes not only something to do but a positive morality to justify conduct at such gross variance with the mob members' ordinary conceptions of decency and humanity. In short, what occurs under conditions of mob interaction is not the annihilation of morality but a rapid transformation of the moral frame of reference.2
Here we have talked about bizarre and short-lived examples of group problem-solving. But the line between this sort of thing and large-scale social movements, with their elaborate and often respectable ideologies and programs, is tenuous. No fundamentally new principles have to be invoked to explain them,3
We quote from one more writer on the efficacy of the interaction situation in facilitating transformations of the frame of reference. The late Kurt Lewin, on the basis of his experience in attempts at guided social change, remarks:
... Experience in leadership training, in changing of food habits, work production, criminality, alcoholism, prejudices, all seem to indicate that it is usually easier to change individuals formed into a group than to change any one of them separately. As long as group values are unchanged the individual will resist changes more strongly the farther he is to depart from group standards. If the group standard itself is changed, the resistance which is due to the relationship between individual and group standard is eliminated.*
*Kurt Lewin, "Frontiers of Group Dynamics," Human Relations, I (June, 1947), 35.
A General Theory of Subcultures [ 65 ]
The emergence of these "group standards" of this shared frame of reference, is the emergence of a new subculture. j It is cultural because each actor s participation in this sys-
> tem of norms is influenced by his perception of the same
* ' norms in other actors. It is sw&cultural because the norms ^       , are shared only among those actors who stand somehow
to profit from them and who find in one another a sym-i pathetic moral climate within which these norms may
' .   come to fruition and persist. In this fashion culture is continually being created, re-created and modified wherever individuals sense in one another like needs, generated by *, like circumstances, not shared generally in the larger
social system. Once established, such a subcultural system r may persist, but not by sheer inertia. It may achieve a life
which outlasts that of the individuals who participated in its creation, but only so long as it continues to serve the needs of those who succeed its creators.
* -
'      •      SUBCULTURAL SOLUTIONS TO STATUS ' PROBLEMS
one variant of this cultural process interests us espe-: cially because it provides the model for our explanation
of the dehnquent subculture, Status problems are problems of achieving respect in the eyes of one's fellows. Our ability to achieve status depends upon the criteria of status ; applied by our fellows, that is, the standards or norms they
go by in evaluating people. These criteria are an aspect of I their cultural frames of reference. If we lack the charac-
teristics or capacities which give status in terms of these criteria, we are beset by one of the most typical and yet
[ 66 ] A General Theory of Subcultures
distressing of human problems of adjustment. One solution is for individuals who share such problems to gravitate toward one another and jointly to establish new norms, new criteria of status which define as meritorious the characteristics they do posses, the kinds of conduct of which they are capable. It is clearly necessary for each participant, if the innovation is to solve his status problem, that these new criteria be shared with others, that the solution be a group and not a private solution, If he "goes it alone" he succeeds only in further estranging himself from his fellows. Such new status criteria would represent new sub-cultural values different from or even antithetical to those of the larger social system.
In general conformity with this pattern, social scientists have accounted for religious cults and sects such as the Oxford Group and Father Divine's Kingdom as attempts on the part of people who feel their status and self-respect threatened to create little societies whose criteria of personal goodness are such that those who participate can find surcease from certain kinds of status anxiety. They have explained such social movements as the Nazi Party as coalitions of groups whose status is unsatisfactory or precarious within the framework of the existing order and who find, in the ideology of the movement, reassurance of their importance and worth or the promise of a new society in which their importance and worth will be recognized. They have explained messianic and revivalistic religious movements among some American Indian and other non-literate groups as collective reactions to status problems which arise during the process of assimilation
A General Theory of Subcultures [ 67 ]
into a culture and social system dominated by white people. In this new social system the natives find themselves relegated to the lowest social strata. They respond by drawing closer together to one another and elaborating ideologies which emphasize the glories of the tribal past, the merit of membership in the tribe and an early millen-ium in which the ancient glory and dignity of the tribe will be reestablished.* All these movements may seem to have little in common with a gang of kids bent on theft and vandalism. It is true that they have little in common on the level of the concrete content of ideologies and value systems. Tn later chapters, however, we will try to show that the general principles of explanation which we have outlined here are applicable also to the culture of the delincjuent gang.
SOME ACCOMPANIMENTS OF THE CULTURAL PROCESS
the continued serviceability and therefore the viability of a subcultural solution entails the emergence of a certain amount of group solidarity and heightened interaction among the participants in the subculture. It is only in interaction with those who share his values that the actor finds social validation for his beliefs and social rewards for his way of life, and the continued existence of the group and friendly intercourse with its members become values for actor. Furthermore, to the extent that the new subculture invites the hostility of outsiders—one of the costs of subcultural solutions—the members of the sub-cultural group are motivated to look to one another for
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those goods and services, those relationships of cooperation and exchange which they once enjoyed with the world outside the group and which have now been withdrawn. This accentuates still further the separateness of the group, the dependence of the members on the group and the richness and individuality of its subculture. No group, of course, can live entirely unto itself. To some extent the group may be compelled to improvise new arrangements for obtaining services from the outside world. "The fix," for example, arises to provide for the underworld that protection which is afforded to legitimate business by the formal legal system and insurance companies.
Insofar as the new subculture represents a new status system sanctioning behavior tabooed or frowned upon by the larger society, the acquisition of status within the new group is accompanied by a loss of status outside the group. To the extent that the esteem of outsiders is a value to the members of the group, a new problem is engendered. To this problem the typical solution is to devalue the good will and respect of those whose good will and respect are forfeit anyway. The new subculture of the community of innovators comes to include hostile and contemptuous images of those groups whose enmity they have earned. Indeed, this repudiation of outsiders, necessary in order to protect oneself from feeling concerned about what they may think, may go so far as to make nonconformity with the expectations of the outsiders a positive criterion of status within the group. Certain kinds of conduct, that is, become reputable precisely because they are disreputable in the eyes of the "out-group."
A General Theory of Subcultures { 69 ]
One curious but not uncommon accompaniment of this process is what Fritz Red! has called "protective provocation." Certain kinds of behavior to which we are strongly inclined may encounter strong resistances because this >: behavior would do injury to the interests or feelings of
f- people we care about. These same kinds of behavior t would, however, be unequivocally motivated without com-
| plicating guilt feelings if those people stood to us in the
|i        relation of enemies rather than friends. In such a situation we may be unconsciously motivated to act precisely in ? those ways calculated to stimulate others to expressions
of anger and hostility, which we may then seize upon as evidences of their essential enmity and ill will. We are then absolved of our moral obligations toward those persons and freer to act without ambivalence. The hostility of the "out-group," thus engendered or aggravated, may serve to protect the "in-group" from mixed feelings about its way of life.
CONCLUSION
i our point of departure, we have said, is the psycho-
genic assumption that innovations, whether on the level
■ of action or of the underlying frame of reference, arise
out of problems of adjustment. In the psychogenic model, however, the innovation is independently contrived by the actor. The role of the social milieu in the genesis of the problem is recognized, but its role in the determination of
i the solution minimized. In the psychogenic model, the
fact that others have problems similar to my own may lead
chapter v
A Delinquent Solution
WHAT THE DELINQUENT SUBCULTURE HAS TO OFFER
. the delinquent subculture, we suggest, is a way of dealing with the problems of adjustment we have described. These problems are chiefly status problems: certain children are denied status in the respectable society because they cannot meet the criteria of the respectable status system. The delinquent subculture deals with these problems by providing criteria of status which these children can meet.
This statement is highly elliptical and is based upon a number of assumptions whose truth is by no means self-evident. It is not, for example, self-evident that people whose status positions are low must necessarily feel deprived, injured or ego-involved in that low status. Whether they will or not depends upon several considerations.
[121]
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We remarked earlier that our ego-involvement in a given comparison with others depends upon our "status universe." "Whom do we measure ourselves against?" is the crucial question. In some other societies virtue may consist in willing acceptance of the role of peasant, lowborn commoner or member of an inferior caste and in conformity to the expectations of that role. If others are richer, more nobly-born or more able than oneself, it is by the will of an inscrutable Providence and not to be imputed to one's own moral defect. The sting of status inferiority is thereby removed or mitigated; one measures himself only against those of like social position. We have suggested, however, that an important feature of American "democracy," perhaps of the Western European tradition in general, is the tendency to measure oneself against "all comers." This means that, for children as for adults, one's sense of personal worth is at stake in status comparisons with all other persons, at least of one's own age and sex, whatever their family background or material circumstances. It means that, in the lower levels of our status hierarchies, whether adult or juvenile, there is a chronic fund of motivation, conscious or repressed, to elevate one's status position, either by striving to climb within the established status system or by redefining the criteria of status so that one's present attributes become status-giving assets. It has been suggested, for example, that such typically working-class forms of Protestantism as the Holiness sects owe their appeal to the fact that they reverse the respectable status system; it is the humble, the simple and the dispossessed who sit at the right hand of God, whereas
A Delinquent Solution [ 123 ]
worldly goods, power and knowledge are as nothing in His eyes. In like manner, we offer the view that the delinquent subculture is one solution to a kindred problem on the juvenile level.
Another consideration affecting the degree of privation experienced in a given status position is the "status source." A person's status, after all, is how he stands in somebody's eyes. Status, then, is not a fixed property of the person but varies with the point of view of whoever is doing the judging. I may be revered by some and despised by others. A crucial question then becomes: "Whose respect or admiration do I value?" That you think well or ill of me may or may not matter to me.
It may be argued that the working-class boy does not care what middle-class people think of him, that he is ego-involved only in the opinions of his family, his friends, his working-class neighbors. A definitive answer to this argument can come only from research designed to get at the facts. This research, in our opinion, is yet to be done. There is, however, reason to believe that most children are sensitive to some degree about the attitudes of any persons with whom they are thrown into more than the most superficial kind of contact. The contempt or indifference of others, particularly of those like schoolmates and teachers, with whom we are constrained to associate for long hours every day, is difficult, we suggest, to shrug off. It poses a problem with which one may conceivably attempt to cope in a variety of ways. One may make an active effort to change himself in conformity with the expectations of others; one may attempt to justify or explain away his
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inferiority in terms which will exculpate him; one may tell oneself that he really doesn't care what these people think; one may react with anger and aggression. But the least probable response is simple, uncomplicated, honest indifference. If we grant the probable truth of the claim that most American working-class children are most sensitive to status sources on their own level, it does not follow that they take lightly rejection, disparagement and censure from other status sources.
Even on their "own" social level, the situation is far from simple. The "working class," we have repeatedly emphasized, is not culturally homogeneous. Not only is there much diversity in the cultural standards applied by one's own working-class neighbors and kin so that it is difficult to find a "working-class" milieu in which "middle-class" standards are not important. In addition, the "working-class" culture we have described is, after all, an ideal type; most working-class people are culturally ambivalent. Due to lack of capacity, of the requisite "character structure" or of "luck," they may be working-class in terms of job and income; they may have accepted this status with resignation and rationalized it to their satisfaction; and by example, by class-linked techniques of child training and by failure to support the middle-class agencies of socialization they may have produced children deficient in the attributes that make for status in middle-class terms. Nevertheless, all their lives, through all the major media of mass indoctrination—the schools, the movies, the radio, the newspapers and the magazines—the middle-class powers-that-be that manipulate these media have been
ADelinquent Solution [ 125]
trying to "sell" them on middle-class values and the middle-class standard of hving. Then there is the "propaganda of the deed," the fact that they have seen with their- own eyes working-class contemporaries "get ahead" and "make the grade" in a middle-class world. In consequence of all this, we suspect that few working-class parents unequivocally repudiate as intrinsically worthless middle-class objectives. There is good reason to believe that the modesty of working-class aspirations is partly a matter of trimming ones sails to the available opportunities and resources and partly a matter of unwillingness to accept the discipline which upward striving entails.
However complete and successful one's accommodation to an humble status, the vitality of middle-class goals, of the "American dream," is nonetheless likely to manifest itself in his aspirations for his children. His expectations : may not be grandiose, but he will want his children to be "better off" than he. Whatever his own work history and social reputation may be, he will want his children to be "steady" and "respectable," He may exert few positive pressures to "succeed" and the experiences he provides his children may even incapacitate them for success; he may be puzzled at the way they "turn out." But whatever the measure of his own responsibility in accounting for the product, he is not likely to judge that product by unadulterated "corner-boy" standards. Even "corner-boy" parents, although they may value in their children such corner-boy virtues as generosity to friends, personal loyalty and physical prowess, are likely also to be gratified by recognition by middle-class representatives and by the kinds of
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achievement for which the college-boy way of life is a prerequisite. Even in the working-class milieu from which he acquired his incapacity for middle-class achievement^ the working-class corner-boy may find himself at a status disadvantage as against his more upwardly mobile peers, Lastly, of course, is that most ubiquitous and inescapable of status sources, oneself. Technically, we do not call the person's attitudes towards himself "status" but rather "self-esteem," or, when the quality of the self-attitude is specifically moral, "conscience" or "superego." The important question for us is this: To what extent, if at all, do boys who are typically "working-class" and "corner-boy" in their overt behavior evaluate themselves by "middle-class," "college-boy" standards? For our overt behavior, however closely it conforms to one set of norms, need not argue against the existence or effectiveness of alternative and conflicting norms. The failure of our own behavior to conform to our own expectations is an elementary and commonplace fact which gives rise to the tremendously important consequences of guilt, self-recrimination, anxiety and self-hatred. The reasons for the failure of self-expectations and overt conduct to agree are complex. One reason is that we often internalize more than one set of norms, each of which would dictate a different course of action in a given life-situation; since we can only do one thing at a time, however, we are forced to choose between them or somehow to compromise. In either case, we fall short of the full realization of our own expectations and must somehow cope with the residual discrepancy between those expectations and our overt behavior.
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j We have suggested that corner-boy children (like their
working-class parents) internalize middle-class standards to a sufficient degree to create a fundamental ambivalence towards their own corner-boy behavior. Again, we are on
: somewhat speculative ground where fundamental research
remains to be done. The coexistence within the same personality of a corner-boy and a college-boy morality may
? appear more plausible, however, if we recognize that they
are not simple antitheses of one another and that parents and others may in all sincerity attempt to indoctrinate both. For example, the goals upon which the college-boy places such great value, such as intellectual and occupational achievement, and the college-boy virtues of ambi-tiousness and pride in self-sufficiency are not as such disparaged by the corner-boy culture. The meritoriousness of standing by one's friends and the desire to have a good time here and now do not by definition preclude the desire to help oneself and to provide for the future. It is no doubt the rule, rather than the exception, that most children, college-boy and corner-boy alike, would like to enjoy the best of both worlds. In practice, however, the substance
s that is consumed in the pursuit of one set of values is not
■ available for the pursuit of the other. The sharpness of the
dilemma and the degree of the residual discontent depend upon a immber of things, notably, the intensity with which both sets of norms have been internalized, the extent to which the life-situations which one encounters compel a choice between them, and the abundance and appropriate-
-' ' ■      ness of the skills and resources at one's disposal. The child of superior intelligence, for example, may find it easier than
f
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his less gifted peers to meet the demands of the college-boy standards without failing his obligations to his corner-boy associates.
It is a plausible assumption, then, that the working-class boy whose status is low in middle-class terms cares about that status, that this status confronts him with a genuine problem of adjustment. To this problem of adjustment there are a variety of conceivable responses, of which participation in the creation and the maintenance of the delinquent subculture is one. Each mode of response entails costs and yields gratifications of its own. The circumstances which tip the balance in favor of the one or the other are obscure. One mode of response is to desert the corner-boy for the college-boy way of life. To the reader of Whyte's Street Corner Society the costs are manifest. It is hard, at best, to be a college-boy and to run with the corner-boys. It entails great effort and sacrifice to the degree that one has been indoctrinated in what we have described as the working-class socialization process; its rewards are frequently long-deferred; and for many working-class boys it makes demands which they are, in consequence of their inferior linguistic, academic and "social" skills, not likely ever to meet. Nevertheless, a certain proportion of working-class boys accept the challenge of the middle-class status system and play the status game by the middle-class rules.
Another response, perhaps the most common, is what we may call the "stable corner-boy response." It represents an acceptance of the corner-boy way of life and an effort to make the best of a situation. If our reasoning is correct,
A Delinquent Solution [ 129 ]
it does not resolve the dilemmas we have described as inherent in the corner-boy position in a largely middle-class world, although these dilemmas may be mitigated by an effort to disengage oneself from dependence upon middle-class status-sources and by withdrawing, as far as possible, into a sheltering community of like-minded working-class children. Unlike the delinquent response, it avoids the radical rupture of good relations with even working-class adults and does not represent as irretrievable a renunciation of upward mobility. It does not incur the active hostility of middle-class persons and therefore leaves the way open to the pursuit of some values, such as jobs, which these people control. It represents a preference for the familiar, with its known satisfactions and its known imperfections, over the risks and the uncertainties as well as the moral costs of the college-boy response, on the one hand, and die delinquent response on the other.
What does the delinquent response have to offer? Let us be clear, first, about what this response is and how it differs from the stable corner-boy response. The hallmark of the delinquent subculture is the explicit and wholesale repudiation of middle-class standards and the adoption of their very antithesis. The corner-boy culture is not specifically delinquent. Where it leads to behavior which may be defined as delinquent, e.g., truancy, it does so not because nonconformity to middle-class norms defines conformity to corner-boy norms but because conformity to middle-class norms interferes with conformity to corner-boy norms. The corner-boy plays truant because he does not like school, because he wishes to escape from a dull
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and unrewarding and perhaps humiliating situation. But truancy is not defined as intrinsically valuable and status-giving. The member of the delinquent subculture plays truant because "good" middle-class (and working-class) children do not play truant. Corner-boy resistance to being herded and marshalled by middle-class figures is not the same as the delinquent's Routing and jeering of those middle-class figures and active ridicule of those who submit. The corner-boy's ethic of reciprocity, his quasi-communal attitude toward the property of in-group members, is shared by the delinquent. But this ethic of reciprocity does not sanction the deliberate and "malicious" violation of the property rights of persons outside the in-group. We have observed that the differences between the corner-boy and the college-boy or middle-class culture are profound but that in many ways they are profound differences in emphasis. We have remarked that the corner-boy culture does not so much repudiate the value of many middle-class achievements as it emphasizes certain other values which make such achievements improbable. In short, the corner-boy culture temporizes with middle-class morality; the full-fledged delinquent subculture does not.
It is precisely here, we suggest, in the refusal to temporize, that the appeal of the delinquent subculture lies. Let us recall that it is characteristically American, not specifically working-class or middle-class, to measure oneself against the widest possible status universe, to seek status against "all comers," to be "as good as" or "better than" anybody—anybody, that is, within one's own age and sex category. As long as the working-class corner-boy clings
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to a version, however attenuated and adulterated, of the middle-class culture, he must recognize his inferiority to working-class and middle-class college-boys. The delinquent subculture, on the other hand, permits no ambiguity of the status of the delinquent relative to that of anybody else. In terms of the norms of the delinquent subculture, defined by its negative polarity to the respectable status system, the delinquent's very nonconformity to middle-class standards sets him above the most exemplary college boy.
Another important function of the delinquent subculture is the legitimation of aggression. We surmise that a certain amount of hostility is generated among working-class children against middle-class persons, with their airs of superiority, disdain or condescension and against middle-class norms, which are, in a sense, the cause of their status-frustration. To infer inclinations to aggression from the existence of frustration is hazardous; we know that aggression is not an inevitable and not the only consequence of frustration. So here too we must feel our way with caution. Ideally, we should like to see systematic research, probably employing "depth interview" and "projective" techniques, to get at the relationship between status position and aggressive dispositions toward the rules which determine status and toward persons variously distributed in the status hierarchy. Nevertheless, despite our imperfect knowledge of these things, we would be blind if we failed to recognize that bitterness, hostility and jealousy and all sorts of retributive fantasies are among the most common and typically human responses to public
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humiliation. However, for the child who temporizes with middle-class morality, overt aggression and even the conscious recognition of his own hostile impulses are inhibited, for he acknowledges the legitimacy of the rules in terms of which he is stigmatized. For the child who breaks clean with middle-class morality, on the other hand, there are no moral inhibitions on the free expression of aggression against the sources of his frustration. Moreover, the connection we suggest between status-frustration and the aggressiveness of the delinquent subculture seems to us more plausible than many frustration-aggression hypotheses because it involves no assumptions about obscure and dubious "displacement" of aggression against "substitute" targets. The target in this case is the manifest cause of the status problem.
It seems to us that tire mechanism of "reaction-formation" should also play a part here. We have made much of the corner-boys basic ambivalence, his xmeasy acknowledgement, while he lives by the standards of his corner-boy culture, of the legitimacy of college-boy standards. May we assume that when the delinquent seeks to obtain unequivocal status by repudiating, once and for all, the norms of the college-boy culture, these norms really undergo total extinction? Or do they, perhaps, linger on, underground, as it were, repressed, unacknowledged but an ever-present threat to the adjustment which has been achieved at no small cost? There is much evidence from clinical psychology that moral norms, once effectively internalized, are not lightly thrust aside or extinguished. If a new moral order is evolved which offers a more satisfactory solution
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to one's life problems, the old order usually continues to press for recognition, but if this recognition is granted, the applecart is upset. The symptom of this obscurely felt, ever-present threat is clinically known as "anxiety," and the literature of psychiatry is rich with devices for combatting this anxiety, this threat to a hard-won victory. One such device is reaction-formation. Its hallmark is an "exaggerated," "disproportionate," "abnormal" intensity of response, "inappropriate" to the stimulus which seems to elicit it. The unintelligibility of the response, the "over-reaction," becomes intelligible when we see that it has the function of reassuring the actor against an inner threat to his defenses as well as the function of meeting an external situation on its own terms. Thus we have the mother who "compulsively" showers "inordinate" affection upon a child to reassure herself against her latent hostility and we have the male adolescent whose awkward and immoderate masculinity reflects a basic insecurity about his own sex-role. In like manner, we would expect the delinquent boy who, after all, has been socialized in a society dominated by a middle-class morality and who can never quite escape the blandishments of middle-class society, to seek to maintain his safeguards against seduction, Reaction-formation, in his case, should take the form of an "irrational," "malicious," "unaccountable" hostility to the enemy within the gates as well as without: the norms of the respectable middle-class society.1
If our reasoning is correct; it should throw some light upon the peculiar quality of "property delinquency" in the delinquent subculture. We have already seen how the
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rewardingness of a college-boy and middle-class way of life depends, to a great extent, upon general respect for property rights. In an urban society, in particular, the possession and display of property are the most ready and public badges of reputable social class status and are, for that reason, extraordinarily ego-involved. That property actually is a reward for middle-class morality is in part only a plausible fiction, but in general there is certainly a relationship between the practice of that morality and the possession of property. The middle-classes have, then, a strong interest in scrupulous regard for property rights, not only because property is "intrinsically" valuable but because the full enjoyment of their status requires that that status be readily recognizable and therefore that property adhere to those who earn it. The cavalier misappropriation or destruction of property, therefore, is not only a diversion or diminution of wealth; it is an attack on the middle-class where their egos arc most vulnerable. Group stealing, institutionalized in the delinquent subculture, is not just a way of getting something. It is a means that is the antithesis of sober and diligent "labour in a calling." It expresses contempt for a way of life by making its opposite a criterion of status. Money and other valuables are not, as such, despised by the delinquent. For the delinquent and the non-delinquent alike, money is a most glamorous and efficient means to a variety of ends and one cannot have too much of it. But, in the delinquent subculture, the stolen dollar has an odor of sanctity that does not attach to the dollar saved or the dollar earned.
This delinquent system of values and way of life does
j A Delinquent Solution [ 135 ]
j. its job of problem-solving most effectively when it is I adopted as a group solution. We have stressed in our chap-
| ter on the general theory of subcultures that the efficacy
•j of a given change in values as a solution and therefore the ; motivation to such a change depends heavily upon the
\        availability of "reference groups" within which the "devi-.\        ant values" are already institutionalized, or whose mem-j,        bers would stand to profit from such a system of deviant : i values if each were assured of the support and concurrence
j. of the others. So it is with delinquency. We do not suggest I that joining in the creation or perpetuation of a delinquent
1 subculture is the only road to delinquency. We do believe,
however, that for most delinquents delinquency would not be available as a response were it not socially legitimized and given a kind of respectability, albeit by a restricted community of fellow-adventurers. In this respect, the adoption of delinquency is like the adoption of the practice of appearing at the office in open-collar and shirt sleeves. Is it much more comfortable, is it more sensible than the full regalia? Is it neat? Is it dignified? The arguments in the affirmative will appear much more forceful if the practice is already established in one's milieu or if one senses that others are prepared to go along if someone makes the first tentative gestures. Indeed, to many of those who sweat and chafe in ties and jackets, the possibility of an alternative may not even occur until they discover that it has been adopted by their, colleagues. This way of looking at delinquency suggests an answer i to a certain paradox. Countless mothers have protested that their "Johnny" was a good boy until he fell in with a
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certain bunch. But the mothers of each of Johnny's companions hold the same view with respect to their own offspring. It is conceivable and even probable that some of these mothers are naive, that one or more of these youngsters are "rotten apples" who infected the others. We suggest, however, that all of the mothers may be right, that there is. a certain chemistry in the group situation itself which engenders that which was not there before, that group interaction is a sort of catalyst which releases potentialities not otherwise visible. This is especially true when we are dealing with a problem of status-frustration! Status, by definition, is a grant of respect from others. A new system of norms, which measures status by criteria which one can meet, is of no value unless others are prepared to apply those criteria, and others are not likely to do so unless one is prepared to reciprocate.2
We have referred to a lingering ambivalence in the delinquent's own value system, an ambivalence which threatens the adjustment he has achieved and which is met through the mechanism of reaction-formation. The delinquent may have to contend with another ambivalence, in the area of his status sources. The delinquent subculture offers him status as against other children of whatever social level, but it offers him this status in the eyes of his fellow delinquents only. To the extent that there remains a desire for recognition from groups whose respect has been forfeited by commitment to a new subculture, his satisfaction in his solution is imperfect and adulterated. He can perfect his solution only by rejecting as status sources those who reject him. This too may require a certain mea-
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sure of reaction-formation, going beyond indifference to active hostility and contempt for all those who do not share Iris subculture. He becomes all the more dependent upon his delinquent gang. Outside that gang his status position is now weaker than ever. The gang itself tends toward a kind of sectarian solidarity, because the benefits of membership can only be realized in active face-to-face relationships with group members i
This interpretation of the delinquent subculture has important implications for the "sociology of social problems," People are prone to assume that those things which we define as evil and those which we define as good have their origins in separate and distinct features of our society. Evil flows from poisoned wells; good flows from pure and crystal fountains. The same source cannot feed both. Our view is different. It holds that those values which are at the core of "the American way of life," which help to motivate the behavior which we most esteem as "typically American," are among the major determinants of that which we stigmatize as "pathological." More specifically, it holds that the problems of adjustment to which the delinquent subculture is a response are determined, in part, by those Very values which respectable society holds most sacred. The same value system, impinging upon children differently equipped to meet it, is instrumental in generating both delinquency and respectability.
WHAT ABOUT THE SEX DIFFERENCES?
my skin has nothing of the quality of down or silk, there is nothing limpid or flute-like about my voice, I am a total