Abstract
Strain and Defiance are criminological theories that lay ambivalent emphasis on the notion of “rebellion,” which is to say that they both regard mutinous behavior as being motivated by positive or negative ends alike. Individuals rebel, say, by stealing in order to achieve higher status (economic strain); or they may violently antagonize authority as a way to “salvage dignity” in an environment in which they have no social stake whatsoever (defiance). Conversely, they may responsibly protest to oppose blind consumerism (strain); or they may civilly disobey racist laws (political defiance). It is here argued that both theories may be construed as special cases of a general problem, which Thorstein Veblen had already diagnosed in 1899. Veblen depicted social dynamics as a battle between the deterring forces of conservatism, which are animated by an overpowering predatory-pecuniary instinct, and those of progressivism, which rely, on the other hand, on an (ever more enfeebled) instinct of cooperation and workmanship. In this Veblenian model, civil defiance represents a challenge of the peaceable middle-class to the rule of the elite, whereas economically-strained defiance is the expression of the attempt of (middle to low) classes possessed by a pecuniary drive to emulate the status of the elite itself.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Durkheim, E. (1975 [1895]). Textes. II. Religion, morale et anomie (p. 177). Paris: les Éditions de Minuit.
Passas, N. (1995). Continuities in the Anomie Tradition. Advances in Criminological Theory, 6, 91–112, 95.
Merton, R. K. (1938). Social Structure and Anomie. American Sociological Review, 5, 672–682.
Cullen, F. T., & Messner, S. M. (2007). The Making of Criminology Revisited ¬ An oral History of Merton’s Anomie Paradigm. Theoretical Criminology, 11(1), 5–37.
Merton, R. K. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure (pp. 185–211). New York: The Free Press.
Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviation. New York: The Free Press.
Messner, S. F., & Rosenfeld, R. (2007). Crime and the American Dream. Belmont, California: Thomson Wadsworth. 29, 66.
Sherman, L. W., & Berk, R. A. (1984). The Specific Deterrent Effects of Arrest for Domestic Assault. American Sociological Review, 49, 261–272.
Sherman, L. W., and Smith, D. A. et al. (1992), “Crime, Punishment, and Stake in Conformity: Legal and Informal Control of Domestic Violence,” American Sociological Review, 57: 680-690. See also Berk, R. D., Campbell, A., Klap, R., and Western, B. (1992). “The Deterrent Effect of Arrest in Incidents of Domestic Violence: A Bayesian Analysis of Four Field Experiments,” American Sociological Review, 57: 698-708.
Sherman, L. W. (1993). Defiance, Deterrence, and Irrelevance: A Theory of the Criminal Sanction. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 30, 445–473.
Black, D. (1983). Crime as Social Control. American Sociological Review, 48, 34–45.
See note 30.
Sherman, L. W. (2010). Compliance and Consilience: a General Theory of Criminology. In E. McLaughlin & T. Newburn (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Criminological Theory. London: Sage.
Ibid, pp. 378-87.
Agnew, R. (1992). Foundation for a General Strain Theory of Crime and Delinquency. Criminology, 30, 47–76.
Passas, N. (1997). Anomie, Reference Groups, and Relative Deprivation. In N. Passas & R. Agnew (Eds.), The Future of Anomie Theory. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 62.
Ibid, 88.
Ibid, 72.
Passas, “Continuities in the Anomie Tradition,” 96.
Ibid, 102, 104.
Veblen, T. (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class. An Economic Study of Institutions. New York: MacMillan.
Such as that exhibited, e.g., by the Montagnais-Naskapi of the Labrador Peninsula, cited in Sellin, T. (1938). Culture Conflict and Crime. New York: Social Science Research Council, 58-59: “[In their midst], strife is scarcely present, violence strenuously avoided; competition even contemptuously disdained. These, they think, lead to ridicule.”
Veblen, T. (1921). The Engineers and the Price System. New York: Huebsch.
Veblen, T. (1904). The Theory of Business Enterprise. New York: Huebsch.
Merton’s word of choice for describing offending behavior— “innovation”— is, in this connection, not a felicitous one; “cheating and strife,” e.g., would have been a more appropriate heading.
Veblen, Leisure of Class, 243, 238.
Ibid, 235.
Ibid, 237-238.
Messner & Rosenfeld, Crime and the American Dream, 90; Sherman, “Compliance and Consilience,” 382-84; and Sherman, “Defiance, Deterrence, and Irrelevance,” 466.
In this streamlined refitting of Defiance, it might be more expedient to consider particular cases of police brutality (such as the Rodney King affair) as forms of perverse, extreme deterrence rater than “defiant law-enforcing.”
Ranulf, S. (1938). Moral Indignation and Middle-Class Psychology. A Sociological Study . Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 200; and Ranulf, R. (1933), 42-43. The Jealousy of the Gods and Criminal Law at Athens. A contribution to the Sociology of Moral Indignation. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 88, 90.
Stanley, C. (1980). Folk Devils and Moral Panics. The Creation of Mods and Rockers (p. 198). Oxford: Martin Robertson.
Passas, “Anomie, Reference Groups, and Relative Deprivation,” 67.
Veblen, T. (1934). Christian Morals and the Competitive System. In Essays in Our Changing Order (pp. 200–218). New York: Viking.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Preparata, G.G. Industrious rebels and captains of deterrence: defiance interpreted through a Veblenian reformulation of strain theory. Crime Law Soc Change 60, 25–38 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-013-9433-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-013-9433-2