Chicago School of Thought, Anomie, and Strain Theories

Criminological Theory – Chapters 3&4
Chicago School of Thought, Anomie, and Strain Theories
Your name
September 12, 2016
Your Institution of Affiliation
Abstract
This paper summarizes the points and theories laid out in the third and fourth chapters of the book Criminological Theory: context and consequences. More specifically, the three most famous and well-known theories among them: The Social Disorganization Theory, Anomie, and Strain Theory. Just like the other chapters of the book, these two focuses on the assessing the social context where crimes happen. This is different from other approach, such as those employed by psychology since those theories focus on an “aberration” on the individual’s way of thinking rather than external forces that might have caused the problems. As said earlier, this paper would describe these three theories (and the Chicago school) briefly and would focus then on using these theories in analyzing the events in the world today.
The Social of Theories of Criminology
The social study of Criminology differs from other approaches since instead of focusing on the idea that there are aberrations in the neurological and psychological state of the individual they are focused on the social factors that affect the way individuals (and groups) think and act. For them, these social factors are ‘external’ and coercive (much like social facts) that the people are left with little to no choice but to act based on it. One of the most famous fields of thought is the Chicago School. Emerging in the 1920s and 1930s, the Chicago School of thought is composed of theories by Sociologists that specialized in the use of Symbolic Interactionism and Urban Sociology in analyzing criminal behavior in the “ever-changing American society.” Some of the Theories that were part of the Chicago school are Shaw and McKay’s Theory of Juvenile Delinquency, Burgess’s Concentric Zone Theory, Sutherland’s Theory of Differential Association, to name some. But perhaps the most known among them is the Social Disorganization Theory as conceptualized from the works of Chicago school authors like Shaw and McKay’s and Sutherland. According to this theory, crime happens and increases because of the “lack of ...