Sample Research Paper
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This is a research paper on Institutional Anomie Theory. In their book Crime and the American Dream, Messner and Rosenfeld (1994) offer an interpretation of anomie philosophy to explain why United Sated is in the grip of crime when compared to other countries. Their “institutional anomie theory” is based on Merton’s (1938) historic hypothesis, however they build further discussing the role of culture and social structure in a more comprehensive way.
In their book Crime and the American Dream, Messner and Rosenfeld (1994) offer an interpretation of anomie philosophy to explain why United Sated is in the grip of crime when compared to other countries. Their “institutional anomie theory” is based on Merton’s (1938) historic hypothesis, however they build further discussing the role of culture and social structure in a more comprehensive way. Since this theory is quite new there have been a few tests which have succeeded in supporting the basic assumption of the theory and have also helped in explaining the different crimes in the U.S.
It was Durkheim who initially came up with the idea; he tried to explain a pattern of suicide and the variation in individuals, groups and societies. The Anomic suicide occurred because of some causal processes that destroyed the relationship between the economic ambitions and achieving the objectives. Therefore unchecked ambition could be seriously harmful if the economy reality was different and there was a gap and a disparity between the objective and the reality.
Merton argues that instead of holding individual behavior responsible for crime, cause of crime can be found in the way the society is organized. This is not very different from Reiman’s model (1995) which puts forward the theory that the system is prejudiced towards the poor who are at a disadvantaged in all sectors and especially targeted in crime. Merton based his theory on two facets of the social order:
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