Social Dynamics of Crime and Control: New Theories for a World in Transition 9781472562111

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Foreword In Social Dynamic of Crime and Control critical criminology has come of age. Long restricted to the margins of the discipline in which a correctional perspective has been the centerpiece, this volume reflects the growing importance of "social reaction", "constructionist", "constitutive" and cultural approaches to crime and social order. It includes extensive discussions of the influence of the social dynamics of markets on crime, the limits and contexts of legal control, the cultural dynamics of crime, and it incorporates a serious approach to a theory of crime linking labelling to systems theory. Although most of the contributors are European, it includes major contributions from the US and Australia and reflects throughout the perspectives of an international criminology. The book is the product of a workshop held several years ago at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL) in Onati, Spain. The HSL is a partnership between the Research Committee on the Sociology of Law and the Basque Government. For more than a decade it has conducted an international master's programme in the sociology of law and hosted hundreds of workshops devoted to sociolegal studies. It maintains an extensive sociolegal library open to scholars from any country and any relevant discipline. Detailed information about the IISL can be found at wtutv.iisj.es. This book is the most recent publication in the Onati International Series in Law and Society, a series that publishes the best manuscripts produced from Onati workshops conducted in English. A similar series, Colecion Onati: Derecho Y Sociedad, is published in Spanish. William L.F. Felstiner Eve Darian-Smith

Preface This volume assembles recent perspectives and fresh approaches in the field of criminology. It gives an overview of new paths that criminologists take to meet the challenges of social dynamics in different fields of the discipline. Scholars of criminology and sociol-legal studies have contributed to the volume thus furthering an integrative and complex perspective on crime and control. This volume includes the papers from a conference that took place at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law at Ofiati, Spain, from 23 to 24 October 1997. The VW-Foundation in Germany generously funded the conference. We are in particular indebted to Dr Hagen Hof of the VW-Foundation for his advice and support. We owe further thanks to the staff of the International Institute at Ofiati, especially Mrs Malen Gordoa, who all contributed to the perfect organisation and the inspiring atmosphere of the workshop. SUSANNE KARSTEDT, KAI-D. BUSSMANN

Bielefeld, Halle (Saale), September 1999

Contributors Klaus Boehnke, Technical University Chemnitz—Zwickan, Germany Erhard Blankenburg, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands John Braithwaite, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia Kai-D Bussmann, Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany Gabriele Classen, Free University, Berlin, Germany Willem de Haan, Department of Criminal Law, University of Groningen, The Netherlands John Hagan, University of Toronto, Canada Gerd Hefler, Technical University, Chemnitz—Zwicken, Germany Susanne Karstedt, Institute for Demographic Research and Social Policy, University of Bielefeld, Germany Jack Katz, Department of Sociology, UCLA, USA Hans-Jiirgen Kerner, Institute of Criminology, University of Tuebingen, Germany Nicola Lacey, Department of Law, London School of Economics, UK Michael Levi, Cardiff School of Social Sciences, UK Joan McCord, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA Wolfgang Ludwig-Mayerhofer, Department of Sociology, Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, Germany Dario Melossi, Faculty of Law, University of Bologna, Italy Hans Merkens, Free University, Berlin, Germany Steven Messner, Department of Sociology, SUNY—Albany, NY, USA Thomas Ohlemacher, Institute of Criminological Research, Lower Saxony, Germany Richard Rosenfeld, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri St Louis, USA Wolfgang Stelly, Institute of Criminology, University of Tuebingen, Germany Jiirgen Thomas, Institute of Criminology, University of Tuebingen, Germany ElmarWeitekamp, Institute of Criminology, University of Tuebingen, Germany Lucia Zedner, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, UK

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Introduction: Social Change as a Challenge for Criminological Theory SUSANNE KARSTEDT and KAI-D. BUSSMANN

its title to one of the most influential sociological works of the century: Pitirim Sorokin's "Social and Cultural Dynamics". Sorokin's classic gives a broad perspective on the history of social and cultural change. In contrast, this volume is very modest in its intentions. It assembles very different perspectives on social dynamics, crime and control that direct theorising and research in the field. Like other social scientists, criminologists struggle to keep pace with the transformation of societies all over the world, and to link their theories with the dynamics of social change. Criminologists traditionally are vivid observers of social change. Increasing rates of crime are seen as indicators of the "dark side" of social change, and the disruptive and disintegrative processes that are an integral part of social transformation. In fact, these dark sides seem to be fairly obvious. De-industrialisation, widespread unemployment and the emergence of the "service society" change the face of cities and regions. The increasingly competitive mechanisms of markets put pressure on the bonds that are the foundations of society. The powerful mechanisms of self-regulation in social institutions, communities or even families seem to fall apart in an increasingly "individualised" society, and consequently, the "non-state" forms of social control are weakened. There is no doubt that the dismantling of the welfare state has an impact on crime and social control at national levels. In a "fragmented society" violent conflicts as well as property crimes will spread. Criminologists forecast an increase of violent crimes in those groups of society that are most affected by social and economic pressures. The structure and distribution of different types of crimes will reflect the emerging distributions of winners and losers in national societies. The populations in West and East European countries experience new uncertainties in their life courses. The dynamics of social change directly affect the life courses of juveniles through situations of stress and strain, which are causal factors for delinquent involvement. Furthermore, globalisation provides new opportunities for white collar and organised crime. Criminologists predict an increase of economic and corporate crime on the national level and in the global marketplace.

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2 Introduction: Social Change as a Challenge Now, such profound and rapid changes generate apocalyptic and dramatic predictions of rising crime rates, as well as of an extraordinary spread of violence on a yet unknown scale. But theories that link social change and criminal behaviour have to be aware of the "double movement" (see Messner and Rosenfeld, Chapter 2) of social change and the counteracting forces that emerge during the process. Social change does not necessarily and inevitably cause soaring crime rates. But crime, and in particular violent crime, provide "symbols" of the insecurity and anxieties of a population that experiences the dynamics of social change in everyday life. Moral panics and popular "myths" about crime (see Katz, Chapter 12) therefore seem to be an integral part of social change. Recognition of these transformations in societies stimulated a broad range of new theoretical approaches in criminology. Not a single, but many "futures" opened up for criminological theory (Nelken 1994). Post-critical, realistic, reflexive, republican and constitutive criminology provide if not answers, at least new questions and innovative theoretical concepts. Behind the diversity of theoretical reasoning, we find some common lines of arguments. Theories mostly promote an integrative perspective, that bridges the gap between classical etiological criminology and a constructionist approach. Criminologists realise the limits of state control, and they direct their attention to informal mechanisms of social control as well as to the interaction of formal and informal control. Socio-legal and criminological research thus becomes more integrated. Finally, they base their approaches on a diversity of theoretical models of social structure and power. At the same time, criminologists return to their well-established traditions. The dynamics of social change at the end of the twentieth century seem to have much in common with the first industrial revolution and the process of modernisation in the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century. The extension of markets, the break-down of institutions that restrained markets, the rapid pace of social change, and the devastating impact on parts of the population: these characteristics of the first industrial revolution seem to repeat themselves. Just like during the first industrial revolution these processes become first and most distinctly visible in the cities. The emergence of a "new underclass" in American inner cities or in French suburbs has redirected attention to the relation between social conflicts, inequality and crime. In the metropolitan areas of Western industrialised countries, criminologists find the visible signs of processes of social exclusion, the "tribalisation" of urban social life, and the "decay of the civilized city" (Eisner 1997). This volume gives an overview of the different paths that criminologists take to meet the challenges of social dynamics in their theoretical approaches, in empirical research and criminal justice policies in various fields of the discipline. Scholars of criminology and socio-legal studies have contributed to the volume, thus furthering an integrative perspective on crime and control. They gathered at a conference at the International Institute of Law at Onati, Spain, in October 1997, which was funded by the VW-Foundation. The four sections of this vol-

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ume represent the leading perspectives and topics that the participants forwarded in their papers and discussions. The social dynamics of markets and their impact on crime in national societies as well as in global markets are analysed in the first section. The second one centres on the impact of social dynamics on the control of crime. The third section brings the concept of culture more to the centre of criminological analysis. In the fourth section new concepts of individual offenders and relationships to wider social contexts are presented that will contribute to our understanding of the impact of social change at the micro-level.

CRIME AND THE SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF MARKETS

Post-modern societies more than ever rely on innovative products and innovative needs. They promote a culture of individualism and hedonism in ths population of (prospective) consumers, particularly in the young generation. "Consumer societies" find themselves confronted with a double task. On the one hand they need to unleash individualistic, hedonistic behaviour and to encourage innovative behaviour, even if it trespasses the line between legal and illegal behaviour. On the other hand they have to establish, restore and preserve a regulatory order that holds the deviant tendencies of such behaviour at bay. The second task seems to be increasingly difficult, since the disciplinary networks in families, schools and communities have come under pressure from rampant market individualism. "Omni-market societies" reinforce value orientations and behavioural patterns like "machiavellism" and "hierarchic selfinterest", that might directly be related to different forms of deviant behaviour. In Chapter 2, Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld start from the argument that in modern market societies institutional restraints of markets have been weakened or abolished. Their "institutional-anomie theory" owes as much to Durkheim as to Polanyi's "Great Transformation". They diagnose an increasing disequilibrium between markets and non-market institutions. Failures to restrain markets result in increasing crime rates, in national societies as well as in global markets. The authors develop three scenarios of the dynamics of markets and their institutional restraints: the Great Retrogression, the New Great Transformation and the Fundamentalist Counter-Transformation. Each scenario predicts different outcomes for criminal behaviour and control. Messner and Rosenfeld are most sensitive to counteracting forces in the process of social transformation. They show how the classics can contribute to our understanding of crime in modern societies, and they demonstrate the potential of classic concepts in innovative theories of social change and crime. John Hagan, Gerd Hefler, Gabriele Classen, Klaus Boehnke and Hans Merkens (Chapter 3) address the problem of criminogenic impacts of dominant values in market societies. The American society provides the most advanced

4 Introduction: Social Change as a Challenge setting to analyse criminogenic value orientations like individualism, selfinterest and autonomy. Messner's and Rosenfeld's study on "Crime and the American Dream" as well as Bell's study "Crime as an American Way of Life" are foundations for Hagan and his colleagues to refine the basic arguments. They take a subcultural and "subterranean" turn: the dominant value patterns of market societies will cause delinquency when reinterpreted and linked to other value patterns within subcultural contexts. The spread of market society all over the globe will contribute to the emergence of such criminogenic subterranean patterns in many different societies. Hagan and his colleagues put their argument to an empirical test. Their comparison of adolescents in West and East Germany contrasts a well-established with an emerging market society. Their results confirm a subterranean causal web that is linked to core values of market society, and the existence of strands in this causal web that can lead to subcultural delinquency. Global markets in particular are characterised by a lack of regulatory order and institutional restraints. The global economy is run by new and internationally operating elites who are closely linked together in business, political and bureaucratic networks. Simultaneously with global economic networks illegal ones emerge. Susanne Karstedt (Chapter 4) analyses the impact of such structural characteristics on transnational and economic crime in global and national markets. She argues that competitive advantages result from common structural patterns and "key transnational practices" in legal and illegal business alike. She puts forward the proposition that "patrimonial-feudal" patterns are resurrected or re-emerge in global markets, because they provide high levels of trust, solidarity and informal control that function as equivalents to universal legal regulations and law enforcement in global markets. Organised crime, with roots in specific subpatterns of the patrimonial feudal complex, easily links to such patterns in legal markets and among the new global elites. Thomas Ohlemacher (Chapter 5) analyses the relation between markets and the institutional system from a contrasting perspective. Do experiences of illegal market transactions like extortion and corruption affect trust in the institutional system, and particularly in the political system of society? His approach opens up a new perspective on the relationship between markets and institutional restraints. In contrast to the institutional approach by Messner and Rosenfeld, he centres on individual actors and networks. Ohlemacher bases his empirical study of restaurant owners in Germany on a network approach. His findings indicate that reported victimisations play a minor role in establishing trust; in contrast, common perceptions of such crimes are related to trust in the political system. In conclusion, he finds a causal web linking experiences, common perceptions and trust, that assigns a dominant role to the media.

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SOCIAL DYNAMICS AND THE LIMITS OF LEGAL CONTROL

Social change affects the total system of social control; as some might argue, its impact is more profound here than on deviancy and crime. Social change affects the very social relationships and the institutional structure where mechanisms of social control are embedded, and that are reproduced by successful social control (see Melossi, Chapter 10). The structural and cultural change puts pressure on the efficiency of the penal justice system and institutions of formal social control. "Omni-market societies" and individualism seem to destroy the informal mechanisms of social control, or at least restrict the efficiency of vital networks of informal control: families, schools, neighbourhoods and communities. Consequently, social change will shift the established spheres of formal and informal social control. The limits of state control and disciplinary institutions become more visible, and the linkages between formal and informal control become most important. Criminologists are well aware of the limits of formal control strategies. New criminal justice policies in particular redirect attention to the mechanisms of informal social control. Though the retrenchment of state control comes with a package of legal problems, it is seen as a chance to restore what might be called "natural" social controls. John Braithwaite was one of the first to promote such a perspective and to give criminal justice policies a new foundation. In this volume, he puts forward the idea of a normative criminological theory (Chapter 6). His republican theory on crime and control is designed as a normative theory that integrates political, legal and criminological theory. He particularly emphasises the social-democratic character of a republican theory on crime and control. He argues that criminal justice policies based on a republican theory are superior to those based on legal positivism and liberalism. Republican norms are built on three key elements: liberty, equality and community. The problem of crime is conceived of as an attack on the concept of maximising freedom as non-domination. Therefore deterrence and incapacitation still have a place in this concept, which suggests strengthening the potential of the individual and of civil society. Braithwaite offers a challenging combination of legal and criminological theories and political programme. He strives for a position between moral relativism that might regard rape and murder as acceptable, and legal positivism that finds high imprisonment rates morally agreeable. Wolfgang Ludwig-Mayerhofer's call for the "re-politicization" and "redemocratization" of crime control (Chapter 7) coincides with the main lines of argument in Braithwaite's republican theory. He starts from a brief review of the history of informalisation of law. Ludwig-Mayerhofer discusses the multilayered consequences of the retrenchment of the welfare state for crime control. In the context of criminal policy "outsourcing" of police functions and prisons is one of the consequences. At the same time this development is accompanied by tendencies toward informalisation of the penal law system, which could be,

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in terms of Max Weber, welcomed as a substantivisation of law. However, these tendencies have an often overlooked aspect—they might also contribute to shielding corporate practices from public control. Since neither procedural nor "reflexive law" nor a re-formalisation of law seem to be appropriate remedies, Ludwig-Mayerhofer proposes strategies of "re-politicisation" and "redemocratisation", that give the individuals concerned more opportunities to express their concerns. He in particular forwards procedures through which more egalitarian policies may be found by democratic discourses. In the following chapters, Michael Levi (Chapter 8) and Eberhard Blankenburg (Chapter 9) both analyse the problem of informal controls and of informalisation in the global arena. In particular, they evaluate the potential of particularistic and moralistic modes of social control in contrast to universal and legalistic ones. Will they be more effective in the global marketplace, where international legal regulations are absent and a corresponding system of formal control is lacking? Both authors arrive at very different conclusions. Michael Levi analyses whether Braithwaite's shaming model of crime control might work for financial fraudsters, corporate crime and corruption on the national level and in the global economy. From the many cases that he presents, he draws the conclusion that business elites seem to be quite invulnerable to shaming processes at the national level. Globalisation even enhances their opportunities to evade shaming. He argues that potential damage to business prospects might be the more salient factor in the formal and informal control of crimes in the global economy. In contrast, Erhard Blankenburg sees in public shaming "a fulfilment of criminologists' dreams". Public shaming steps in where criminal law ends. It is a particularly effective strategy for global players in global markets, since it makes organisations responsible for internal controls, and it penalises a general performance rather than individual breaches of rules. International trade will increase the risks, and it will make corporate actors more vulnerable to attacks from worldwide operating moral entrepeneurs, for example Greenpeace. In anticipating such risks and attacks, corporations act as "agents of civic virtues". This more optimistic scenario corresponds to what Messner and Rosenfeld define as "The New Great Transformation" in the global economy. Erhard Blankenburg's case study of the Brent Spar incident can be read as a confirmation of their proposition that "with new forms of social solidarity emerging from global consciousness, it is likely that levels of crime would moderate and perhaps even fall".

CULTURAL DYNAMICS: CONTEXTS OF CRIME AND CONTROL

In the social sciences, the concept of culture has moved from the periphery to the very centre of scientific investigation. Culture figures as a primary rather than dependent variable in global change. Criminology has been no exception to this

Introduction: Social Change as a Challenge 7 development. The concept of culture in particular contributes to an integrative perspective on crime and social control: family patterns, socialisation practices, moral values, informal networks, and finally the punitive system are shaped by overarching fundamental cultural values in societies. Globalisation will contribute to bringing the concept of culture even more to the centre of criminological research. The transfer of innovative schemes of crime prevention and criminal justice between countries, the adaptation and revival of indigenous forms of restorative justice and "conferencing" as in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, or the import of American practices to Europe and Asia: all this will inevitably put "culture" on the agenda of criminologists. The concept of culture defines differences. Consequently, it implies a comparative perspective. The authors in this section centre on the culture of social control and the legal culture of criminal justice systems, and they put the concept of culture into the broader context of the political system and social institutions. Dario Melossi (Chapter 10) contrasts Italian cultural traditions of social control with those in the USA. He characterises Italian culture as a sort of "soft" authoritarianism that is linked to low levels of repression. It tends to combine tolerance on moral issues with rigour against open challenges of social, religious and political hierarchies. The USA is characterised by "democratic rhetoric" and simultaneously high levels of penal repression. The prison has always functioned as the "gateway" toward inclusion in the democratic society. He argues that the transfer and "translation" of critical criminology—a discourse that was especially critical of the puritan, strictly binary and rigid concept of law and order—from its American origins to continental Europe was quite functional in promoting the underlying anarchism and arrogance of power in Italy. Nicola Lacey and Lucia Zedner examine community-based criminal justice initiatives in Britain and Germany (Chapter 11). Their findings suggest that the political discourse, the institutional settings and political cultures of both countries account for a broad range of differences in adapting and implementing "community safety projects". This in particular applies to differences in "community rhetorics" in both countries. Though in Germany appeals to the concept of "community" are nearly non-existent in contrast to Britain, the discourse on foreigners (Auslander) instead seems to direct the implementation of locallybased crime prevention strategies. Lacey and Zedner provide an intriguing example of cultural differences between countries that without doubt are modern, individualised societies. As in Melossi's article the vital role of different political cultures and institutional settings of control becomes visible. Jack Katz (Chapter 12) examines the diversity of metropolitan cultures of control within the same legal culture of the USA. His comparison of presence (Los Angeles) and absence (New York) of "gang myths" in two metropolitan areas of the USA shows how law enforcement cultures are embedded in the political and institutional system of criminal prosecution. Despite quite similar rates of homicides in both areas, the "gang myth" resulted in extremely large

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differences in arrest rates for homicides. In Los Angeles the strategies of policing that were based on the gang myth and nourished by media discourse, finally resulted in one of the most serious cases of civil strife in American history. Willem de Haan centres on culture as an explanatory factor of different rates of violent crime (Chapter 13). Even when industrialised, modern societies like the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, the USA or Southern Europe are compared, large differences are found. De Haan considers various explanations for the relative absence of violent crime in the Netherlands; Dutch cultural traditions that today combine into an "oversensitivity" toward violence seem to be a most important factor in explaining the low rates of violent crime. De Haan in particular pleads for case studies that provide in-depth analysis of the cultural, socio-economic and political context of violent crimes in different countries. Globalisation will contribute to rising rates of violent crime in all modern societies. The impact of globalisation on national societies will be most visible in metropolitan areas, where new cultures of conflict and violence will emerge. Consequently, globalisation might contribute to making cultural patterns of violence more uniform.

THE INDIVIDUAL IN A DYNAMIC SOCIETY: CHALLENGES AND CHANCES

This part focuses on the individual and the causal mechanisms that link the patterns of social change to criminal behaviour among juveniles and adults. Beck's concept of "risk-society" integrates the common characteristics of several directions of change in post-modern societies. Traditional social bonds break down in the process of "individualisation", thus allowing for more autonomy and selfdirection, but simultaneously increasing pressures and strains on the individual. Demands for mobility, flexibility and "crisis-management" during the life course are continuously increasing. The young generation in particular faces challenges to meet the risks of less stable careers and patterns of employment. Characteristic of post-modern societies are "fragmented biographies" of their populations. Taking up these concepts, criminologists have changed their perspective on deviant careers in two directions. They abandoned the more deterministic approach to criminal careers and directed their attention toward "turning points" in the life courses of offenders. Individual offenders are seen as active agents in shaping their lives, making rational (or irrational) decisions. Criminologists are in particular interested in the specific social and historical context of the life course of offenders, and the way criminal careers change with them. Social and individual dynamics are thus linked together. Elmar Weitekamp, Hans-Jiirgen Kerner, Wolfgang Stelly and Jiirgen Thomas (Chapter 14) put the new concept of "individualisation" of the life course to a test. They base their rejection of a deterministic approach on data from two longitudinal studies. Patterns of criminal careers are much less the result of early childhood experiences, socialisation patterns and disadvantages than of current

Introduction: Social Change as a Challenge 9 life circumstances. Macro-level conditions and micro-level life events open up "windows of opportunity" that change the direction of the life course. Criminal careers seem to change as much as "normal" careers in modern societies. Joan McCord (Chapter 15) and Kai-D. Bussmann (Chapter 16) bring to criminological theory what is generally regarded as the fundamental category of modern social sciences: communication. Joan McCord puts criminological reasoning into the wider context of modern philosophy and linguistics by forging a link between post-empiristic philosophy, psycho-linguistics and a general theory of deviant behaviour in the life course. She rejects the perspective that drives, needs, wants or any other type of "force" is required to explain criminal behaviour. Her Construct Theory of motivation starts from the very core of criminological reasoning: voluntary, intentional action. The theory conceptualises motives as potentiating reasons, that is, as reasons seen by the agent to warrant action. The scientific approach to understanding reasons rests on the idea that reasons are learned and understood by learning how to use language. She draws on a variety of studies on language learning, child-rearing practices and particularly the impact of punishment. Reasoning— extending far beyond the narrow concept of "rational choice"—is established as a determinant factor in criminal behaviour, and as the target of intervention. By stressing the mutuality and interdependency of the process of acquiring reasons, she outlines a humanistic approach in criminology. While McCord's approach focuses the micro-level of the individual life course, Bussmann introduces a macro-level perspective and a system theoretical approach. He links criminological theory to the most recent socio-legal theories. Penal law and criminal justice systems direct processes of communication by providing "semantic codes" (Luhmann) that influence reasoning already at an early stage of behaviour. The impact of "legal communication" is underrated within the context of crime control. Within this context penal law functions as a "master system" and a latent medium of communication. Moreover, Bussmann's theoretical approach conceptualises the social and cultural dynamics of crime and control according to three elements: variation, selection and stabilisation. Deviancy and crime contribute to the variation and innovation of behaviour. Selection of legal/illegal behaviour is directed by (legal) communication and discourses; in the final stage, law and criminal justice institutions provide a (temporary) stability. However, very close to Durkheim, Bussmann criticises the common unquestioned "negative concept" of crime from an evolutionary perspective of society. He argues that crime results in a "productive paradox", because the concept "crime" also is an integral and productive part of social and cultural dynamics. In particular variations of individual behaviour—some of them are for different reasons defined as crime—are in principle necessary elements for the development of the entire society. In brief, this volume sheds further light on the social dynamics of crime and control. It addresses pressing questions about how and why social change affects the patterning of crime and criminal justice. It is well beyond the scope

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of this volume to address all aspects of these complex issues, but it directs attention to innovative schemes of theory and research.

REFERENCES

Beck, Ulrich, 1992, Risk Society (Mark Ritter (trans.), London: Sage). Eisner, Manuel, 1997, Ende der zivilisierten Stadt. Die Auswirkungen von Modernisierung und urbanerKrise auf Gewaltkriminalitat (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus). Nelken, David, 1994, "Reflexive Criminology?" in The Futures of Criminology (D. Nelken (ed.), London: Sage).

Market Dominance, Crime, and Globalisation STEVEN F. MESSNER and R I C H A R D R O S E N F E L D 1

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HE PURPOSE OF this chapter is to consider the potentially criminogenic consequences of recent changes in the social and economic organisation of advanced capitalism. Our point of departure is Karl Polanyi's classic work on the emergence of industrial capitalism and recent studies that further develop Polanyi's insights. We draw on these analyses to pose a fundamental issue confronting all capitalist societies: the need to restrain the market and prevent the economy from dominating other institutional realms. We explain how this general institutional challenge bears specifically on the problem of crime and crime control with reference to our recently proposed "institutional-anomie theory". Finally, we use Polanyi's general analytic framework to explore the possible consequences of some of the changes in the structure of contemporary capitalism that are commonly subsumed under the general rubric of globalisation.

ECONOMIC DOMINANCE IN MARKET SOCIETIES2

In a series of influential writings, Karl Polanyi (1957 [1944]; 1968a [1947]; 1968b [1957]) provides an incisive account of the evolution of industrial capitalism over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Polanyi identifies two, essentially dialectical, processes that constituted a "double movement" in the history of capitalism and that profoundly altered the organisation of economic and social life. One process involved the unprecedented expansion of the market as the mechanism for coordinating economic activity. The other involved "counter-moves" to prevent the market from undermining the very foundations of the social order. Taken together, these processes lead to what Polanyi referred to as "The Great Transformation".

1 Presented at the workshop on "Social Dynamics and Regulatory Order in Modern Societies" International Institute for the Sociology of Law, 23—24 October 1997. 2 This section draws on material from Messner (1996).

14 Market Dominance, Crime, and Globalisation To explicate these changes, Polanyi distinguishes between three types of economic transactions or transactional modes: reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange. Reciprocity is characterised by obligatory gift-giving, usually between kinship units. Redistribution refers to obligatory contributions to central political or religious authorities, who then use these resources for their own sustenance and for collective services (Dalton 1968, p. xiv). Market transactions involve the exchange of goods and services in response to prices among actors motivated by the pursuit of profit and gain. Each of these transactional modes is present to some degree in virtually all societies, but their relative importance is highly variable. The defining characteristic of mature capitalist societies, according to Polanyi, is the preeminence of market exchange as the transactional mode around which economic activity is organised.3 This increased reliance on the market has profound implications for social relations. Reciprocity and redistribution intrinsically express non-economic social relationships (Dalton 1968, p. xiv). As a result, economic activity involving these two transactional modes not only yields benefits in the sense of coordinating the activities required for material subsistence; such economic activity is at the same time socially integrative. Market exchange, in contrast, is more readily divorced or "disembedded" from other social relationships. It can be conducted with little regard for the social ties between parties and thus entails minimal social obligations. In that sense, market behaviour is more purely "economic", and it lacks the socially integrative qualities characteristic of the other transactional modes. Moreover, given the necessity of material resources for human survival, the separation of economic activity from other social relations implies that these other relations will become subservient to economic activity. Polanyi emphasises the dangers associated with total reliance on market mechanisms in the organisation of economic life, a situation he refers to as the "self-regulating market". He warns that any effort to allow the market free rein would ultimately be self-destructive because it would undermine the cultural and moral foundations of human existence: "robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure" (Polanyi 1957 [1944],-p. 73). According to Polanyi, capitalist societies responded to the social devastation accompanying the expansion of markets by developing welfare capitalism—the companion component of the "double-movement". The welfare state can be viewed as an institutional arrangement for "re-embedding" the economy by regulating markets (Dalton 1968, p. xxvi). The welfare state uses redistributive mechanisms to enable citizens to meet material needs independently of market mechanisms. As a result, personal well-being does not depend solely on an individual's capacity to sell his or her labour power on the market (see Esping3 As Randall Collins has observed more recently, contemporary capitalist societies are "omnimarket" societies (1990, p. 132).

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Andersen 1990). Rather, human labour power is, in Esping-Andersen's expression, "de-commodified". It is not treated as a commodity identical to other commodities. Economic activity is thus effectively embedded in social relationships involving mutual obligations of fellow citizens to one another. Polanyi's analysis of the dynamics of market economies has been challenged over the years. In particular, critics have charged that his portrait of concrete market transactions is something of a caricature. Bernard Barber (1977), for example, asserts that all exchange institutions, including markets, are always "interdependent with their environing value patterns and other institutional subsystems" (p. 27). On this point Barber echoes Durkheim's (1964 [1893], pp. 206-219) remarks about the non-contractual elements of the economic contract. The very conception of human social relationships in the form of a contract, Durkheim insisted in his critique of the eighteenth century social contract theorists, presupposes prior cultural agreement. Granovetter (1985) similarly takes issue with the suggestion that market exchange is somehow asocial, noting that all purposive action is embedded in ongoing systems of social relations or social networks. Accordingly, the characterisation of market transactions as totally "disembedded", in contrast with other kinds of transactions, gives them a misleading independence from other social relationships (Barber 1977, p. 27). In response to these types of criticisms, Fred Block (1990) has attempted to refine Polanyi's analysis of markets, proposing that economic transactions in market societies be conceptualised as variable along a continuum of "marketness". At the high end of this continuum, transactions are motivated primarily by the self-interested pursuit of economic gain and are governed almost exclusively by market benefits and costs. At the lower end, other considerations come into play as well, considerations such as personal loyalties, friendship bonds, and social obligations.4 The character of these transactions in the aggregate, then, determines the overall "marketness" of the economy and the extent to which economic activity is embedded in, or disembedded from, non-economic social relationships. Similarly, the recent work of Gosta Esping-Andersen extends Polanyi's analysis by describing in greater detail the various types of political responses to the threat of market dominance that have appeared across capitalist societies. Esping-Andersen argues that different historical conditions have promoted distinctive class coalitions that, in turn, have led to varying forms of welfare states. He identifies three basic types of welfare state regimes which vary with respect to their capacity to de-commodify labour and to tame the market: liberal welfare states, conservative/corporatist welfare states, and social democratic 4 Of course, non-market relations are not necessarily harmonious and peaceful. Also, the market may have both integrative and disintegrative consequences for social order and interpersonal relations. The debate over whether or not the market has salutary or deleterious consequences for social order is at the centre of much classical social thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. See Hirschman (1992) and Silver (1990). We elaborate on this point in our discussion below of the institutional-anomie theory of crime.

16 Market Dominance, Crime, and Globalisation welfare states. In Esping-Andersen's view, the liberal welfare state regime is the least de-commodifying, while the social democratic is the most. Both Block and Esping-Andersen thus call attention to the fact that capitalist societies have responded to the institution of market exchange as the preeminent form of economic transaction in different ways, and with different consequences for social relationships, including by implication those that give rise to crime. In sum, Polanyi's classic analysis of "The Great Transformation" identifies a profound and enduring institutional challenge confronting market capitalist societies. The organisation of economic activity around the self-interested pursuit of profit and gain lacks the socially integrative qualities inherent in other forms of economic organisation. Indeed, adherence to market imperatives often disrupts other social relationships. Moreover, to the extent that material wellbeing is determined by market criteria, non-economic institutions will become dependent on the economy. This implies that the interrelationship among social institutions is inherently precarious in market societies, and that some institutional arrangement to regulate or tame the market is essential for the protection of the social order. Recent extensions of Polanyi's work highlight the variability in such institutional arrangements across capitalist societies, in both form and consequences. In the section that follows, we discuss how such variability is related specifically to crime.

ECONOMIC DOMINANCE AND CRIME

Recent criminological theory and research suggest that levels and patterns of serious crime in developed societies can be understood with reference to the balance between the economy and other social institutions. Societies with greater market penetration, such as the USA, exhibit comparatively high crime rates, especially rates of violent, predatory offending. In Crime and the American Dream (Messner and Rosenfeld 1997a), we argue that economic dominance promotes high rates of crime through both structural and cultural mechanisms. Economic dominance undermines the capacity of non-economic institutions to control behaviour. As classic control theory stipulates, social bonds to conventional institutions provide important restraints against the temptations of crime (Hirschi 1969). These bonds develop through participation in institutional roles. When non-economic institutions are subservient to the economy, their roles are less appealing, and these institutions are thereby unable to exert strong external control. The absence of external restraints, in turn, increases the level of crime in society. At a cultural level, economic dominance is likely to contribute to crime by promoting anomie, both in the classical Durkheimian sense of insufficiently regulated goals and in the Mertonian sense of insufficiently regulated means (Durkheim 1966 [1897]; Merton 1968). With respect to goals, a distinctive feature of a market economy is the organisation of economic exchange around

Market Dominance, Crime, and Globalisation

17

profit and loss. These kinds of economic goals are elusive and have no clear stopping points. However much profit or gain one accumulates, there is always more that could in principle be attained. The goals associated with the market economy, therefore, have an inherently anomic quality. Moreover, to the extent that the economy dominates the institutional balance of power, less anomic goals associated with non-economic institutional realms lose their salience in the lives of individuals. Economic dominance is also conducive to a breakdown in commitments to the normative means for pursuing goals. When taken to their logical extreme, cultural orientations towards action that undergird market behaviour are resistant to any moral restraint. The norms guiding purely economic action are relevant only to the extent that they promote material gain at minimum cost; they are, in Merton's apt characterisation, "efficiency norms". The paradoxical task confronting market societies is thus to nurture cultural orientations that support market behaviour, but in a qualified way. Successful execution of this task ultimately requires that institutions not guided by the logic of the market be sufficiently powerful to imbue the means of action with moral force. When the economy dominates the institutional balance of power, non-economic institutions are less able to perform their distinctive functions, including that of socialising actors into pro-social means of achieving personal ends.5 As noted earlier, the historic mechanism for circumventing the problems associated with economic dominance in market societies has been the creation of the welfare state, which attempts to tame the market and de-commodify labour. Welfare states vary considerably in their capacity to accomplish this task (see Esping-Andersen 1990). At one end of the spectrum are states with welfare policies that offer nearly universal and non-conditional entitlements covering most or all of the relevant conditions requiring assistance. At the other end are those states with policies that enforce strict eligibility criteria and that cover a narrow range of conditions meriting assistance. On the basis of the arguments advanced above, it is reasonable to expect that welfare state policies that are de-commodifying should serve to "re-embed" the economy in society and mitigate criminogenic pressures otherwise associated with market arrangements. Sparse but suggestive research indicates that crime rates in advanced welfare states do in fact vary along with indicators of the scope and strength of social welfare policies (Fiala and LaFree 1988; Gartner 1990; 1991). We have recently conducted research that operationalises EspingAndersen's concept of de-commodification and evaluates its relationship with the homicide rates of a large number of nations (Messner and Rosenfeld 1997b). Our results indicate that, net of other influences, rates of criminal homicide are reduced in societies with de-commodified social policies in the form of broad 5

Various scholars have suggested that the USA illustrates a society wherein economic dominance has reached extreme levels, leading to high levels of crime. In addition to Messner and Rosenfeld (1997a), see Bellah et al. 1991; Currie 1997; Schwartz 1994).

18 Market Dominance, Crime, and Globalisation and generous welfare programmes. We interpret our findings in terms of the central claim of the institutional-anomie theory of crime: societies that are able to protect other institutions from extreme market penetration have lower levels of serious crime. Can the welfare state continue to curtail the criminogenic pressures associated with market arrangements in the long-run? The literature on "crises of the welfare state", drawing on both Marxist thought (O'Connor 1973) and critical theory (Habermas 1989), raises serious questions about the viability of this mechanism for taming the market and mitigating its more undesirable consequences (see Messner 1996, for an extended discussion). In the section that follows, we consider the fate of the welfare state, and by extension, the future of crime, under conditions of globalisation.

ALTERNATIVE SCENARIOS OF GLOBALISATION AND CRIME

A necessary starting point for assessing the consequences of globalisation on market dominance and crime is a reasonably coherent definition of globalisation. Malcolm Waters (1995) provides a highly useful summary of classical and more recent sociological accounts of the globalisation process. At the most general level, globalisation refers to the confluence of social and cultural changes that loosen the constraints of geography on the orientations and actions of individuals and collectivities (Waters 1995, p. 3). Globalisation in this account is nothing new; it is contemporaneous with the emergence of modern capitalism and the accelerating pace of economic, political and cultural interconnections within and between nations (this discussion is based on Waters 1995, pp. 62-64). Yet the essence of globalisation is not merely rapid or accelerating economic or political change associated with capitalist development. Globalisation is fundamentally a symbolic process that shatters the hold of place on economic activity, political allegiance, social attachments, and cultural commitments. Time replaces space as the organising principle of action and orientation in a globalised context. The world does not literally become smaller but is experienced by ever-widening populations as contracting, and as growing more unified and inclusive. In Waters' terms, "Globalization implies the phenomenological elimination of space and the generalisation of time" (p. 63). As a symbolic process, globalisation is self-aware and reflexive. At all levels of social action, from village politics to corporate advertising, persons consciously orient themselves to worldwide standards of reference. Place-bound statuses give way to, or must contend with, a shared sense of humanity. With the world as a reference group, traditional distinctions between what is private, particular, and local and what is public, universal, and global begin to dissolve. As a result, a sense of personal risk and uncertainty increases as persons extend trust from immediate and concrete relationships to "patterns of symbolic exchange that appear to be beyond the control of any concrete individual or

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group of individuals" (pp. 63-64). All that is certain is the uneasy sense that one's fate is in the hands of people all over the world. Waters distils his characterisation of globalisation from diverse streams of social thought. Although a fair amount of agreement exists with respect to the broad contours of globalisation, there is considerable disagreement over the implications of these changes for the future of capitalist societies. Three distinct scenarios have been described in the literature. One scenario echoes the themes of early Marxist critiques of capitalism and emphasises the self-destructive nature of contemporary market arrangements. In essence, the globalisation of capitalism represents something of a "Great Retrogression", a return to the selfregulating market of the nineteenth century. A second scenario, in contrast, points to the flexibility of capitalism and its capacity to coexist with a variety of institutional arrangements, including those that offer protections from the potentially destructive consequences of markets. This scenario might be described as a "New Great Transformation", a second double movement wherein the global expansion of markets is accompanied by developments that counter-balance the drive to completely "marketise" all social relationships. Finally, a third scenario calls attention to the possibility of active resistance to markets, and a heightening of ethnic, religious, and tribal identities and conflicts. This might be referred to as the "Fundamentalist CounterTransformation". We suggest that each of these scenarios carries implications for the levels and patterns of crime that would likely emerge in the corresponding new world order.

The Great Retrogression A representative proponent of the Great Retrogression scenario is Gary Teeple (1995). In his book Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform, Teeple offers a neo-Marxist analysis of global capitalism and its self-destructive tendencies. He proposes that the Keynesian welfare state emerged to meet the needs of the national bourgeoisie; state-legislated reform was a response to demands by the working class to ameliorate the horrific excesses associated with capitalist accumulation. However, as capitalism becomes transnational, factors affecting national economic policy move beyond the control of nation-states, which are increasingly at the mercy of global financial, capital, and labour markets. 6 As the capitalist class becomes increasingly supranational and monolithic, trade unions remain distinctly national and fractured (Teeple 1995, p. 133; see also Cox 1996, p. 22). * The capacity of national political structures to deal with international economic issues has been questioned for some time. Over 20 years ago Daniel Bell (1980 [1977], p. 226) speculated that the nation-state would be an "ineffective instrument" for dealing with economic and social problems in a world economy. See Waters (1995, pp. 99-100) for a recent summary of literature on crises of the welfare state.

20 Market Dominance, Crime, and Globalisation A key consequence of these developments is that social reform sponsored by the welfare state declines. This is reflected in the preeminence of a neo-liberal political agenda that is spreading throughout the capitalist world and calls for ever greater privatisation, deregulation, the down-sizing of government, and the general dismantling of the welfare state.7 The direction of all these changes is essentially backwards towards the self-regulating market. Teeple acknowledges that the expansion of the market is meeting some resistance, but he is pessimistic about the prospects of these oppositional movements because the capitalist class is able to control the "ideological systems" in capitalist society. He concludes that "a tyranny is unfolding—an economic regime of unaccountable rulers, a totalitarianism not of the political sphere but of the economic" (Teeple 1995, p. 151). Teeple's analysis of globalisation and the accompanying class dynamics may be overdrawn and somewhat simplistic. The neo-Marxist imagery of a monolithic, globalised, capitalist class is particularly suspect. Nevertheless, his observations about the "unleashing of the market" warrant serious consideration. As Stephen Gill (1996, p. 208) has similarly observed, "the 'self-regulating' market, with its associated processes of commodification, has tended to encompass larger fractions of the world's population." 8 It is thus worth asking the following question: if globalisation does in fact foster self-regulating markets accompanied by emasculated nation-states, what are the implications for crime? Two developments concerning crime seem likely to us. The first is the increasing globalisation of crime itself. Expanding opportunities for crime on an organised, large-scale basis would undoubtedly accompany the "Great Retrogression" scenario. Various scholars have suggested that such global criminal enterprises have in fact been emerging and expanding in recent years. Mittelman (1996a, p. 237), for example, calls attention to the involvement of transnational criminal groups in a wide range of activities, including drug trafficking, "car theft, trade in nuclear materials, smuggling of migrants, arms deals, money laundering, and sales of human organs". This globalisation of organised crime might be viewed as both a consequence of weakened nation-states and a force further undermining these nation-states. This latter point has been argued by Manuel Castells (1997, pp. 259-261), who claims that the "wheelings and dealings of the criminal economy" have deeply affected and destabilised many national governments. In addition to the growing opportunities for organised, globalised crime accompanying the decline of the nation-state, we propose another likely consequence of a Great Retrogression: the spread of anomie throughout the marketised world. As noted earlier, institutional-anomie thoery stipulates that economic dominance in the institutional balance of power is accompanied by an 7 See Olsen (1996) for a discussion of the emergence of the neo-liberal agenda in Sweden, an exemplar of the capitalist welfare state. 8 In contrast with Teeple, however, Gill is more optimistic about the prospects for resistance to the self-regulating market.

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anomic cultural orientation. The self-regulating market is precisely the kind of social arrangement that promotes economic dominance and thus leads to widespread anomie. Moreover, given such anomic cultural tendencies, crime is likely to be widespread and particularly violent because people are encouraged to use the technically most expedient means to pursue their goals. Indeed, this is the explanation that we have offered to account for the comparatively high levels of predatory crime in the USA compared to other advanced nations. What we are suggesting, then, is that a Great Retrogression might very well be accompanied by a greater "Americanisation of crime" throughout the world, that is, by higher levels of crime of a more unrestrained, violent nature.

A New Great Transformation A second scenario for the evolution of globalised capitalism is more optimistic. According to this point of view, the expansion of market arrangements beyond national boundaries does not necessarily lead to an untamed, socially destructive, self-regulating market. Rather, market expansion might be accompanied by the emergence of new social formations that serve as protective mechanisms. In Stephen Gill's (1996, p. 225) words: "We may . . . be in the midst of a 1990s version of Polanyi's double movement as social movements are remobilised and new coalitions are formed". What specific social formations might be part of this new double movement? One possibility is the creation of supranational governance bodies grounded in re-constituted nation-states. Some critics of the conventional wisdom on globalisation question whether the nation-state is in fact an emasculated relic of the past. For example, Hirst and Thompson (1996; see also Mittelman 1996) argue that while nation-states are clearly less autonomous than they were previously, they still serve important and unique functions. Most importantly, nation-states have the capacity to lend legitimacy to supranational bodies and agreements. These supranational entities might assume some of the responsibility for the regulation of global markets from individual nation-states, thereby inhibiting the complete marketisation of social relationships. In addition, supranational agencies may be able to confront the problem of the globalisation of crime through coordinated law enforcement efforts across multiple nation-states. Various scholars have also pointed to the possibilities for new forms of social relationships to emerge along with globalisation. Judith Blau (1993) calls attention to the tendency of expanding markets to be accompanied by expanding opportunities for "social contracting", i.e., cooperative relationships for achieving shared social goals. These social goals often reflect a new global consciousness, as reflected in concerns over environmental threats such as ruptures in the ozone layer, global warming, deforestation, soil erosion, the depletion of fishing stocks, and so on (Cox 1996, p. 29; see also Waters 1995). More generally, a globalisation of civil society might emerge as a response to the deleterious

22 Market Dominance, Crime, and Globalisation effects of economic globalisation, creating new forms of social solidarity (Mittelman 1996b, p. 10). The implications for crime of the New Great Transformation scenario are clearly quite different from those of the previous scenario. With a rejuvenated nation-state supplying international regulation of the market and international means for crime control, and with new forms of social solidarity emerging from a global consciousness, it is likely that levels of crime would moderate and perhaps even fall. The recent global rise in crime might thus be a transitional phase as the more prosocial component of the double movement catches up with its more "economic" counterpart. The Fundamentalist Counter-Transformation The third scenario concerning the likely consequences of globalisation for the future of world capitalist development envisions multiple sources of conservative reaction to the spread of the very economic, political, and cultural forces that define globalisation itself. In his book jihad Versus MacWorld, Benjamin Barber (1995) presents a provocative account of these counter movements that seek to protect traditional ways of life from the secular, rationalising, and corrosive impact of modernisation. A singular interpretation of the fundamentalist reaction to globalisation is inherently difficult to draw given the immense variety of ethnic, religious, and political forms of fundamentalism, and the differences in specific grievances, targets, programmes, and tactics pursued by reactionary groups throughout the world. However, one unifying theme stands out. In spite of their other differences, the counter movements, from the rural militias of the USA to the ruling circles of Iran, are united in their opposition to the symbols of globalisation that Waters describes. All have the character of symbolic crusades against universalism, the "phenomenological essence" of globalisation, and seek to restore or sharpen particularist allegiances and identities. In that important respect, all are profoundly anti-market in word if not always in deed (terrorists must often resort to the international arms market to obtain their weapons). Markets are universalising social arrangements, and global markets could not operate effectively if buyers and sellers had to be linked to one another through relationships other than the abstract and impersonal connections forged by the pricing system. The fundamentalist reaction to globalisation is, then, ultimately a reaction to the universalising tendencies of market dominance. Moreover, this reaction often inspires acts, sometimes violent, that contravene widely-shared conceptions of human rights, even if they are not always crimes in a strict legalistic sense. Given these observations, what are we to make of a theory that locates the sources of crime, violent crime in particular, in the marketplace? The third scenario of a fundamentalist counter-transformation brings constructive pressure to bear on our thesis of market dominance and high crime

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rates. Examples of appalling violence are easily observed in non-market contexts. Even if we could bracket the pogroms, ethnic cleansings, and mass murders committed in the name of religious conversion as somehow beyond the scope of theories designed to explain less spectacular, more conventional crime, how should we understand the mundane yet highly prevalent interpersonal violence found throughout the cities and countryside of the pre-capitalist world? Or the well documented decline in violent offending that accompanied the "civilising process" set in motion by the emergence and spread of capitalism over the past two centuries in Europe (Elias 1978 [1939]; Gurr 1989)? The answer, we propose, lies in the concept of institutional balance that is central to the explanation of crime offered by institutional-anomie theory. The violence associated with the fundamentalist reaction to market dominance serves as an important reminder that the relationship between markets and the moral order cuts both ways. Anomie, disorder, and crime result, we have argued, when the market dominates society, rendering other institutions incapable of effectively exercising social control or performing vital socialisation functions. However, alternative forms of institutional imbalance also can lead to disorder and crime. The dominance of so-called "civil institutions", such as the kinship system or religion, leads to a kind of hyper-moral vigilance that encourages crime in the defence of the moral order itself, albeit understood in narrow and particularistic terms. This type of cultural orientation, and the crimes of social control that accompany it, although perhaps less pronounced than under pre-industrial conditions, are far from absent in a post-industrial, globalising world. They are usefully viewed as reactions to a spreading institutional order that is perceived to be dominated by the market and therefore destructive of traditional institutions and values.9

THE CHALLENGE OF INSTITUTIONAL BALANCE

We have presented in this chapter an explanation of crime under conditions of market dominance and have sketched out some implications of this explanation for the future of crime in a global context. We do not claim exhaustiveness for the three scenarios of globalisation offered here, nor do we have reason to believe that one of them is superior to the others. The scenarios are not mutually exclusive; elements of all three warrant consideration in a comprehensive account of the impact of globalisation on the level and pattern of criminal activity in post-industrial society. Following Malcolm Waters' discussion of globalisation, and consistent with a basic tenet of the institutional-anomie theory of crime, we have placed 9 A third possibility that we do not develop in this chapter is the domination of the institutional structure by the state. Although highly speculative, a hypothesis meriting future investigation is that political dominance results in widespread cynicism in the population regarding the legitimacy of political authority, which invites corruption on the part of the powerful and powerless alike.

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considerable emphasis on the symbolic and cultural consequences of the globalisation process. A full understanding of the cultural sources of crime in postindustrial society must consider not only the values and beliefs that are favoured when a particular institution dominates the institutional balance of power within and across societies, but also the consequences for crime when alternative cultural prescriptions and associated symbolic representations are renounced. The market promotes crime when the freedom of action that it encourages is left unchecked by considerations of collective order and mutual obligation. Political and social values, likewise, assume degraded forms in the absence of attention to individual rights and liberties—doctrines promoted throughout the world by the universalising tendencies of markets. The horrors of both anomic and moralistic violence in post-industrial society, it follows, are reduced when the respective cultural orientations of the full range of social institutions are balanced such that each serves as a continuous reminder of the indispensability of the others.

REFERENCES

Barber, Benjamin R., 1995, Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Times Books). Barber, Bernard, 1977, "Absolutization of the Market: Some Notes on How We Got From There to Here" in Markets and Morals (Gerald Dworkin, Gordon Bermant, and Peter G. Brown (ed.), Washington, DC: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation), pp. 15-31. Bell, Daniel, 1980 Reprint, "The Future World Disorder: The Structural Context of Crises" in Daniel Bell, The Winding Passage: Essays and Sociological Journeys 1960-80 (Cambridge, MA: Abt Books), pp. 210-227 (Original edition, 1977). Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, 1991, The Good Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf). Blau, Judith R., 1993, Social Contracts and Economic Markets (New York: Plenum Press). Block, Fred., 1990, Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Castells, Manuel, 1997, The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell). Collins, Randall, 1990, "Market Dynamics as the Engine of Historical Change" Sociological Theory 8 at 111-35. Cox, Robert W., 1996, "A Perspective on Globalization" in Globalization: Critical Reflections (James H. Mittelman (ed.), Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner), pp. 2-31. Currie, Elliott, 1991, "Crime in the Market Society: From Bad to Worse in the Nineties" Dissent (Spring), 254-259. Dalton, George, 1968, "Introduction" in K. Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economics: Essays of Karl Polanyi (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books), pp. ix-liv. Durkheim, Emile, 1964, Reprint, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press). (Original edition, 1893). , 1966, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (New York: Free Press). (Original edition, 1897).

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Elias, Norbert, 1978 Reprint, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners (New York: Urizen). (Original edition, 1939). Esping-Andersen, Gosta, 1990, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Fiala, Robert and Gary LaFree, 1988, "Cross-National Determinants of Child Homicide" 53 American Sociological Review 432—445. Gartner, Rosemary, 1990, "The Victims of Homicide: A Temporal and Cross-National Comparison" 55 American Sociological Review 92-106. , 1991, "Family Structure, Welfare Spending, and Child Homicide in Developed Democracies" 53 Journal of Marriage and the Family 231-240. Gill, Stephen, 1996, "Globalization, Democratization, and the Politics of Indifference" in Globalization: Critical Reflections (James H. Mittelman (ed.), Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner), pp. 205-228. Granovetter, Mark, 1985, "Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness" 91 American Journal of Sociology (November), 481—510. Gurr, Ted Robert, 1989, "Historical Trends in Violent Crime: Europe and the United States" in Violence in America, Volume 1 (Ted Robert Gurr (ed.), Newbury Park, CA: Sage), pp. 21-54. Habermas, Jiirgen, 1989, "The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion of Utopian Energies" in Jurgen Habermas on Society and Politics: A Reader (Steven Seidman (ed.), Boston: Beacon Press), pp. 284-299. Hirschi, Travis, 1969, Causes of Delinquency (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Hirst, Paul and Grahame Thompson, 1996, Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell). Merton, Robert K., 1968, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press). Messner, Steven F., 1996, "Crime and the Institutional Balance of Power in the Advanced Welfare States", paper presented at the Sixty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, 28-31 March, Boston, MA. and Richard Rosenfeld, 1997a, Crime and the American Dream (Belmont, CA: Wads worth). , 1997b, "Political Restraint of the Market and Levels of Criminal Homicide: A Cross-National Application of Institutional-Anomie Theory" 75 Social Forces 1393-1416. Mittelman, John H., 1996a, "How Does Globalization Really Work?" in Globalization: Critical Reflections (James H. Mittelman (ed.), Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner), pp. 229-241. , 1996b, "The Dynamics of Globalization" in Globalization: Critical Reflections (James H. Mittelman (ed.), Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner), pp. 1-19. O'Connor, James, 1973, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's Press). Olsen, Gregg M., 1996, "Re-Modelling Sweden: The Rise and Demise of the Swedish Compromise in a Global Economy" 43 Social Problems (February), 1-20. Polanyi, Karl, 1957, Reprint, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press). (Original edition, 1944). , 1968a, "Our Obsolete Market Mentality" in K. Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economics: Essays of Karl Polanyi (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books), pp.

59-77.

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Polanyi, Karl, 1968b, "The Economy as an Instituted Process" in K. Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economics: Essays of Karl Polanyi (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books), pp. 139-174. Silver, Allan, 1990, "Friendship in Commercial Society: Eighteenth-Century Social Theory and Modern Sociology" 95 American Journal of Sociology 1474—1504. Teeple, Gary, 1995, Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press). Waters, Malcolm, 1995, Globalization (London: Routledge).

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency Beyond the American Dream JOHN HAGAN, GERD HEFLER, GABRIELE CLASSEN, KLAUS BOEHNKE, andHANS MERKENS

INTRODUCTION

* LTHOUGH THE CONCEPT of subculture has its origin in sociology (see / \ Yinper 1960), its most influential application is in criminology, where it is A. \ . a focal point of contributions not only by sociological criminologists (e.g., Cohen 1955), but by anthropologists (e.g., Sullivan 1989) and political scientists as well (e.g., Banfield 1968). This does not mean, however, that there is consensus about the role of subcultures in the explanation of crime. Criminologists frequently disagree about the meanings, origins, and influences of subcultures; about whether and in what form subcultures exist, and if so, about where subcultures come from, and the nature and extent of subcultural influences on individuals and groups. At the core of this debate are conflicting assumptions about whether subcultural crime and delinquency are wholesale rejections or subterranean reflections of core values of the dominant culture; and therefore about whether the problems of crime and delinquency come primarily from outside, or whether they often are generated through subterranean values that come from inside the dominant culture itself. Thorsten Veblen (1899), Robert Merton (1938), and Daniel Bell (1953) saw such issues as uniquely American, however, American culture and its economy are now global forces, and the questions posed by subcultural theories are no longer isolated in their implications. This chapter has several purposes. First, we make the point that the concept of subterranean values has never been fully developed and investigated empirically. Secondly, we emphasise that while the idea of subterranean values was developed in the USA, its potential application is much broader, especially now that the ethos of market economy and society are so globally ascendant. Thirdly, we will illustrate and explore the implications of the prior two points by exploring the descriptive and explanatory value of the subterranean tradition

28

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency

in understanding delinquency in the rapidly changing settings of East and West Germany.

SUBCULTURES FROM SELLIN THROUGH SUTHERLAND

Subcultural theories of crime have their origins in the ideas of two founding figures of sociological criminology, Thorsten Sellin and Edwin Sutherland. Although Sellin and Sutherland were contemporaries, Sellin's influence came earlier and reflected a different period in American history. Sellin's (1938) contributions emerged during the depression, while the first great wave of immigration of this century was still fresh in the minds of Americans. His work evolved in the context of political conflicts surrounding immigration, for example, in the form of legislative efforts to outlaw alcohol and drug use associated in the public mind with immigrants. Sellin saw these struggles as "culture conflicts" involving the "conduct norms" of nativist, immigrant and other groups. He was mindful that legislation could criminalise behaviours that were regarded as acceptable and appropriate within particular cultural groups in society. Subsequent notions of subcultural conflict elaborated this view that adherence to subgroup norms could lead directly into conflict with dominant groups (e.g., Void 1958). This tradition emphasised that subcultures were distinctively different from the dominant culture, that they occupied subordinate locations in the social structure, and that their influence on participants was direct and strong. Meanwhile, Edwin Sutherland's contributions gained prominence in American criminology during the middle of this century. He too was concerned about the influence of culture on crime, but his vision ranged over the entire social structure and included consideration of the crimes of all classes. Of course, Sutherland's (1949) most famous contribution was his conceptualisation of white-collar crime, which he explained with the same differential association theory he applied to other crimes. He asserted that business groups simply acted like other subcultural groups in defining their illegal behaviours as acceptable. Sutherland's student, Donald Cressey (1965), ironically called these behaviours "respectable crimes". This element of respectability signalled a broad-based societal tolerance for some illegal forms of behaviour. The Sutherland tradition therefore differs from Sellin in suggesting that subcultures are connected rather than opposed to the dominant culture, that they can occupy positions ranging from superordinate to subordinate in the social structure, and that their influence may be more surreptitious and diffuse than direct or overt.

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency

29

FROM THE DELINQUENT SUBCULTURE TO THE SUBCULTURE OF DELINQUENCY

The ideas of Sellin and Sutherland remain enormously influential in two distinct subcultural traditions of modern criminology. Sellin's emphasis on the distinctiveness, subordination, and strength of subcultural effects is reflected in midcentury theories of delinquent subcultures, including the classic works of Cohen (1955), Miller (1958), Cloward and Ohlin (1960), and the later works of Wolfgang and Ferracuti (1967) and Banfield (1968). Although there is notable variation in the specific dynamics of causation associated with each of these contributions to the theory of the delinquent subculture, all are agreed that this subculture is strongly opposed in its norms and values to the dominant culture, that this subculture is located in the lower levels of the social structure, and that the influence of this subculture on the behaviours of its members is direct and strong. The alternative conceptualisation of the subculture of delinquency has evolved from the work of Sutherland, through the writings of Matza and Sykes (1961; Matza 1964), and more recently Coleman (1987) and Hagan (1991; Hagan et al. 1995). These writings refocus the notion of subcultural delinquency to acknowledge that this behaviour often finds ironic direction from norms and values in the dominant culture, that this direction is democratic in its dispersion throughout the social structure, and that this influence can be covert, contingent and diffuse. At the core of this approach is Matza and Sykes' (1961) concept of subterranean values, which refers to normative traditions that "are familiar and within limits tolerated by broad segments of the adult population". These traditions may converge in encouraging behaviours as diverse as occupational and organisational crime and as common as minor forms of delinquency. Matza and Sykes (1961) locate a source of this subterranean convergence in Veblen's (1899) classic observation in his Theory of the Leisure Class that delinquents conform to the norms of conventional society's business sector, rather than deviate from it, when they place a desire for "big money" in their value system. They go on to note that wealth-motivated and entrepreneurial traditions in American society encourage adventure, excitement, and thrill-seeking, which seemingly further promote deviance when compared with such conformity-producing values as security, routinisation, and stability. Their point is that the former risk-oriented "edge values" exist side by side with the latter more cautious "mainstream values". Matza and Sykes (1961, p. 717) conclude that, "the delinquent has picked up and emphasised one part of the dominant value system, namely, the subterranean values that coexist with the other, publically proclaimed values possessing a more respectable air". Hagan (1991) more recently has argued that subterranean values that pervade contemporary popular culture subtly encourage a larger but less threatening "party subculture" that exists alongside and to some extent overlaps with a much smaller but more ominous "delinquent subculture". Both may be part of a larger subculture of delinquency

30 Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency that has Veblenesque origins in the higher rather than lower reaches of the social order. Meanwhile, the former theory of the delinquent subculture has not fared well empirically. Kornhauser (1978) simply concludes that the delinquent subculture is nonexistent, and there is evidence that she is right. Short and Strodtbeck (1965) found that gang youth in lower class neighbourhoods accepted the prescriptive norms of conventional society, and Hirschi (1969) found little evidence of the focal concerns associated with "lower class culture" among the children of lower status parents. There is some evidence in both the studies by Short and Strodtbeck and Hirschi that some segments of the population are more accepting than others of delinquent behaviour, but Kornhauser notes that the delinquent subculture theory claims more than mere toleration of such behaviours. As Brownfield (1996, p. 108) similarly notes, theorists in this tradition predict a strong influence of "preferred and positively endorsed values requiring criminal behavior." The problem, Brownfield concludes, is that offenders are found in the empirically based research literature to be instrumental in their indifference to conventional morality rather than holding the oppositional values that the delinquent subculture theory depicts. Kornhauser notes that this is better evidence of anomie and amorality than of a delinquent subculture.

SUBTERRANEAN ASPECTS OF A CULTURE OF COMPETITION

Yet recall that a sense of amorality is exactly what the Sutherland inspired tradition of the subculture of delinquency leads us to expect. Sutherland (1947) himself developed the thesis that criminality in capitalist societies is fostered by an emphasis on competition and individualism, which he argued reduces commitment to social welfare. He observed that "it is difficult to imagine a respectable philosophy which would be more in harmony with and conducive to criminality than this philosophy of individualism" (p. 73). Sutherland reasoned that the principle of individualism was historically useful in moving from feudalism to capitalism, but that then it became a negative principle, undermining social welfare and leading to rationalisations conducive to crime. Such rationalisations and what Kornhauser identifies as anomie amorality are portrayed by Sykes and Matza's (1957) as "techniques of neutralization". Cressey (1953) was perhaps the first to recognise this kind of "anomie amorality", although he did not call it that, in accounts that embezzlers give of their crimes. Cressey found that before beginning their criminal careers, embezzlers often redefine their acts as "necessary" forms of "borrowing", so that in their minds the force of urgent circumstances (i.e., typically a shortage of funds) alters the meaning of their contemplated criminal behaviours. This understanding of necessity marks a cognitive crossing point into a subterranean world of anomie amorality that Coleman (1987) also finds operating more broadly in areas of white-collar crime.

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency

31

Coleman (p. 411) observes that "There are . . . ample data from both sociological research and the public statements of convicted offenders to construct a typology of the techniques of neutralisation used by white-collar criminals", and he goes on to illustrate six such neutralisations that again often involve the push of necessity. The necessity in many of these instances, however, does not come so much from immediate financial problems as from peers, employers and the marketplace that surround these "respectable criminals". Coleman reviews a well-developed research literature in which a majority of white-collar employees report being surrounded by expectations that encourage unethical and criminal behaviour. The prevalence of these subterranean beliefs is consistent with a Sutherland tradition in which an anomic form of amorality devolves from the dominant culture, is dispersed throughout the world of work, and exercises its influence in a diffuse pattern that influences not only employed adults, but adolescents as well. Building on Sutherland, Coleman goes on not only to make a case for the existence of these beliefs, but also for the need to understand their origins and to demonstrate their operation. Coleman's (1987, pp. 414-415) key point is that it is one thing to recognise the existence and operation of techniques of neutralisation at various levels of society and in relation to various kinds of delinquency and crime, but it is quite another to account for the origins of the motivations that lead to these neutralisations. He insists that the latter explanation is structural and that its roots are in the political economy of industrial capitalism that produces a "culture of competition" (see also Sutherland and Cressey 1978, pp. 102—110). This culture is the logical outgrowth of seventeenth century writings, for example, by Hobbes and Locke, that underpin our modern ideas about market society: From this perspective, each person is seen as an autonomous individual with the powers of reason and free choice, who is, in large measure, responsible for his or her own condition. The pursuit of economic self-interest and the effort to surpass their fellows in the accumulation of wealth and status are of critical importance to these autonomous individual actors. The key ideas in the culture of competition therefore involve central assumptions in market-oriented society about a highly individualised competition for success. We believe that this culture of competition expresses itself as a form of hierarchic self-interest that we operationalise in the form of a latent structure LISREL model below. Oddly, this culture of competition and hierarchic selfinterest have not previously been documented empirically in sociological or criminological research, even though this step is fundamental and crucial to the argument that subcultural crime and delinquency derive from core cultural values. Meanwhile, there is also a further consequence of the culture of competition that is infrequently discussed, and this is a pervasive sense of insecurity that this culture produces. Coleman (1987, p. 416) observes that "This fear of failure permeates every stratum of contemporary society from the corporate leaders to the

32 Subterranean Sources of Subcultural Delinquency underclass". The desire for success and the fear of failure therefore are powerful motivating forces in market society: powerful enough to justify the realisation of ambitions through deviant as well as conventional means. In the abstract, society is able to respond with an emphasis on high ethical standards of conduct. However, Coleman (p. 421) notes that while these ethical standards are easily combined with the values of competitive individualism on the theoretical level, "in actual practice there is often an obvious contradiction between the two". And this is where the anomic amorality of the techniques of neutralisation come into play. While Coleman focuses on the subcultural manifestations of these neutralisations in white-collar settings, his point, and that of Sutherland, Merton and others before him, is that the institutional structure and culture of market society are riddled with subterranean neutralisations that engender a range of criminal and delinquent activities. Before discussing these anomic neutralisations further, however, we elaborate our conception of the culture of competition and hierarchic self-interest.

THE CULTURE OF COMPETITION AS HIERARCHIC SELF-INTEREST

The culture of competition that is at the core of Coleman's subcultural theory is expressed in a social psychology of self-interest with sociological as well as economic connections to the stratification of market-driven societies. Veblen (1934) described this social psychology as a hierarchical striving in market societies that goes beyond simple monetary concerns to simulate an insatiable desire to maintain a high status or to improve a lesser one. Merton (1938) made a similar point in his classic essay on "Social Structure and Anomie", reminding sociologists of Durkheim's observation that modern capitalism provoked a material "longing for infinity". Lipset and Bendix (1959, p. 61) elaborated this theme by emphasising that people are motivated "to protect their class positions in order to protect their egos, and to improve their class positions in order to enhance their egos". This paired preoccupation with enhancement and protection parallels Coleman's twinning of the search for success and the fear of failure. The result is a social psychology of social and economic stratification that we conceptualise and operationalise as hierarchic self-interest. Hierarchic self-interest is a subterranean tradition in advanced market societies. This construct is neither consistently repudiated nor revered, although in some periods and settings, for example, during the "Reagan Revolution" and in films like Wa// Street, notions such as "greed is good" can become subjects of cultural fascination if not celebration. Values such as equality of opportunity ordinarily receive much greater emphasis. The defence of hierarchic self-interest tends to emerge as inequalities of life chances are revealed by lay and academic analyses of educational and occupational outcomes, and as the underpinnings of the quest for advancement and affluence are more fully laid bare by individual experience and social commentary and debate. Nonetheless,

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency

33

the underpinnings of this quest are sufficiently salient that they are the subjects of several conceptually related but practically disconnected areas of social psychological research. The first of these areas of research derives from Leon Festinger's (1954) social comparison theory of self-conceptualisation and its attention to how, why, and with whom individuals evaluate their attitudes and abilities. Social comparison theory is in many ways an outgrowth of the attention given by Mead, Hyman, and Merton to reference groups in the formation of self-conceptions and evaluations (see Suls 1977, p. 2). Festinger emphasised that individuals are driven to evaluate their own abilities, and that in addition to using nonsocial sources to do this, they also make comparisons with others to reach conclusions about themselves. The result is that other people become standards of social comparison. Festinger notes, like Durkheim, Veblen, Merton, and Lipset and Bendix, that there is a strain in individuals' comparisons of abilities to push constantly for higher self-assessments, which gives this theory a strongly proactive and competitive component. Festinger also notes that there is an ego- or selfenhancing aspect of this process that is inherently self-serving and that makes this theoretical approach especially relevant to considerations of hierarchy and self-interest. Below we present a set of survey items developed to capture the contribution of social comparisons to the measurement of a competitive dimension in individual hierarchic self-interest. The second area of social psychological work involves research by Hui and Triandis on idiocentrism and allocentrism, a trait level distinction that corresponds to sociocultural conceptions of individualism and collectivism. This approach as well is concerned with conceptions of the self, with the focus placed most distinctively on how independent actors see themselves as being free from reliance on others. Hui and Villareal (1989, p. 311) write that, "Individualists believe that the self is the basic unit of survival, while collectivists hold the view that the unit of survival lies in a group or several groups". The assumption is that an individual's location on a cultural continuum from individualism to collectivism will have consequences in terms of life-style, interpersonal relationships, and psychological well-being. These consequences include associations among individualism, the need for achievement, and preferences for interpersonal competition (Triandis 1983). Waterman (1984) finds that individualists are among those most likely to display achievement motivation. More generally, the argument is that collectivists tend to be self-effacing, while individualists are self-enhancing (see Hui and Villareal 1989, p. 313). It is the overall emphasis of individualism theory on self-preservation, autonomy, achievement and selfenhancement that ties this tradition to our conceptualisation and measurement of hierarchic self-interest, as we note in further operational terms below. The third area of social psychological work that is relevant to our notion of hierarchic self-interest focuses on materialism and success. The origin of this line of work is Ronald Inglehart's early writing about The Silent Revolution and his thesis that the advanced Western nations are moving toward "postmaterialist"

34

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency

values and political styles. "The values of Western publics have been shifting", Inglehart (1977, p. 3) wrote two decades ago, "from an overwhelming emphasis on material well-being and physical security toward greater emphasis on the quality of life". Although evidence of the directional change predicted in this work is at best mixed, Inglehart's research is nonetheless important in the attention it gives to material achievement. This focus on achievement is developed at both the individual and societal levels by including not only measures of individuals' goals in school and work, but also items tapping support for societal efforts to maximise economic growth, for example, through the development of nuclear energy. The latter focus adds a macro dimension to the measurement of individual dispositions favouring hierarchies of material success. We elaborate the measurement of materialism and success orientation through the further contributions of Boehnke (1988) below.

ORIENTING HYPOTHESES

We spell out in this section the specific strategy we use to measure the latent concept of hierarchic self-interest. A key aspect of this strategy is the premise that the above social psychological dimensions coalesce into a higher order set of preferences. The initial hypothesis that organises our work below is therefore that: HI: Hierarchic self-interest is a latent construct that emerges as a higher order representation of personal preferences for an individualised competition for success.

Messner and Rosenfeld (1994, p. 84) write in a parallel context that, "These tendencies are expressed at the cultural level in the preeminence of the competitive, individualistic pursuit of monetary success as the overriding goal". Note that these preferences do not require criminal behaviour in the sense that the delinquent subculture theories assert, but their unbridled competitive thrust nonetheless does raise linked prospects of social inequality, individual and group failure, and anomic amorality that may follow.

From hierarchic self-interest to acceptance of inequality and anomic amorality The embrace of hierarchic self-interest enervates the endorsement of inequality as an organising feature of society. From Marx to Parsons to the present there is an enduring theoretical and empirical interest in how societies legitimate social and economic inequalities. Equality of opportunities is invoked as the most compelling source of legitimisation for inequalities in outcomes. For example, Mayer et al. (1992, p. 53) note that "inequalities based on technical and scientific competence are justified through the equality of educational opportunity". The issues therefore may be less whether and how this justifica-

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency

35

tion is offered, than the extent to which self-interested hierarchic attitudes stimulate the acceptance of these inequalities. The second hypothesis that organises our work is therefore that: H2: Hierarchic self-interest engenders the acceptance of inequality.

As Parkin (1972) has noted, those who already have the most also have the most to gain from the acceptance of inequality. Messner and Rosenfeld (1994, p. 10) further observe that: "A competitive allocation of monetary rewards requires both winners and losers; and 'winning' and 'losing' have meaning only when rewards are distributed unequally. In addition, the motivation to endure the competitive struggle is not maintained easily if the monetary difference between winning and losing is inconsequential". An underemphasised implication of this reasoning is therefore that the embrace of hierarchic self-interest and its underlying acceptance of inequality sets in motion a process in which "losers" and "out-groups" are created and degraded in society. This leads to our third hypothesis that: H3: The acceptance of inequality encourages a repudiation of societal outgroups.

Given this willingness to repudiate outgroups, it should come as little surprise that hierarchic self-interest also encourages a subterranean tradition of anomie amorality. This form of anomie is conceptually distinct but empirically connected to the hierarchic self-interest of the dominant market culture; indeed, it is a predictable product of this culture, and it is therefore our fourth hypothesis that: H4: Hierarchic self-interest is a source of anomie amorality.

That is, anomie is a further value that is inculcated, less overtly but nonetheless extensively, by the culture of modern capitalism, as a logical outgrowth of its subterranean tradition of hierarchic self-interest. This form of anomie is a prescription of normative flexibility that facilitates the achievement of the more publically proclaimed cultural goals involving monetary success and achievement (see Orru 1987). The point is that market culture places the goal of material success ahead of the rule of law in its value hierarchy, and in this context, flexible redefinitions of law come to be valued. This is a basis of an ironic subterranean interdependency of good and evil in market-oriented value systems.

From anomie amorality to group delinquency The amorality of the anomie we describe is captured in commonplace references in market society to such tactics as "finding an edge", "cutting a corner", and "winking at the law". The point of these expressions is that, in Sykes and Matza's (1957) terms, they "neutralize" violations of law. It is in this sense,

36 Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency finally, that much crime and delinquency is not a challenge to the social and cultural order, but rather a "disturbing reflection or caricature of it". Of course, delinquents do not need to think all of this through in contemplating and engaging in delinquent acts. They presumably rarely do so. Instead, all that is required is that there is a sufficient societal diffusion of hierarchic self-interest through a resulting anomic amorality that the subculture of delinquency becomes commonplace as a group-supported response to the challenge of developing an achievable adolescent life-style (see Greenberg 1977). This is the basis of our fifth hypothesis that: H5: Anomic amorality encourages adolescent participation in group delinquency.

Matza and Sykes echo Veblen in noting (1961) that, "Adolescents in general and delinquents in particular [are] members of the last leisure class". That is, their involvements in delinquency give adolescent expression to what Veblen called leisure class values like hierarchic self-interest that reflect rather than reject subterranean traditions in the dominant culture. These delinquent acts tend to be committed by individuals in the company of others, who are also engaging in delinquent activities. Hierarchic self-interest and anomic amorality thus form the diffuse background conditions that respectively make the delinquent life-style culturally purposeful and possible. Although much resulting delinquency has an apparent random component (see Matza 1964, p . 44), some subcultural delinquency also is given further direction by the availability of degraded and therefore neutralised targets, such as the "members of debased minorities" (p. 175). We already have noted that hierarchic self-interest through the acceptance of inequality can lead to the repudiation of societal out-groups, and therefore: H6: The repudiation of societal outgroups further encourages group delinquency.

That is, repudiation associated with out-group membership can serve as a "denial of the victim" that justifies and thereby directs subcultural delinquency.

Both gendered and generic Thus far, we have presented hypotheses about the subterranean sources of subcultural delinquency that are largely unqualified by demographic, institutional or societal settings. Although we will argue that these hypotheses have a generic quality in their operation in market-oriented societies, some further, final sources of hypothesised variation can be identified. First and foremost is the influence of gender. We expect that: H7: Males are more prone to hierarchic self-interest than females.

Messner and Rosenfeld (1994, p. 69) note that "cultural prescriptions and mandates are filtered through prevailing gender roles, which implies that the inter-

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency

37

pretation and meaning of cultural messages differ to some extent for men and women". The concept of hierarchic self-interest may help to operationalise a central role assigned to hierarchy in the feminist literature on crime (see Simpson 1989), and it may therefore also help to explain some of the gender difference in delinquency (cf., Hagan et al. 1985). Messner and Rosenfeld (1994, ch. 4) further note that a societal emphasis on competitive individualism involves an institutional imbalance in which the economy takes priority over other institutions. The same argument applies to hierarchic self-interest, and the implication of this position is that: H8: The prominence of market-oriented values such as hierarchic self-interest will supersede restraints from noneconomic institutions such as the family and schools.

We have noted that there is a long tradition in American social theory of arguing that this problem is uniquely problematic in the USA, but we have suggested that the forces of hierarchic self-interest are increasingly global, and highly competitive individualised values may now be especially prominent in settings undergoing rapid social change toward market principles. Messner and Rosenfeld (1997) suggest that there may be a lag in the evolution of market economics and the development of abilities of other social institutions to constrain their criminogenic potential. An implication is that: H9: Hierarchic self-interest will be most pronounced in circumstances of rapid market transitions.

However, to say that males in settings of market transitions are especially susceptible to hierarchic self-interest is not to claim that these individuals are affected uniquely by the basic processes involved. Rather, they simply are more effected by these processes. Thus our final hypothesis is that: H10: Although hierarchic self-interest is more characteristic of males and in settings of rapid market-oriented social and economic change, the influence of hierarchic selfinterest is more broadly generic.

In particular, we believe that the influence of hierarchic self-interest, that we treat as a crucial subterranean source of much group delinquency, is a diffuse but pervasive cultural process that extends globally beyond the USA to marketoriented societies around the world.

WHERE EAST MEETS WEST

The data used to test the above hypotheses were collected in 1994 and 1995 in four sites in the former East and West Germanies. These sites provide uniquely interesting settings in which to test our hypotheses. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the two Germanies were consciously subsidised in efforts by their sponsoring powers to establish the opposed benefits of market driven

38 Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency and centrally planned principles of social and economic organisation. Then, with the rapid demise of the German Democratic Republic and the subsequent unification of the two Germanies following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the former East Germany became the object of an extraordinarily rapid and highly capitalised market transition organised largely by the former West Germany. Borneman (1993, p. 319) articulates a predictable expectation that, "with the collapse of their state and social system, East Germans lost their time and space coordinates". Yet it is not entirely clear where and how this might have effected adolescents. Two obvious sites in which to explore the possibilities are East and West Berlin. Borneman (1993, p. 17) uses the metaphor of "mirror-imaging" to describe the consequences of the investment of resources in this divided city during and since the Cold War. However, citizens in East and West Berlin, even more than in the rest of the two Germanies, were and are connected through extensive family ties and acquaintances, and even before the Wall fell most East and West Berlin youth watched the same television, and they were therefore exposed to the same latent and manifest themes of advanced capitalist culture and its dominant market values. We expected East Berlin youth to be more vulnerable than West Berlin youth to the accentuation, exaggeration and distortion of these marketdriven values during the rapid market transition, in part as a result of their direct and extensive exposure to West Berlin culture; however, we did not know whether to expect this difference to be greater, smaller, or the same as between other former East and West German settings. Two further sites therefore were included in this research. The sites selected were in the former Karl-Marx stadt region now called Chemnitz to the south of Berlin in East Germany, and in the region surrounding the town of Siegen in West Germany. Both the Chemnitz and Siegen metropolitan areas have smaller populations than Berlin. Both are also much more heavily dependent on industrial work than Berlin, and both are currently sites of considerable economic restructuring and unemployment. These settings diversify our representation of East and West Germany and thus allow an assessment of the uniqueness of the East and West Berlin comparison. We sampled students from seventh t o tenth grades in each of the four sites in 1994. Schools were selected following detailed pilot work (e.g., see Kirchhofer et al. 1991). While exact enrolment figures are not available for all schools, the response rates are estimated to be between 60 per cent and 70 per cent. Proportions of students do not differ significantly on demographic variables such as gender and parental work status, across grades and comparable kinds of schools; by these measures the sampling of adolescents seems closely representative of the communities from which they are drawn.

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency

39

EAST-WEST DIFFERENCES

Aside from the exogenous variables of age, gender, and coming of age in East and West Berlin, the remaining variables in our analysis are measured with multiple item scales. Descriptions of the scale items, descriptive statistics, and alpha scores are presented in Table 3.1. There are persistent differences between the East and West German sites. For example, our scale measures of parental control asked if the youth surveyed could meet friends after 8.00 p.m., stay over at a same/different sex friend's home, or take a holiday trip without asking permission of parents. Parental control tends to be greater in the former East than West German sites. The scale of school achievement is based on self-reports of general achievement, German and Math grades, and overall academic performance measures. These measures tend to be higher in the Eastern than Western sites. Five items initially used to measure competitiveness ask respondents to assess their achievements relative to others, in the sense of "being among the best", "better than others", "better than average", "above average", and finding out "how well I did in comparison with others". Competitiveness tends to be higher in the East than West. Later we will test the effect of deleting the "better than average" item, because it seems the least sensitive of the measures to the issue of competitiveness. The next items are drawn from Boehnke's (1988) operationalisation of aspects of Inglehart's work on post-materialism. These items focus on "performing well", "the importance of achievement", "success at school and on the job", the "need for nuclear power plants", and "what is good for industry". Success orientations are stronger in the East than West. The last two items address macro- as contrasted with micro- aspects of orientations to success, in the sense that they focus on public policy matters. Later we assess the implications of removing these latter items from our analysis. Three items are included next that load most heavily in a study by Hui and Villareal (1989) of individualism-collectivism among American undergraduates. These items involve feelings about "going on a trip with friends", "looking after themselves", and "standing alone", with all three items coded to reflect a commitment to individualism. There is some tendency for individualism to be higher in the East than West. We initially used eight items to measure anomic amorality. These items asked about the importance of getting ahead versus playing by the rules, the association between success and dishonesty, breaking rules to make money, obeying the law when it doesn't serve one's interests, getting ahead by doing things that are not right, breaking the law if you can get away with it, "idiots" who let others take advantage of them, and respect for the law. Overall, youth score higher on this scale of anomic amorality in the East than the West. The reliability of this scale was later improved by removing the second, fourth, and eighth of these items.

1.50 .69

1.66

.86

Female=2 Mean score on the three item scale of checking with parents (yes=l) Self-reported grades (0=poor to 5=excellent) Mean of Likert style measures of dis/agreement (not at all true=0 to completely true=3) As Above

As Above

Gender

Parental Control (alpha = .71/70)* Meet friends after 8:00 PM Stay over at friend's house (same/different sex) Take holiday trip without checking with parents

School Achievement (Self-Reported)(alpha = .69/71)* General achievement German and Math grades Overall Academic performance

Competitiveness (alpha = .66/.58)* "I would like to be among the best in all areas of life (Yi) "For me, to be successful in life means to be better than others"(Y2) "My ambition is always to be better than average'^Ys)** "I am only satisfied when my performance is above average"(Y,t) "In any kind of examination or competition it is important for me to find out how well I did in comparison with others"(Yj)

Success Orientation (alpha = 70/.67)* "People who don't perform well won't be happy"(Yg) "The most important thing in life is achievement"(Y7) "Success in school and later on the job is most important in life"(Yg) "We need nuclear power plants"(Y9)** "Whatever is good for our industry is good for us"(Yio)*'1

Individualism (alpha = .52/M)* "To go on a trip with friends makes one feel less free and mobile; as a result there is less fun"(Yn)

1.75

3.31

14.48

Years of Age

Age

.57

.65

.60

.68

.35

.50

1.09

East Berlin (n=327) X SD

Measures

Variables

.83

1.56

1.64

3.01

.61

1.48

14.57

.61

.67

.57

.68

.35

.50

.47

West Berlin (n=322) X SD

Table 3.1: Inventory of variables, measures and descriptive statistics for East and West German youth, 1994-1995

.66

3.24

.82

1.63

.51

.60

.55

.33

.64

1.58

.50

.87

1.52

15.18

(n=626) SD X

Chemnitz

.62

.55

.72

.60

.65

.36

.50

1.08

1.48

1.42

2.98

.53

1.53

15.22

Siegen (n=643) X SD

.74

.72

1.26

.84

As Above

Mean scores on four self-report delinquency items (never=0 to often=3)

Ethnocentrism (alpha = .80/.78)* "Foreigners are better off in their homeland" "Foreigners are not as trustworthy as Germans" "Foreigners should be dismissed from jobs before Germans" "There are too many foreigners in Germany" "Foreign aid is too philanthropic"

Group Delinquency (alpha = .80/.76)* "What kinds of things does your group do?" Steals Things Damages Property Provokes Fights Gets into Fights

1.23

1.26

.66

.61

.60

.72

1.33

.89

.67

1.29

.58

1.15

.63

.65

.58

.65

.56

.91

1.37

1.14

* Alpha scores are reported for East/West Berlin and Chemnitz/Siegen combined samples. The alphas pertain only to items used in the final versions of the scales. ** Deleted from final scale. See Table 2.

.61

1.30

As Above

Acceptance of Social Inequality (alpha = .60/.55)* "Rank differences between people are acceptable, because they show what you make of the chances you have" "On the whole, the social differences in our country are just" "Today in Germany economic profits are distributed justly"

.61

1.36

Mean of Likert-style measures of dis/agreement ( 0=strongly disagree to 3=strongly agree, with inverse items reverse coded)

Anomic Amorality (alpha = .73/.75)11 "It is more important to get ahead in life than to play by the rules" "People who are the most successful in life often are the most dishonest" "I want to make a lot of money, even if I must sometimes break the rules" "People should obey the law, even if it doesn't serve their interests" "If you want to get ahead, sometimes you must do things that are not right" "It is okay to break the law, if you can get away with it" "Idiots deserve it when others take advantage of them" "I have great respect for the law"

"We would be better off if everyone would just look after themselves" (Y,2) "To be superior, a man must stand alone"(Yi3)

.60

.56

.52

.59

42

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency

Three items measuring the acceptance of inequality were included from Mayer et al.'s (1992) work on opportunity and inequality. These items ask about the "acceptability" and "justice" of "rank differences between people". The scores on these items indicated that the former East German youth were less likely than the West German jjoiith to accept social inequality. Ethnocentrism was measured by Likert-style responses to six items asserting that "foreigners" are better off in their homelands, not as trustworthy as Germans, should be dismissed from jobs before Germans, are too numerous in Germany, that foreign aid is overly philanthropic, and that Germany's first priority should be to restore its "earlier greatness". East German youth scored notably higher on these items than did West German youth. Finally, subcultural delinquency was measured by asking "what kinds of things does your group do?" Youth were asked to indicate whether their groups were never to often involved in stealing things, damaging property, provoking and getting into fights. Again, the East German youth scored higher on these items than the West German youth. On these and the other multi-item scales we have presented, the former East German youth are consistently different from the West German youth, regardless of whether we consider the paired comparisons of East and West Berlin or Chemnitz and Siegen. Next we begin to explore the subterranean place of hierarchic self-interest in this differentiation of East and West German youth.

SUBTERRANEAN MODELS OF HIERARCHIC SELF-INTEREST

We used LISREL 8 to confirm a set of theoretical expectations about the subterranean nature of hierarchic self-interest (see Table 3.2). LISREL's use of observed measures to trace the structure of latent concepts is an appropriate match with the subterranean theme in this theory of hierarchic self-interest. More specifically, LISREL allows us to specify and test a layered measurement model in which hierarchic self-interest is represented as a second order latent concept that is abstracted from the three more directly observed dimensions identified in our discussion of competititiveness, success orientation, and individualism above. This use of LISREL also allows us to test the distinctiveness of this second order latent construct from the acceptance of inequality and anomic amorality, also introduced above. We began our development of a measurement model of hierarchic self-interest with a single factor Model (A) that included all of the items in Table 1 measuring competitiveness, success orientation, individualism, anomie, and the acceptance of inequality. Although it is conceivable that these factors might collectively represent some kind of overarching materialist orientation, this model did not in fact fit the data well, with a ratio of chi-square to degrees of freedom of more than 14 and a goodness of fit index of .71. Treating the anomic amorality or acceptance of inequality items as uncorrelated second factors (Models B

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency

43

Table 3.2: Development of LISREL Measurement Model of hierarchic self-interest in East and West Berlin Model A. Single Factor Model B. Two Factor Model with Anomie as Uncorrelated Second Factor C. One Factor Model with Anomie Items Omitted D. Two Factor Model with Inequality as Uncorrelated Second Factor E. One Factor Model with Inequality Items Omitted F. Two Factor Model with Competitiveness as Uncorrelated Second Factor G. Two Factor Model with Individualism as Uncorrelated Second Factor H. Two Factor Model with Success as Uncorrelated Second Factor I. Competitiveness, Individualism, and Success as Three Uncorrelated Factors J. Second Order Factor Model of Hierarchic Self-interest with Competitiveness, Individualism, and Success as Three Correlated First Order Factors K. Second Order Factor Model of Hierarchic Self-interest with Y9 and Y10 deleted L. Second Order Factor Model of Hierarchic Self-interest with Y3 removed

x2

df

GFI

AGFI

3666

252

.71

.66

2824 1523

252 104

.80 .83

.77 .78

1366

104

.85

.80

1094

65

.85

.79

1113

65

.87

.81

1190

65

.84

.78

1080

65

.87

.82

1096

65

.86

.81

609

62

.92

.88

288

41

.95

.93

151

32

.97

.95

and D) improved this situation somewhat, as did simply omitting the anomie and inequality items (Models C and E); and omitting both the anomie and inequality items produced a one factor Model (E) that increased the goodness of fit to .85, but with a chi-square ratio that was still nearly 17. We then created three separate two factor models in which competitiveness (F), individualism (G), and success orientation (H) were each respectively treated as uncorrelated second factors. Each had a similarly inadequate fit, as did Model (I), which treated competitiveness, individualism, and inequality as three uncorrelated factors. Only Model (J) significantly improved this situation by taking the theoretically proposed step of treating competitiveness, individualism, and success orientation as three correlated first order factors in a second order factor model of hierarchic self-interest. This reduced the chi-square ratio to just under 10 and increased the goodness of fit to .92. Deleting the two more abstract, macro-level measures of success orientation (Model K), involving nuclear power plants and

44

Subterranean Sources of Sub cultural Delinquency (x2 = 530.86; DF = 191; GFI = .95)$

* Seigen and West Berlin ** Chemnitz *** East Berlin § coefficients significant at p