hi everybody and welcome back. we are going to get into institutional anomie theory today. This is still a strain theory... this is a third strain theory in addition to Merton's stain theory and Agnews theoretical revision, a general strain theory or a general theory of strain. So institutional anomie theory is often just abbreviated as IAT. It is a part of a larger work called Crime and the American Dream by two theorists called Messner and Rosenfeld. This was authored in 1994 and Messner and Rosenfeld wanted to explain why crime is excessively high, specific to American culture. So this theory is interesting in that it only extends itself to explanation of crime in The United States. Once again they're referring back to Merton's original postulates that focus on The American Dream.... that commitment to material success, financial success, etc., that is pursued by everybody in society and we do so through competition. So just like Merton, Messner and Rosenfeld argue that there's the same focus, that we still have that weight of desire to achieve and acquire monetary goals. And we do that at the expense of institutional means of obtaining them. So let's talk about anomie for a second and The American Dream. So first of all anomie is a concept originally developed by a sociologist named Emile Durkheim and really it is just a word for chaos, meaning in chaos in society, meaning that when people experience anomie there is no social script the laws, the rules, the morals of society and so forth focus are not being followed, they're being ignore. What results is chaos, disorder, crime, violence, etc., and Messner and Rosenfeld argued that The American Dream directly breeds anomie, or it breeds crime, and it gets back to that intense focus on acquiring material wealth, but doing so through competition. They argued what is missing from Merton's theory is a discussion on or a focus on the way institutional power is shifted towards the economy in The United States. There are many institutions in any given society. Let's talk about that first... there's the institution of family, there's religion, there's the economy, educational institutions, on and on we go. Society is built up of institutions and each institution plays a role in creating the larger puzzle. the completed puzzle of what we call The United States or our culture what we value, how our culture functions. They argue that America is very unique in that we have an intense emphasis on economic institutions at the expense of all other institutions, that economics come before family, economics come before marriage, economics come before education, it's valued above all else and in a competitive capacity. Let's expand on that a little bit. We look at our education system, whether it's our public education institution or post-secondary education of college... what's the entire purpose? We don't teach in The United States for the sake of learning or for the value of knowledge. We do so specifically with an emphasis on this is preparing me to get into the workforce to make money... the more education I receive, the more education I get, the more money I will make. So everything Messner and Rosenfeld argues that all other institutions either take a back seat to our economic institutions, or they are in support of our economic institutions. Politics as an institution for example... politicians make every decision based on "will I be re-elected, will I get more campaign donations to fund my next reelection?" Rather than "What is best for my constituents, what is best for, whether it's local or state or federal politics, what is best for my country, what is best for the people of my country? They are focused on the economic in other countries. Messner and Rosenfeld make the point that other countries have a much greater emphasis on other social institutions. So for example, family is a huge powerful institution. In south American communities and cultures, over economic institutions. So for example, we have a work day here in The United states... you get an hour for lunch, you scarf down your lunch, a lot of people don't even take lunch, they work over lunch because we're focused on getting work done and making money. Whereas in a lot of South American countries they literally have a two, two and a half hour break where everybody leaves work and they go home and they sit down at the table at lunch every day with their family. They spend time with the family while they eat their lunch and then they all make their way back to the office. This is just a cultural difference, but it's a big cultural difference according to Messner and Rosenfeld because they say that when we have more divided, evenly the emphasis among institutions, when it's more divided evenly, you're going to have less crime, because money is not the only thing of import in a given culture, in South America for example. But here in The United States, we have such an intense emphasis on economic success, material success, that all the other institutions sort of melt away. They're there, but they don't have as big of a role and because we have such a focus on the economic institution, therefore those other institutions don't have the same amount of power and control over daily life and there's more room for crime. When The United States focuses solely on the economy and economic success, according to Messner and Rosenfeld everything else becomes secondary and the result is going to be lawlessness and anomie... chaos as we discussed. So they argue that The American Dream is going to generate anomie by focusing on that pursuit of money through any means possible. That material success, that economic success, is valued above all else, which is going to create and feed crime. Whereas in other cultures you have a greater emphasis on family, you have a greater emphasis on marriage, you have a greater emphasis on religion. It doesn't create quite as much competition in the economic stratosphere and there are more controls over behavior where thinking about "well I don't want to if I break the law and I get all this money if i steal, if I deal drugs, if I do whatever,,, I have all this money but, I risk my family, I risk my morals in my religious institutions etc. So it's more likely to constrain behavior, illegal behavior, deviant behavior. But because our institutions here in The United States are much weaker, with the exception of the economic institutions, that is what Messner and Rosenfeld argue is missing from Merton's original strain theory explanation. That it is our unhealthy cultural obsession with money, wealth, and material success that creates lawlessness... it undermines the value of other institutions and it ultimately results in anomie and lots of crime.