Ethnic minorities, culture conflicts and crime

Abstract

Since the mid-sixties debate among German criminologists has centered around the impact of cultural conflict on deviance and crime. Research in this area is restricted to individual level explanations of behavior. There is, however, another avenue provided by culture conflict theories. This paper describes the contemporary German situation and suggests that shared values and collective morals are no longer the nucleus of stability in modern industrial societies; they have been replaced by a material culture. When large proportions of the population are denied access to this material culture, the potential for a collective reaction increases. Violent behavior is then justified by the assertion that culture or national identities are being defended. Thus, collective reactions might lead to cultural conflicts between groups and go beyond individual violent acts or other types of deviance.