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Handbook on Crime and Deviance pp 209–224Cite as

Institutional Anomie Theory: A Macro-sociological Explanation of Crime

Part of the Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research book series (HSSR)

Criminologists have formulated a wide range of explanations for the causes of crime, as reflected in several chapters of this volume. One useful means for classifying these explanations is according to their primary level of analysis. Micro-level theories direct attention to characteristics of individuals (e.g., biological, psychological, and social psychological traits) or their immediate social context (e.g., family and peer influences) to explain individual differences in criminal offending. Macro-level theories, in contrast, explain the variation in ratesof crime across population “aggregates.” The nature of these aggregates varies in different theories. For example, social disorganization theories focus attention on features of relatively small-scale aggregates – the collection of people who live in the same neighborhood. The core insight of these theories is that variation in levels of crime reflects the degree of informal social control that residents are able to exercise over the geographic territory that comprises their neighborhood.

Keywords

  • Crime Rate
  • Cultural Orientation
  • Homicide Rate
  • World Value Survey
  • Social Disorganization Theory

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a more extended discussion of the similarities and differences between Merton’s anomie theory and IAT, see Messner (2003).

  2. 2.

    Our citations to “Social Structure and Anomie” refer to the elaborated version published in the second edition of Social Theory and Social Structure (Merton, 1968).

  3. 3.

    Merton recognizes that the structural strains toward anomie can elicit different responses on the part of the members of a society, and he develops his well-known typology of modes of individual adaptation to enumerate these responses. Although Merton makes fleeting references to social class differences in family socialization when illustrating various adaptations, he never systematically incorporates his typology of individual adaptations with his abstract model of social system dynamics.

  4. 4.

    See Messner and Rosenfeld (2000) for a more detailed discussion of the similarities between Polanyi’s views on capitalist development and key themes in IAT.

  5. 5.

    For more recent analyses of how the market economy encroaches on other realms of social life, see Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton (1991), Currie (1991), and Schwartz (1994).

  6. 6.

    For a formal treatment of the conceptualization of institutions that informs IAT, see Messner, Thome, and Rosenfeld (2008).

  7. 7.

    Although not discussed here, we also note that key problematics for the further development of IAT include systematically incorporating the institution of religion into the theoretical framework and attending to the gendered nature of social institutions. For suggestive findings relevant to the extension of IAT to the institution of religion, see Antonaccio and Tittle (2007). For discussions of the centrality of gender to criminological phenomena, see Miller and Mullins (2006) and Hagan, Simpson, and Gillis (1987).

  8. 8.

    See Eisner (2008) for evidence on increasing homicide rates during the latter decades of the 20th century in European nations, following a long-term decline.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY, USA

    Steven F. Messner

  2. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Richard Rosenfeld

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  1. Steven F. Messner
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, Washington Ave. 1400, Albany, 12222, USA

    Marvin D. Krohn

  2. School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, Washington Ave. 1400, Albany, 12222, U.S.A.

    Alan J. Lizotte

  3. School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, Washington Ave. 1400, Albany, 12222, U.S.A.

    Gina Penly Hall

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Messner, S.F., Rosenfeld, R. (2009). Institutional Anomie Theory: A Macro-sociological Explanation of Crime. In: Krohn, M., Lizotte, A., Hall, G. (eds) Handbook on Crime and Deviance. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0245-0_11

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