ABSTRACT
The sociological version rejects individualist explanations and proposes that those behaviours defined as criminal behaviour are simply those that deviate from the norms acceptable to the consensus of opinion in society. The sociological variant of the predestined actor model involves the ‘scientific’ measurement of indicators of ‘social disorganization’ – such as rates of crime, drunkenness and suicide – in specified urban areas. Emile Durkheim was the founding father of academic sociology in France and a major social theorist working at the turn of the twentieth century. Sociologists working at the University of Chicago reached the conclusion that growing up and living in negative conditions undoubtedly influenced the outcome of people’s lives. Conformity is a largely self-explanatory adaptation whereupon people tend to accept both the cultural goals of society and the means of achieving them. Problematically, post-subcultural studies pay little attention to the importance of social divisions and inequalities in contemporary youth culture.
