Zone 3 By Emile Durkheim

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was a French sociologist who was considered to be a radical social thinker of his time. Durkheim published a book called the De la division du travail social (The Division of Labor in Society). In this book he talked about the social change involved in the industrialization. He divided his research into three different theories; mechanical, the transition from mechanical to organic, organic. Mechanical is a more primitive form of society and organic is a more modern form. Durkheim focused more on the influence of social backgrounds that have an effect on human behavior. There are three subtypes of social structure theories: ecological/environmental, strain, and cultural deviance. One of Durkheim’s argument was that …show more content…
Zone two is viewed as the slums of a city with the poorest neighborhoods and a heavy flow of immigrants. Zone three is where the working class citizens mainly live and it is located further away from Zone two. The living conditions in this area are way better than zone two with moderate housing and apartments. The people who occupy this area have most likely migrated from Zone two due to its poor upkeep. Zone four which is located in the center of the city. Zone four consists of single family homes and luxury apartments. The suburban homes and better neighborhoods are in the final zone, zone five. Ernest Burgess argued that each of these five zones are gradually growing and overlapping into the next zone (p.135). Due to the constant overlapping of these areas, the crime rate would increase due to rapid social change. Strain theory is a criminal behavior that is the product of one’s relative position in the social hierarchy. This theory is closely associated with Robert K. Merton. Merton adapted Durkheim’s theory and shifted the focus away from rapid social change. Instead he argued that there were certain relatively stable social conditions that were associated with the higher crime rates in American society, as well …show more content…
Cohen realized that the lower class youth were not properly socialized by the time they entered school. The “middle class measuring rod” are the standards that middle class teachers expect their students to meet and most of them cannot which leads to stratus frustration. At this point they’ve become extremely frustrated with the inability to do well academically. Lower class boys will engage in a third party concept “reaction formation”, an overly intense response to any perceived threat or insult. The three subcultures (corner boy, college boy, delinquent boy) describe youth that are unable to improve because of lack of opportunity or internal prohibition. Corner boy are kids who started hanging out on the street corner. College boys are the ones who make it out of high school but are not prepared for the rigors of college. They usually end of dropping out of college. Delinquent boys are the ones who are most likely to engage in the series of the law. Cloward and Ohlin agreed with Cohen that gang delinquency was motivated by status and reaction of the middle class values, but they argued that they were less serious delinquents (Bernard et. al, 2010). Cloward and Ohlin came up with “retreatist subculture” which is very similar to Merton’s retreatist