RT Article
T1 Industrious rebels and captains of deterrence: defiance interpreted through a Veblenian reformulation of strain theory
JF Crime, law and social change
VO 60
IS 1
SP 25
OP 38
A1 Preparata, Guido Giacomo 1968-
LA English
YR 2013
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1854204084
AB Strain and Defiance are criminological theories that lay ambivalent emphasis on the notion of "rebellion," which is to say that they both regard mutinous behavior as being motivated by positive or negative ends alike. Individuals rebel, say, by stealing in order to achieve higher status (economic strain); or they may violently antagonize authority as a way to "salvage dignity" in an environment in which they have no social stake whatsoever (defiance). Conversely, they may responsibly protest to oppose blind consumerism (strain); or they may civilly disobey racist laws (political defiance). It is here argued that both theories may be construed as special cases of a general problem, which Thorstein Veblen had already diagnosed in 1899. Veblen depicted social dynamics as a battle between the deterring forces of conservatism, which are animated by an overpowering predatory-pecuniary instinct, and those of progressivism, which rely, on the other hand, on an (ever more enfeebled) instinct of cooperation and workmanship. In this Veblenian model, civil defiance represents a challenge of the peaceable middle-class to the rule of the elite, whereas economically-strained defiance is the expression of the attempt of (middle to low) classes possessed by a pecuniary drive to emulate the status of the elite itself.
NO Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 37-38
K1 Business Elite
K1 Conspicuous Consumption
K1 Criminal Sanction
K1 Leisure Class
K1 Strain Theory
DO 10.1007/s10611-013-9433-2