What is a violent subculture? Why do some subcultures seem to stress violence? How might participants in a subculture of violence be turned toward less aggressive ways?
Nowadays, there is a great number of different movements which have many adherers among the youth. Sometimes, some of these movements become so significant that they could be called a subculture. Subculture has its own rules and peculiarities which determine belonging to it. Additionally, it has an extremely powerful influence on young people, who consider themselves to be the members of this subculture. Unfortunately, nowadays, there is a great number of these movements which promote violence among the youth. Rude attitude towards a certain group of people and constant fights with representatives of some other subculture are the main conditions under which people could belong to it.
There are several reasons why various subcultures stress violence and insist on young people performing violent actions. The first obvious reason is that it is the easiest way to control members of a subculture. Being a good way to burn off steam, violence also leads to the appearance of a certain bond between young people who were involved in these actions. That is why rude actions serve as a sort of initiation which all members of a subculture should undertake. It is obvious that the remedies to shift the priority to less aggressive ways to express emotions should be found. That is why young people should be interested in some other activities which promote humanistic values. The alternative to violent subculture should be created at schools or colleges for people to be able to participate in their activity and feel belonging to some society.
Choose a subtopic from Types of Social Structure Theories and write an essay about it relevance to crime
There are three main theories whose main aim is to explain the existing social structure and its influence on the behavior of people in society. They are strain, social disorganization, and culture conflict theories. The main sense of the last one lies in the fact that different conflicts in society appear due to the differences in mentalities of people and their vision of the world. Additionally, it states the fact that the main root of criminality is the differences in the idea of what could be called legal in society (Schmalleger, 2015). According to this very theory, people are socialized in different ways and, as a result, they have an absolutely different vision of the right behavior. Which is inappropriate for a certain social group could be a rather common practice for another. These differences appear due to the various values which exist among representatives of different social groups.
However, it should be said that very often, these differences are no so crucial. Thus, there are also cases when incongruity of these values leads to some serious results. The latest accident in Umpqua Community College in Oregon can be taken as a good example to illustrate the main concepts of this theory. A man murdered ten people asking to what religion they belonged to (Parker, 2015). However, it would be wrong to suppose that the religious aspect became the main root of this event. There were some reasons for this accident, and the most important was the desire to become famous and mentioned in the news. The chosen way shows that a man was not brought up with the idea that human life is priceless. Having no respect for it, a young man did not even suppose that it could hurt the feelings of other people. Moreover, his desire to kill Christians shows his attitude to this culture. The given horrible accident can show the importance of culture conflict theory. The murderers values did not coincide with traditional human values and, that is why he performed these actions.
With this in mind, resting on these facts, it is possible to conclude that the culture conflict theory is rather important for the tracking of the roots of crime and the development of the ways to get rid of manifestations of this issue. Moreover, it can help to understand the mechanisms of the formation of criminal inclinations among people. Under these conditions, culture conflict theory should be given great attention and analyzed.
References
Parker, D. (2015). Mass Shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon: Live Updates. The New York Times.
Schmalleger, F. (2015). Criminology Today. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education.