PRESENTATION OUTLINE
I am sure that some point, everyone has (or will have) come to a cross road and did not know which choice to go with. "Should I go with the crowd? Should I deviate from the norm? Do I go on my own and create my own path?"
Robert K. Merton constructed a highly influential theory of deviance that located the source of crime within the very structure of American society.
Merton's theory has 4 possible outcomes that describes one choice when at a cross road.
(1) Conformity accepts both cultural goals and institutionalized means. (2) Ritualism rejects cultural goals and accepts institutionalized means.(3) Innovation is the opposite of ritualism.
(4) Retreatism rejects both cultural goals and institutionalized means. (5) Rebellion creates new goals and new means.
I have a friend who has a boyfriend that occasionally flirts with other girls and she knows that he does this, and she considers this to be cheating, which obviously frustrates her, but she still stays with him.
Relationships typically have a cultural goal to marry each other and stay true to only one's significant other, and with her boyfriend not exactly following that, their relationship rejects cultural goals.
Institutionalized means in relationships are very similar to the cultural goals, to marry and not cheat. I do not know if they have intentions to marry, but their relationship rejects institutionalized means by not completely staying true to each other.
Since my friend's relationship rejects both cultural goals and institutionalized means, her relationship fits into Merton's Deviance Typology retreatism category.
Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Applebaum, R. P., & Carr, D. (2015). Essentials of sociology (5th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton &.
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