t persons with similar predispositions" (Gomme, 1993, p. 60). The major contribution of the Chicago school does not rest with the principle of differential association, but rather with the principle that deviance results from external, social forces at least as much as internal, psychological forces.
Functionalism shares with the Chicago school a theory based on an organic model, a "bio," rather than "eco" system, to be precise. The functionalist "draws parallels between organic life and the social order" (Gomme, 1993, p. 64). As Gomme (1993) further points out, "Functionalism like the organic analogy from which it derives, asserts that the ideal condition of any system is balance and stability" (p. 64). Unlike the Chicago school, however, functionalism is much more theory-bound in that it labours to support several theories, all of which seek to explain crime and deviance.
"Anomie theory and the functions-of-deviance approach are the two basic themes of functionalism," according to Gomme (1993, p. 76). Emile Durkheim's anomie theory asserts that deregulation in society produces conditions wherein individuals' aspirations and the means of their achievement fall out of phase with one another. The widening gap produces a strain, as the disjunction between ends and means increases. Merton argued that individuals' aspirations stay at a high levels for all groups; those groups deprived of their goals adapt to anomie in five distinct ways. They can conform, innovate, engage in ritualistic action, retreat, or rebel. It will later be seen that the criminal is an "innovator" in terms of his or her abandonment of legitimate means of attaining goals.
Following Merton's repertoire of adaptations, Cohen argued that disaffected and disenfranchised groups reject society's middle-class values in order to form their own subcultures. Similarly, Cloward and Ohlin argue that individuals who experience strain (anomie) become involved in i...