Conflict Theory Perspective

When we talk about the conflict theory perspective, this refers to power and social inequality as the major cause of societal problems. The elite people of the world use power to obtain privileges and to protect themselves by using the very criminal justice system that is meant to protect everyone. When someone commits a crime such as breaking into a person’s car and stealing valuables such as a computer, means they are breaking the law. The law is a written rule that tells people in a society what they can and cannot do and there to protect everyone and if broken people are punished.
When it comes to deviance which is breaking the rules of the culture, such as walking down the street naked could be considered as breaking the law. While other

cultures such as Muslim’s practice sacrifice such as killing goats for cultural reasons, in North America, that could be looked upon as breaking the law. Sociologists tend to look into experiences outside the individual such as social experiences or social factors. These can be due to many reason such as inequality, economic status, media and migration.
While people might learn through association with others such as bad neighbours, delinquent friends, street gangs and sub cultures, these groups can tend to lead others to deviant behaviours. A perfect example is when I went to boarding school for the first time and my parents found out I was hanging with a group of bad friends. I was always cautioned to never hang out with the group. It was only until they put me in a Catholic school that I realized how bad the group really was because that group of friends later always got into trouble all the time.
Many wonder whether deviance is functional for societies due to claims that deviance affirms norms and clarifies moral boundaries and that it promotes social unity and social change at the same time. As a society we try to motivate everyone to be successful by having people compete with each other and motivate people to be successful. That can sometimes make people feel discontent with what they have and they will attempt to better themselves. The key issue with this is that some people are already ahead and makes it difficult for others to compete. While some people play by the rules, some people might feel the system failed them and that sense of frustration and dissatisfaction is known as anomie.

People deal with anomie through innovation, ritualization, retreatism and rebellion. The innovator accepts the cultural goals but tends to do things differently to attain those goals. Steve Jobs dropping out of college to attain his goals and the proud founder of Apple. A drug dealer selling cocaine illegally through moving his product so he can be rich. Ritualization rejects cultural goals but accept the institutionalized mean to attain the cultural goals they reject. Someone doing a telemarketing job for money, they hate their job, don’t like being at work yet they are there because they don’t know what else to do. Retreatist who rejects both the cultural and institutionalised means. Rebellion is the same as the retreatist rejecting the cultural and institutionalized means but replacing them with new things such cultural rules with new rules and new institutionalized means to change those goals.