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Abstract:
In this paper, the authors use Contextual Anomie and Strain Theory (CAST) to explain recent acts of white-collar and corporate deviance involved in the near collapse of the US economy (e.g., fraud in big banks and on Wall Street). One goal of the article is to demonstrate how CAST can be used to help understand these kinds of acts of elite deviance. Another is to illustrate how the key tenets of the theory can be assessed against real-world deviant acts. Using a methodology of inferential logic-whereby general truths are discovered by analyzing specific incidents as laid out by scholarly and governmental investigations of the deviant acts under study-we are able to demonstrate that CAST is a valid explanation of white-collar and corporate crime.
Introduction
Although research shows that white-collar and corporate crimes receive far less attention in mainstream media than what are commonly referred to as serious street crimes (Robinson, 2017), it is also true that the careful consumer of news will regularly see stories describing harmful acts committed by elites. In the past 15 years, for example, the media have covered the actions of elites on Wall Street, in big banks, and even among members of Congress, that helped cause the economic collapse in the United States. This collapse caused between $12 and 22 trillion in losses, the equivalent of about 600-1,100 years of property street crime (Robinson, 2015). The media also devoted coverage to serious safety violations associated with some Toyota cars and the role that white-collar elites in the company played in trying to keep auto defects a secret, as well as serious deviance among executives in General Motors (GM) associated with defective ignition switches that led to more than 100 deaths. Prior to that; the media covered the explosion aboard a deep sea oil rig operated by British Petroleum (BP) in the Gulf of Mexico, (which killed 11 employees and resulted in the largest oil spill in US history), and the role that negligence and recklessness among corporate managers played in the disaster (Friedrichs, 2009; McLean & Nocera, 2010).
Still, since most Americans do not see even these acts as crimes-in spite of the culpability of elites involved and the enormous harms they cause-people remain largely preoccupied with serious...