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Abstract
Messner and Rosenfeld have proposed an institutional anomie theory of crime, incorporating the proposition that societal investments in programs to buffer citizens from capricious market forces (decommodification) are inversely related to rates of lethal violence among societies. They support this argument through an analysis of variations in homicide rates among nations. However, the research relevant to their theory is quite limited with numerous claims and arguments yet to be examined. This paper outlines several limitations of the theory and brings data from the World Values Surveys and other sources to bear on their characterization of American culture in comparison to other nations, their arguments about the impact of economic dominance on other institutions, and alternative explanations of the link between decommodification and homicide. Finally, the relevance of the theory to serious property crime is considered and shown to generate serious problems for institutional anomie theory when evaluated as a general theory of crime.
Keywords: Anomie, Decommodification, Homicide, Burglary.
One of the most enduring debates in criminology over the last three decades has involved the theoretical and empirical adequacy of various versions of "strain" or "anomie" theory in the explanation of crime and delinquency in comparison to social control and differential association-social learning theories (see Jensen and Akers 2002: 9-38). Most of the research relevant to that debate has focused on individual-- level, self-reported offenses and the variance explained by variables central to each perspective (e.g., see Hirschi, 1969). Because measures of stratification and economic well-being are more central to strain-- anomie theories than alternative theories, much of the controversy has centered on the variance explained by such measures. Self-reports of offending tend to enter into very weak relationships with measures of economic or social status (see Jensen and Rojek, 1998: Ch. 4).
In 1987, Thomas Bernard challenged the adequacy of such analyses for testing strain theory and argued that a proper assessment of the theory required analysis of variations at a macro-level (Bernard, 1987; 2000). That argument has been further endorsed by Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld in Crime and the American Dream (2001: 38-42). They argue that analyses based on self-report survey measures of crime and delinquency are irrelevant to the Durkheimian-- Mertonian, macro-level version of strain theory, which focuses on...