Conceptualizing Institutional Anomie Theory on the Individual Level in Poland

• In Event: Applications of Criminological Theories across the World

Abstract

Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT), a macro-level theory originally developed to explain crime rates, locates crime´s sources in the institutional and cultural structure of societies. It is argued that crime emerges as a result of imbalances in the institutional structure – namely a domination of economy – and cultural pressures towards anomie. Whereas there is sufficient support for the theory operationalized on the macro-level, lately attempts emerged considering also micro-level indicators. The research at hand builds on these by transferring IAT´s conceptual framework to the micro-level and capturing the processes of accommodation, devaluation and penetration. Thereby, this research expands recent efforts to transfer IAT to the micro-level related to the concept of ‘marketized mentality’, a mentality with an especially strong commitment to the principal values of the market. Using representative Polish survey data from 2010 (n=1000) and 2016 (n=1051) the interrelations of IAT constructs are analyzed and linked to deviant behavior. The results show that the IAT constructs can be usefully applied by the suggested conceptualization and how they are conducive to deviant behavior in Poland.

Authors

• Jacek Bieliński, Collegium Civitas, Institute of Sociology

• Andreas Hövermann, University of Bielefeld