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Capitalism, Social Institutions, And Pathways To Crime: Reconstructing Institutional Anomie Theory, Amanda Marie Smith

Dissertations

Messner and Rosenfeld (1994; 2013) developed the Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT) as an explanation for the high rates of serious crime in the United States. They theorize that high serious crime rates are the result of a culture that values material gain as the primary goal (i.e., the American Dream) with a weak social institutional structure. This study argues that IAT must be reconstructed because Messner and Rosenfeld: (1) discount religion as a social institution of importance, (2) exclude high inequality as a source of structural blockages, and (3) use the concept of the American Dream as a proxy for …