Matza, David, and Gresham M. Sykes: Subterranean Values and Delinquency

Deviant Values?

Drawing on a burgeoning literature on delinquents, particularly the behavior of youths in street gangs, Matza and Sykes (1961) found several “underlying values” that they concluded are entirely consistent with the mainstream American value system. The first of these is a preference or desire for “excitement,” an adventurous life filled with “displays of daring” and “charged with danger.” Next, delinquents value an ethic of “grandiose dreams and quick success.” This contrasted with the notion that one gets ahead through hard work. Better to make one's financial success through the easy score and outwitting one's peers. Finally, the delinquent values a “readiness for aggression” that is often observed in gang violence. The use of aggression, however, is not a pathological drive to create suffering; rather it “is a demonstration of toughness and thus of masculinity.”

At first glance, this “cluster of values” appears to represent a disturbed subculture that deviates “from the dominant society,” rather than a reflection of conventional American values. Not so, argue Matza and Sykes. In fact, these values appear eerily similar to “the code of the ‘gentlemen of leisure’ depicted by Thorsten Veblen” (p. 714). Daring and adventure, rejecting the “prosaic discipline of work,” a taste for consumption and luxury, and the valuation of masculine endeavors—these are all prototypical of the “leisured elite.” It thus appears that non-delinquent members of society's upper classes possess the same values as their lower-class counterparts. The only difference, as Matza and Sykes see it, is the expression of those values in the form of delinquency. All youths, then, subscribe to a similar set of American values; the delinquent's values are no more deviant than the law-abiding youth's values.

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